Chapter Eight [Eli]

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"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

I sigh, glancing over my shoulder to see him leaning against the lobby doorway in a black button-up and a silver bow-tie — The Lodge's servers uniform. It's... a strange image, at best.

"What else do you expect me to do?" Elliott asks me plainly.

I want to roll my eyes, but I don't have the energy even for that. Practice wore me down to a mush.

"Have somebody else train him," I mumble under my breath.

"Do you see anyone else here?"

It's a rhetorical question, obviously. Besides myself, my brother and the subject of our conversation, there is no one else in the lobby and bar area. The only other living soul outside the kitchen, is the same older gentleman who eats soup for dinner every night, sitting in his usual corner table in the dining room.

"I didn't hire him. His dad did," Elliott says. "And since it's a weekday, you're the only other waiter here."

"You train him, then."

He gives me a look. The look. That's not Elliott the brother, it's Elliott the manager. To be honest, though, I haven't seen Elliott the brother in a while.

"Fine."

I lean off the bar counter and walk towards Liam Astor. I can't be too sure he hasn't been listening to every word we said. He pushes himself off the door frame as he sees me approach, standing readily on both feet. 

His face isn't as bad as I would expect, after seeing him on Friday night. There's no visible swelling, and barely any noticeable bruising except for his lip. The skin on the side of his face looks clear, except for a very slight coloring which the warm shade of the lightening here manages to conceal. There's also no cast or bandage on his hand.

Guess the best medical care money can buy and a weekend's rest in a luxury mansion does wonders to one's physical health. That, or he put on makeup to cover up the bruising.

"Hey." Liam smiles.

I jerk my head towards the dining room, hoping he'll take the hint and follow me.

"Guess you're not thrilled at the prospect of being stuck with me," he muses, trailing behind me.

I don't answer.

"I promise you won't even know I'm here," he says. "This is just my dad trying out unorthodox parenting methods. I'll be totally quiet and inconspicuous, and stay completely out of your way."

I turn around, leaning against the dining room counter to stare back at him blankly. He stops walking, standing in front of me with a sort of expectant look. I let the silence last for just long enough to be mildly uncomfortable.

"So you don't actually expect to do any work?" I ask.

He has the audacity to look taken aback.

"You realize you being here means somebody else isn't, and I'm the only other employee," I tell him evenly. "If you don't work, I work double."

He looks around the dining room and I can practically read his mind. There is only one guest here, and virtually no work. Not apparently.

"I don't actually work here, though," he speaks slowly. "My dad just decided I need to be more responsible. He's trying to teach me to work for my privileges."

"How dare he," I deliver flatly.

Liam's eyes narrow with a mix of disbelief and offense that he's trying to hide. He tucks all that back into a mask of flippant indifference after a second.

"You think I'm just a spoiled rich brat who's never worked a day in his life." It could have been a question, but he doesn't phrase it like that.

I cross my arms over my chest. "And you don't?"

He scoffs. "I work a lot."

"On what, for who?" I shake my head.

"I put more hours in the rink than anybody else in Brunson and Lake City combined," he shoots back promptly. He actually looks proud of that one. Like it's a given win. An irrefutable argument.

I refute it, "Because you don't have to balance school and practice with a job and family obligations."

He rests his hands on his hips, eyebrows drawing in. "I have family obligations and I manage them just fine," he says.

"Really?" I raise my eyebrows lightly. "So... House work? Domestic tasks? The servants don't have that covered?"

"I have other kind of family obligations," he retorts.

"Dinner party appearances with the rest of the Lake City elite doesn't count," I say.

He scoffs again. "Says you, who never had to do it."

I tilt my head to the side. "Have you ever cleaned a dish in your life?"

"Yes," he fires back immediately. I wait for the stubborn fire in his eye to die out, fading into begrudging resignation. "No."

"Great. Let's start there." I pull away from the counter, walking into the kitchen. He doesn't follow me as readily as he did before.

"We have to keep an eye out on the dining room while we're in here, but we should be able to finish that pile before anyone comes for dinner orders."

He stares back at me imperviously, before trying a glance at the small stack of dishes on the sink to my left. When he looks back at me, there's a defiant little glint in his eye despite his willfully unaffected expression.

"I thought I was here as a waiter," he says.

"You're here to work."

He stares between me and the dishes again, his impassive front cracking at the surface. 

"You expect me to just go?"

I shrug. "It's not rocket science."

"No," he agrees. "That's highly refined, qualified manpower-demanding work."

"You'll get it done faster by putting your hands to use instead of your mouth," I tell him.

He snorts. "No one ever said that to me before. Then again, no one ever asked me to get it done faster."

The smile on his face is deviously proud. He stares at me like he's just waiting to relish in my reaction. When I offer nothing more than an unimpressed look, he cocks his head curiously.

"I think I liked you better when you got all flustered and wobbly after the slightest reference of sex."

I press my lips together. "That's not what happened that night," I murmur.

He smiles coyly. "So, you dropped that stew on my dad on purpose?"

"No. It slipped," I answer stiffly. "Sometimes it happens when you balance too much. You'd know that if you'd ever worked before."

He hums pensively. "Some people get passive-aggressive when they're trying to deviate. You turn aggressive-aggressive. Little piece of advice — it works better when you act indifferent."

"Is that what you do?"

He tilts his head with a sly smile, and I can't tell whether he thinks my snappy reply was a win for him or a tie between the two of us. I'm also not sure when it was decided this was a competition at all.

I break the eye contact to turn around and reach for the stainless steel counter top behind me. I grab a scourer and throw it at Liam, then shove the detergent bottle in his chest for him to grab. He holds one object in each hand, looking between them weirdly.

"What am I supposed to do with these?" He asks me, holding the cleaning supplies like one would an alien artifact.

"Clean the dishes."

"How?"

I sigh, grabbing a water-proof kitchen apron from the hook on the wall. I undo the buttons on my cuffs to roll the sleeves up to my elbow. When I extend my hand towards him to get the scourer, Liam doesn't try to hide the way his eyes rake up the length of my forearms.

Unauthorized, my head produces the memory of whispered rumors. The kind that go around every school — she likes him, he slept with her, they went out once. This particular piece of rumor I heard just two weeks after school started, from Trey Coleman. It was just a snide joke, meant to leave the implication in the air, during a friendly game we played on Labor Day.

"Whose team you on?" Owen had asked idignatly, after James Lowell let my team score too easily.

"Some guys play for both," Trey had said with a pleased smile. "Just ask Liam Astor."

That implication was reinforced when I heard some other guys from the hockey team talk about it at a party, between tears of laughter. And it was pretty much confirmed when Mackenzie Pruitt walked by, shooting them a cynical smile as she asked, "Why so interested, boys? Exploring your options?"

I purse my lips, turning around to conceal the heat rising to my face before it becomes visible.

I grab one of the dishes.

"Water," I say, sliding the scourer under the running tap. "Detergent." He hands me the bottle and I squirt some on the green mesh. "Rub. Then rinse."

He leans one hip against the counter surface by my right, watching as I finish following my own instructions. When I'm done, I jerk my head in the direction of the towels behind him. He turns around to grab one.

I almost expect him to stand uselessly with the clean wet dish in one hand and the towel in the other, but he dries it. Spoiled, but not hopelessly dumb.

"That's it?" He asks with a lilt of surprise to his tone.

I snort. Easier when you're just watching.

"I wash, you dry."

"Yes, sir," he chants.

I bite my lip, rolling my eyes. I can see him smile through the corner of my eye. I choose to ignore it.

We work through the stack on the sink with the system I designed. Liam takes the job of drying his dishes a little too seriously, though. More than once I have to wait for him to finish his dish after I'm already done with the next.

I jerk the scourer in his direction after he takes over five minutes with a single plate. He gasps as a few thick droplets of foamy water land on the side of his face and the chest of his shirt.

"Are you serious?" He breathes.

I raise my eyebrows. "You don't have to be so damn meticulous."

"Maybe you should be a little more meticulous," he counters. "I'm not sure I'll ever trust this place's hygiene standards enough to ever eat here again, after watching you clean those so fast."

I don't bite the bait, staring back at him blankly. If he's deterred in the slightest, it doesn't show.

"You realize a dishwasher would be significantly more efficient too, right?" He taunts.

I snort. "Tell that to your dad."

Liam seems to realize his misstep immediately. He sucks in his lips, leaning his hip against the counter. I squirt the scourer in his face again. He gasps, wiping it with the back of his hand.

"That's not very professional."

"Just put that plate down and dry this one."

"I will not lower my standards of work to please your impatience. I thought the whole point of being here was teaching me to work hard."

"Work hard, not slow."

His jaw slacks. My eyes catch his fleeting glance in the direction of the running water in front of him, but my mind doesn't make sense of it until it's too late. I take several steps back as a splash of cold water hits the sleeve of my uniform. 

Liam grins proudly at me. I glare back.

"You know I have to work the rest of the shift in this, right?"

"You started it," he says.

"I didn't start anything!"

He scoffs, but the grin is still on his face. Part of me wants to be wholeheartedly irritated with that stupid grin, but my lips betray me, falling into a smile of their own. His grin widens, just before the kitchen doors swing open. 

"What's taking you so long in here? Chef Armell will be here soon," Elliott says, followed by, "What the hell happened to you?"

"I got wet," I mutter, walking back up to the sink to reach for the last plate.

"I can see that," Elliott says. He looks between the two of us, the dish in my hands and the water-dripped floor. "Did you seriously just take thirty minutes to wash two dozen dishes?"

I purse my lips, keeping my back to my brother — my boss — and my eyes down on the task in hands.

"My bad," Liam pipes up. "I guess training me is taking away from his productivity."

I lift my eyes to look at him, then glance at Elliott. His eyebrows are slightly pinched in the middle, like he's having trouble formulating an adequate response.

Liam grins. "If there's trouble, just tell my dad I got in the way. He'll believe you."

***

Hello, hello :)

How are we feeling about Liam's first day of work? Is he a natural? What about Eli? Do you think he was born to train others?

At this point, I would also love to know if there is one particular POV — Liam's or Eli's — that you enjoy reading the most? What are you expecting to see from these main characters as their story progresses?

Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to read, vote and comment! Hope you liked this one :)

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