Shaking my head slightly at her increasingly unnerving lack of conversation, I proceeded to chuck my other garbage bag in the dumpster.
‘So, does Carlos ever come here for more than 20 minutes at a time? And for more than just coming to count his money?’ she suddenly said, out of the blue.
I was taken aback by her observation, but it was true. The boss had a habit of leaving for long hours at a time. You’d think he would supervise a little more those people that he put in charge; whether it was groundskeeper Janet, or old Darcy at accounting. Darcy worked her ass off in the warehouse at the back to prepare a vivid look for the owner of how profits grew daily. She was pretty much Carlos’s personal accountant, tallying expenses even for all of his endeavors, which I had no clue what they were.
Mostly, he was just gone, running errands in his Astro Van, handling some PR or doing whatever the fuck an owner does for his business.
‘What do you mean?’ I said, trying to see where she was going with this.
‘Well, today was quite busy, as a matter of fact. But all he did was walk aimlessly around the diner with his wife. He looked like he lost his contact lenses in the flower beds, I don’t know, but he could have come to help with the line-up instead, and use his charm to tone down the growing impatience that I had to deal with.’
I laughed when she made finger quotes on the word “charm”. I was sensing that Emery might have a bit of a cynical personality. I wasn’t going to lie: I liked that a lot.
I mean, were we going to start talking behind the boss’s back now? Was I finally going to have an opportunity to speak my mind to someone about the man that’s been rotting my life for the past 2 years?
Laying on the table and looking overly confident, like she always did, I just stared at her jugs, because, hey, she was letting me look, dammit. Was this another trap, or was I just being paranoid?
‘Yup, that’s good old Carlos, for you.’ I said, snapping out of my daydreaming. ‘This is his kingdom, and we are his low and humble servants.’
I was afraid my analogy was going to make us start giving him many other not so flattering nicknames. So I added:
‘But… fair warning, though: don’t ever piss him off.’ I laughed. ‘I know that old fart can get ugly when he’s mad… Trust me.’
Not only was she new, but she basically knew me as Carlos’ right arm. Still, my calling him an old fart would surely clarify my position towards him, even while being his so-called top employee. That didn’t make me love him more. Far from it.
She looked at me, unaltered from my words, and we just left it at that as I walked away, nodding. Still, I felt that we just connected, somehow.
******
After that, I had more than a few opportunities to open myself a little more towards Emery. For example, there would be times where drink orders were coming in a lot more than food. She’d get swamped with specialty coffees, pop refills, juice and even ice cream orders.
That was when I started offering her my help, since there were a few basic things I knew how to do for the front of the house. Among those, my favorite was definitely the milkshakes. I had to say they were quite popular, and they were advertised in bright bold letters on the billboard: we really had to live up to it.
The thing was that Carlos had a partnership with a local craft dairy shop. They came up with this special recipe for our milkshake that made it extra thick and silky. We’d top it off with fruits, caramel chips, cookie dough or whatever, and a little parasol, making the final product super sexy, and call it our own. But the blend came in large bags, unmixed. So that was where the hostess came in to prepare the drink in what must be the loudest mixer that I’ve ever heard.
That mixer had a 10 liter capacity, convenient for many orders at once. Its reliable 100 watt motor was perfect to crush everything we put in there. Even though it bore a brand that’s no longer part of today’s household landscape, it still worked perfectly. But it was loud and very unsteady, so much that you had to hold it down by the lid with two hands every time you started it. And our milkshakes needed a good 20 second spin until desired consistency.
It was a hassle, but it made a great milkshake. Fresh.
Now, I guess you saw me coming with this? Can you picture the new girl, operating this hellish contraption? That’s right. Every time Emery would get an order for milkshake, she knew she was going to have to brace herself and hold it quite steady despite her decent strength and corpulence.
Then it began. She would press the button and the mixer started bucking and thrashing like a wild beast. As impossible as it seemed, considering the usual tightness of her clothes, Emery’s own milk jugs would start gyrating around, and threaten to pop out her top! She found a way to keep them from potentially doing so by holding them down with her arms while she held on to the lid on the mixer. Occasionally, she’d look down and, I guess, made sure her tits were still in place. She was well aware of the risks that her assets were exposed to, but every time she walked out of a battle with the mixer, she would blow a strand of hair from over her face with a proud smile, and simply readjusted her clothes as needed. She returned to the order window with a staggered breath and rosey cheeks, beaming like a champion. It was so fucking sexy…
Every time she pressed that button, I dedicated myself to stop everything I was doing only to watch, as her whole body was taken by these tremors. I almost felt privileged from being the only one able to witness it. It wasn’t even as if people had started swarming Carlos’ Roadside Diner to come get their milkshake with a free boob show, courtesy of yours truly. No, the clients had no idea. They had no idea how much they made my day whenever they placed an order. They had no idea that they were causing Emery to keep my cock semi-hard by making her tits shake and shake to my great enjoyment. I know. I’m a bit of a pervert…
So, yeah. I knew how to help out at the order window. But I feigned not really knowing how to make a good milkshake. Emery was going to be the only person I wanted to see operating that mixer. She was going to be the milkshaker.
******
Every night, I came home, exhausted and a little surly from what I was letting this job do to me. But my weekends were mostly spent forgetting about it all. It was sacred to me. I hung out with some buddies of mine, where nobody really talked about each other’s jobs. We mostly went to shows, rode our skateboards around town and drank beer, without causing too much ruckus.
My aim was to keep a good, healthy balance between my job and my life or emotions outside of work. Throughout her first weeks at the diner, I thought I could easily go home and keep my mind away from Emery.
Until I ran into her unexpectedly on that random Monday night…
It hadn’t been such a hectic day, but I had intended to do some overtime to finish some back burner stuff around the diner. Literally. Cleaning around, preparing orders, etc. In mid-june, the sun was already high and crazy hot at that late time of day. Everyone had gone home. Or so I thought…