Summer Lovin'

Chapter Thirteen

(May 13th 2009)

Addy wiped down the bar and gave me her sternest look, "You're sure you're okay to close for me tonight? You've been working non stop?"

"It's honestly not that big of a deal. And you are not allowed to work tonight, you've been talking about him coming back for the last month. You, my friend, are reuniting with your boyfriend tonight, cause I cannot take listening to you talk about how horny you are any longer." I gave her a smile and a nudge as I said it.

She laughed and sassily walked away, heading to the back to get plates and utensils to set me up for the night time shift.

I looked around the brewery, we were in that lull before dinner time where the shifts switched over. It was supposed to be my night off but when Addy had messaged and told me that her boyfriend, Li had completed his contracting job in Toronto early and was on his way back tonight, I had been happy to help her out.

I had been back for about a month and I generally liked most of Jon's staff. There were a few bad apples and a few girls that needed a good head shake, but all things considered it was a great place to work. It was early yet, but I thought it would be easy enough to lessen Jon's responsibilities.

I was one hundred percent certain that one of those ways was going to be Addy. She was by far my favourite out of all the girls at work. She had dark purple hair and light green eyes. A stone cold knock out, with a wicked sense of humour and one of the kindest people I had ever met.

She was a natural born leader and I thought that when I was done for the summer, she could take over for me. She would be the perfect choice for manager.

A couple of the girls had been a little snide towards me at first, feeling threatened with another single woman in town and not impressed that Jon had brought in an outsider, for the management role.

But, Addy had told them to grow up and stop being such dicks. As soon as she had stood up for me, I had been given less grief and I was on the way to me being welcomed in. Her kindness had made both this job and being home easier than I had expected it to be.

It had cemented our friendship because she had proven to be my kind of people. One of the biggest steps into adult hood, for me anyways, had been that I made a conscious effort to surround myself with positive people. Addy was willing to stand up for someone she barely knew, was funny as fuck and had shown herself to be drama free... for the most part anyway.

The other thing that helped was that her boyfriend, Li had been gone for work for the last month. She was as lonely as I was and she was quickly becoming one of my favourite friends.

We had hung out anytime I was free, which wasn't much considering I was working all the time but enough that she had worked her way into my heart.

It was funny because she went out of her way to talk about her boyfriend as little as possible, saying that she missed him too much when he was gone and so not talking about him was how she coped.

To my relief, Gabriel and I hadn't run into each other yet. I had been so scared to come home because I had wanted space from Gabriel and since being home, I hadn't seen him once. I knew he was around because I had spent some time with Mama Sawyer and Declan but he was scarce, which I should be thankful for but instead I found myself disappointed.

I started my beer and liquor counts watching as Addy walked around and closed up all her tables. We had added daily counts into our protocol, with me coming back to be the manager.

It had been easy to bring me in as a manager because Josie's dad had done virtually everything himself since Mrs. Stevens had passed away. He wasn't replacing an employee, he was lightening his own work load. He also had known immediately why I was back.