​20 Weeks – Chapter 2 (Part 3)

20 Weeks – Chapter 2 (Part 3)
 
 
    "safety – like light – is a façade.”   C.J. Roberts


​ 
“You’re late.”
 
At the sound of the words she’d dreaded her whole drive in, Bijuu cringed as if she’d been physically struck.
 
But it was just the middle-aged Deedra, who was only happy when she was making someone else miserable.
 
Still… Bijuu just happened to be her favourite target, and just then… well… Bijuu didn’t quite feel as if she had the strength to take it.
 
“I had a flat,” Bijuu answered, just as flatly.
 
“Well, I hope you’re prepared to stay late then, because I don’t think I should have to do my work on top of yours.”
 
“No ma’am, you should not.  And I can stay as late as I’m needed.” Bijuu answered, ducking under the large woman’s tray, and scurrying out of the way just as quickly as she could.
 
“Oh, and Bijj…” Deedra hollered, just as Bijuu had thought she’d escaped.
 
“Yes?” she inquired, without turning.
 
“Don’t you think you should try to find some better fitting clothes?  I mean… you’re falling out, dear.”
 
Deedra’s eyes stared meaningful holes in the back of Bijuu’s head.
 
“Yes ma’am,” Bijuu answered, just as her mother had taught her… before she had died.
 
“Your mother’s not dead,” her ghost hollered at her, from the sofa in the breakroom.
 
Not that Bijuu cared to listen just then.
 
“She’s late again,” a weasel-faced man said from behind a stack of dirty glasses.
 
“Deedra’s late all the time,” James, the handsome bartender reminded him.
 
“Yeah… But, Deedra has other… assets,” Gary, the owner of the bar said. 
 
“Sure…” James began, in a hesitating fashion, as he himself couldn’t really see the draw the large woman with the sagging tits and permanent menthol breath had on his boss.
 
“But… Bijuu works twice as hard, complains a hundred percent less, and has never actually missed a day…”
 
Gary adjusted his mask so that he could speak over it clearly, so there would be no misunderstanding.  “Yeah… but Deedra comes with other perks.”
 
James, the five-foot-nine dark-haired, dark-souled, bartender rolled his eyes and thought for a second about knocking his boss upside his head.  But then he recalled he was one of his few friends who still had a job, and went back to washing glasses instead.
 
“Bijuu!” Gary called, as he went by the breakroom.
 
“I want to see you in my office.”
 
Like a cold Northern wind… it was… screaming in through an open door in the middle of the night.  That’s what it felt like any time her boss wanted to speak to her.  Or so at least it felt, in her veins.
 
“Is it just me, or is Bijuu’s ass really getting big?” Deedra asked of the good-looking bartender, even though she knew it would be a rhetorical question, as James wasn’t the kind to partake in that kind of gossip.
 
But really… Bijuu’s ass was enormous… and if he couldn’t see that… then heaven help him, the eternally-jealous woman thought.
 
“I couldn’t help it, I had a flat tire,” Bijuu began, the second she had stepped into his small-cramped office.
 
She held her apron in her hand.
 
“Shut the door,” he told her, his smile sliding off his face and slithering across the floor.
 
Bijuu had to take a step back to keep from stepping on it.
 
“Don’t do it!” Nyx, her ghost, intoned in a meaningful way, from the top of the filing cabinet in the corner.
 
Bijuu though, against her ghost’s advice, and her gut instinct… shut the door, and then stood right up against it.
 
Gary just looked at her, and smiled again, another one of his throw-away smiles that meant anything but what he would have it imply.
 
“Look Bijuu… with the pandemic… things are tighter than ever, and the truth is… I’m gonna have to let somebody go.”
 
The man eyed the sixteen-year-old in a way, that nobody would think was appropriate.
 
And then he patted his lap.
 
“Of course,” he said, reaching out his hand to her.
 
“If you were willing to work with me, on some of my other… needs…”
 
Gary pulled off his mask, and once again reached for the girl that was thirty-five-years younger than him.
 
“You’re willing… to work with me… Bij… aren’t you?” he asked, this time his voice working its ways into more of a demand, than a question.
 
Reluctantly, Bijuu took a light seat on his knee.
 
“There… there… that’s not so bad… now, is it?” he asked, one hand going to the small of her back, and the other… to the side of her face.
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2020
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.