Whistleblower ✓

34 | bruised ego

On Saturday, our administrative assistant was out with the flu, so Rebecca bumped me over to the second worst task at the Garland Country Club—calendar management. It wasn't that fielding emails and scheduling lessons and events was particularly challenging. It just meant that, on a day with cloudless skies and a comfortably cool breeze, I was locked up in a windowless office deep in the basement of the clubhouse.

My only source of a view was a framed and autographed photo of decorated Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte hung on the wall opposite the desk.

I wasn't complaining about it.

But some sunlight would've been nice.

The worst part of being stuck in the office was that I didn't have PJ around to distract me from my incessant thoughts of Bodie St. James.

It was a relief when noon rolled around and I had an excuse to take my lunch break so I'd be just in time to watch kickoff. Garland had an away game against Arizona State, who'd been struggling harder than we had this season but would probably still kick our collective ass.

PJ wasn't behind the bar, so I had to go looking for her in the back room. I found her with a clipboard tucked under one arm as she inventoried cases of alcohol.

The retired population of Garland, California consumed an absurd amount of top-shelf tequila. This was mainly due to the fact that the Real Housewives of Garland were obsessed with post-tennis-lesson frozen margs.

"Yo," I greeted, sounding a bit too much like Ryan (my group member, not the Olympian) for my liking.

PJ turned, her eyebrows pinched in concentration. Her face went slack with a smile when she saw me.

"Hi. How's Lochte?" she croaked.

"Beautiful and vacant-eyed as ever," I said. "What's wrong with your voice?"

PJ tried—and failed—to suppress a hacking cough.

"It's nothing. My throat's a little sore. I think I'm just dehydrated."

I wasn't sure if this meant she was hungover, or getting sick. For both our sakes, I hoped it was the former—working at the club when PJ wasn't there was like cannonballing into a swimming pool without any water. Not even a little bit enjoyable.

"Morning, ladies!"

Speaking of painful, our supervisor had arrived.

Rebecca bustled into the bar with a smile on her face. She had her long, dark hair in twin French braids and a white streak of sunscreen across one cheek. She never wore makeup, since she considered it false advertising—a fact she brought up every time someone made a remark about how strong PJ's eyelash game was.

I'd never had the balls to ask Rebecca who, exactly, she thought she was selling herself to.

False advertising. Fuck off. Women weren't Big Macs. Just because I looked better on Instagram than I did during Writing 140 on a Monday morning didn't mean I was any less delicious.

"Did you hear the news?" Rebecca asked us, pushing her Ray Bans onto the top of her head. "I'm sure you've heard, Laurel. I guess all those tips were fake after all! What a relief, right?"

No. It was not.

"I knew they'd clear Vaughn," Rebecca continued. "I knew he was being scapegoated."

I was good at biting my tongue. Every once and a while, my anger (or a few too many alcoholic beverages) led to a slip up—like the time I'd told Bodie St. James to eat a dick. And the time I'd called him a coward. And a dumbass, en Español.