Leaving Jetty Road Read Free Page A

didn’t want to work there anyway. There’s too much studying this year.”
    Probably she’s upset. Not because she really wanted to work at the café—I believe her when she says she didn’t—but because I got the job and she didn’t. As in,
Nat’s better than me—
that kind of thing.
    But I think the truth of it is, I just talked to Michael more than she did. Lise, being shy, hardly said anything at all.
    When I say Lise is shy, I mean, like—
shy.
Put her with people she doesn’t know very well and she goes sort of quiet and stiff, like she’s got nothing to say. It’s even worse when she’s with guys. Even Tim, whom she’s known for years: when he’s around, she’s this completely different person; you can’t get a word out of her. It’s like she shuts in on herself. Her face gets all
boxed in.
Only her lovely wild hair seems free.
    I don’t get it, to be honest. I mean, last year I had this crush on one of Tim’s mates from work, Mario. It was huge: I used to lie in bed at night for hours, just thinking about him. He stayed over at our house for dinner a couple of nights, and the whole time, all I wanted to do was reach out and
touch
him. Just feel
close
to him, you know? Of course I never said anything to him about it. How could I? He was my brother’s friend; you can’t get more embarrassing than that.
    So yes, in one way, because of all that, I felt pretty shy around him. But it never made me so shy I couldn’t speak. Besides, the thing is, you get over those feelings, and you move on. You know?
    But Lise hasn’t moved on—not at all. If anything, her shyness seems to have gotten worse as she’s gotten older. Sometimes I think she’ll never change.

    On my first day at the Wild Carrot Café, it’s 100 degrees.
    Michael, the manager, is apologetic. “I’ve got the ceiling fans on high. Doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, though.” He runs a stubby hand through his short gray hair. “One of these days we’ll get air-conditioning.”
    He shows me around the place again, more slowly than he did during the interview. There are wooden floorboards all the way through to the kitchen, scrubbed to a dull, worn gleam. A small black tub of wheatgrass decorates each of the tables, which are covered with unbleached tablecloths and burlap place mats. (“Very unfashionable to have tablecloths these days, I know,” says Michael, bustling around, tugging at a cloth to straighten it, pushing a sugar pot back into the center of the table. “Butcher paper’s all the rage. But I can’t stand the stuff. It’s so unrestful.”)
    Potted plants in terra-cotta-colored containers line the walls, and rough wooden crates filled with apples and oranges stand in each corner of the shop. More tubs of wheatgrass stand at each end of the counter. It’s got what you call the natural look. Almost—but not quite—twee.
    Michael introduces me to a girl with dark, curly hair and a wart on her upper lip who’s standing at the espresso machine behind the counter, wrapping knives and forks up in paper napkins.
    “Loretta’s a uni student. She works here on Saturdays and Sundays. She starts at ten, an hour before you.”
    Loretta glances up at me with a lazy, hungover smile.
    “That’s on the days when she
makes
it here, of course,” says Michael grimly, and hurries me on out the back to the kitchen.
    “And this is our chef, Joshua.”
    Joshua’s standing at the counter opposite the dishwasher, chopping veggies. He turns around and smiles at me in greeting.
    And that’s it. There’s no warning. One minute I’m feeling normal (if a bit nervous about whether I’m actually going to
like
it, working here); the next minute Joshua the chef is smiling at me—and my knees are crumbling.
    He’s like—gorgeous.
Drop-dead.
    He has brown-brown eyes, an Asian-style brocaded cloth cap in place of the usual chef’s hat, and a swoop of blond hair that falls over his forehead. He’s tall, tall, tall, and his