She-Vegans, Electricity, and Tattoos: An Exploration of Other Things You can do in a Walk-In Besides Keep Food Cold

I'm working on tightening this up for submission to a favorite Literary Journal of mine. Help would be appreciated.

A flash of electric purple, the smell of coconut and hibiscus, and the dessert that Jordy had just placed on The Pass was gone. If he glanced out over The Pass and into The Dining Room, he would see Elle delivering the dessert to a booth full of tattooed and pierced vegan women, who would all look from the dessert to him and wave flirtatiously, maybe bite their lips and try to make their eyes melt. And that was why he never looked. He didn’t ask to be the type of guy every she-vegan seemed to want, and he was getting tired of all the staring and gaping and flirting. He was ready, he was realizing more and more, for something else, something…real. Years of fucking around and then all of the sudden, this little girl, barely twenty-one—basically the same age as his little sister—walks into the restaurant and flicks her purple hair over her shoulder and asks him about his tattoos, runs her warm fingers down the length of the tattoo on his side before she even tells him her name and suddenly, he doesn’t want to fuck around anymore. Not with anyone but the purple-haired girl. Elle.

But the she-vegans were staring. He could feel their eyes and hear them laughing, louder than normal, trying to get his attention, lure him into looking up at them. Seriously? Was he really that attractive? He was a too-tall, too-skinny pale dude with too-dark hair, who looked younger than his twenty-five years—younger, even, than his twenty-year-old sister, who everyone always thought was the older of the two. He had too many tattoos and not enough peircings and looked more like The Ghost of Punks Past than a living, breathing vegan being. SO WHAT WAS WITH ALL THE STARING?!?!

Another flash of electric purple, but this time, it wasn’t so flashy. He looked up and right into Elle’s big, round, electric blue eyes (everything about that girl was electric).

“The Ladies of Table Eight gave me something for you,” she said in that scratchy-yet-feminine voice of hers, and she handed him a piece of paper so heavily perfumed it almost completely masked the subtle coconut and hibiscus scent of electric Elle.

He took the paper from her, his fingers brushing hers and creating a sort of electric storm where they touched—tiny lightning bolts and little shocks like needle pricks. And then she was gone, cleaning up some guy’s spilled martini at the front of the restaurant. Jordy watched her go, watched the round muscles that made up her ass as she bent to sweep up the glass, wipe up the alcohol on the floor so no one slipped, and he watched the martini-spiller watch them, too. Then he looked down at the piece of paper in his hands and unfolded it, smearing the white paper with whipped cream and pineapple juice from his fingers.

Orgasmic dessert, Prince Piercing.
What else can you do that to?
♥ Kate, Jade, Teka and Chloe

Why? Why always with the stupid note-passing and trying too hard to be sexy? This wasn’t high school, for chrissake. He much preferred the natural swing of Elle’s hips, her comical breed of sexual innuendo (“How’s it hanging?” she’d asked this afternoon when she slammed into the kitchen, spilling clothes and eye pencils, a pocket-size journal and her cell phone out of her purse and onto the floor in her wake and not even noticing). He preferred her electricity to the same-thing-every-time that he got from the She-Vegans who ordered dessert and ogled him from across the dining room.

Fuck open kitchens. FUCK THEM. That’s where the problem lay. With this small restaurant thing; only fifteen tables, most of them two-tops, the dim lighting (due to Greg’s “A Little Dim Lighting and Inconspicuous Dirt Behind the Potted Plants or Under the Booths Where No One Can See Never Hurt Anyone” Policy), and the goddamn open kitchen. He would have practically killed to be back in the enclosed, messy and hot-as-hell part of the kitchen with Rich Peel, doing dishes among all the stainless steel prep tables (Elle’s knee bumping into his hip this afternoon as she sat on the table next to his cutting board, waiting for Greg to show up with the produce so they could all go unload, but she was sitting there, on the prep table, swinging her leg and not caring that her knee was bumping into his hip and distracting him from his tomato dicing like nothing else could), instead of out there on The Line where, if they really wanted to, really craned their necks, maybe lifted themselves out of their chairs a little, the guests could see over The Pass and into the kitchen. But they didn’t have to crane or lift to see Jordy. He was so damn tall, all they had to do was turn their heads toward the Kitchen and there he was, his head and shoulders in plain and unobstructed view.

Greg wandered by, heading to the back for more Seitan because it was crazy busy again—which would explain the flashes of electric purple instead of the whole, slow-motion smiles and blue-eye glances she gave Jordy on the slower nights. He patted Jordy on the back as he walked by and Sarah handed him a new ticket over The Pass.

“Table Five wants dessert.”

Jordy glanced over The Pass at Table Five. Two blonde chicks with more tattoos than skin grinned back at him and then Elle breezed by, into the back and his eyes followed her into The Walk-In and he felt a sudden need for more Whipped Soy Cream, stored in a box on the bottom right shelf of The Walk-In, behind the mangos and he had to go get it right that second or else Table Five would be completely dissatisfied with their dessert and all hell would break loose. He bolted from the kitchen, bursting into The Walk-In and pulling the door shut just as Elle straightened and turned around, her hands full of mangos.

“I need some Whipped Soy Cream.”

“That’s great.” She rolled her eyes, her armful of mangos bumping against his chest.

“Need help with those?”

“Nope. I got it under control.” A mango rolled out of her arms and landed next to his shoe.

“I can see that,” he said, crouching slowly to retrieve her mango, his eyes watching her watch him closely.

“Thanks.” As he put the mango back in the box, not her arms. “That’s exactly where I wanted that to go. Back in the box.”

Jordy pulled another mango from her stack and dropped it back into the box, grinning down at her, his eyes teasing.

“Seriously, knock it off!” Her breath puffed out of her mouth, a thick white cloud of heat in all that cold.

Another mango from her arms into the box and she was glaring at him with those electric blue eyes, and he was grinning. Couldn’t help himself. Especially because if she moved her arms to hit him like she usually did when he was pissing her off, all her precious mangos would fall onto the floor and then where would she be?

Jordy moved closer to Elle, the tip of his shoes pressed against hers. He looked right into her sparking eyes and dropped another mango back into the box, undaunted by her attempts to intimidate him with her sadly un-icy stare.

“Fuck you, Jordy. Let me past. It’s fucking freezing.”

He didn’t say a word, just leaned in a little closer, lips mere inches from hers. Another mango in the box and out of her arms.

“Jordy, seriously.” Her voice wasn’t quite as sharp as it had been before. She was starting to get it. He extended his arms, clasped one hand around the cold metal shelf behind her head, put another mango in the box, used his hips to pin her back against the shelf—she was stuck between him and the stacks of Seitan, limes, mangos, veganaise, pico de gallo.

She gets it a little more, even if it’s fucking freezing in here, he thought. She’s getting it. Her eyes sparked with blue mischief and she bit her lip, her eyes on his lips, his eyes on hers, watching those white teeth sink into that full, red lower lip, waiting for him, glistening and wet.

Jordy leaned past her a little, his lips hovering just centimeters away from her ear lobe, her neck, her jaw, the white fog of her ragged breathing mingling with the thin mist of his. The mangos hit the floor with dull, ripe thuds, rolling under the shelves and into the spaces between boxes, disappearing.

Finally, now that the mangos are gone. He pressed his lips to hers, gentle, searching, opening her mouth with his. He could hear her breathing hard through her nose, feel the heat radiating from her skin through his t-shirt when her hand rested on his stomach. His eyes were closed, he was just feeling the electricity of her touch, feeling the spark when she pushed her hips forward and into his, their bodies melding, seamless.

A dish crashed to the floor in the world outside of The Walk-In, loud and sharp. Elle jumped away from him, bumping into the shelf, the containers of food rocking violently, but not spilling. Her eyes were wide and wild.

“DAMN COMMIES!” Rich the dishwasher, shouted at the broken bits of dinnerware.

“I should get back,” Elle whispered to Jordy’s shoulder, her eyes on the ground. She ducked under his arm and slipped out the heavy door.

Jordy let out a long, deep breath and rested his forehead against the metal shelf where Elle had just been standing, listening to the cling and clatter of the dining room and the tinkling of glass in the kitchen as Rich swept up the broken plate. He needed a minute or two before he went back out there, needed to stop thinking about what it felt like to be kissing such an intense cloud of energy, electricity. Needed to stop thinking about getting her down to that lacy, hot-pink thong that had been peeking out of the top of her pants all night when she bent over to wipe off the tables, and he wanted to get her all the way down to that and then take THAT off. Take it off and then throw it on the floor. He wouldn’t be opposed to putting it on his head, if she was that kind of girl. But he wanted to get her down to that pink thong and then down to less and then fuck her ‘til she came. And screamed. There would have to be lots of screaming because screaming was hot. It was FUCKING HOT, but this wasn’t helping with his situation. He needed to think about cold. It’s freezing in here. Snow drifts and frozen sidewalks and his mother in her nasty old moth-eaten fur coat and his father’s snow boots, shoveling the driveway and singing Patsy Cline in her tuneless, crackly, paper-thin voice. There. That was MUCH better. He was almost ready to emerge into the public eye, would be completely ready if it weren’t for the smell of coconuts and hibiscus frozen in the air. Think about Greg. Greg catching you in here, taking five in the middle of the Saturday night dinner rush and it won’t matter if you have a boner or not. You’ll be toast. Fucking fried (except that we don’t fry anything at Horizon’s, so you’ll be grilled, but either way, you’ll be fucked). So get the hell out of here and pretend like nothing happened.

Jordy grabbed the Whipped Soy Cream and a handful of mangos and left The Walk-In, the bright lights of the Kitchen screwing with his eyesight for a second. And then, out of the piercing white of the light, there was Rich Peel, sweeping madly at the bits of shattered plate, his plastic apron crinkling and crackling with every movement.

Pretend like nothing happened.

“What’s goin’ on, Rich?” Jordy asked, raising one eyebrow inquisitively.

Rich looked up at him through his thick, dirty corrective lenses, which could only have been manufactured in the 1970s, and said, “Chicken pies.”

“What?”

“Chicken pies and commies. They’re coming around the mountain when she comes.” He flicked the last bit of broken glass into the dustpan without taking his eyes off of Jordy. “Chicken pies.”

“Oh…kay.” Jordy nodded at the dishwasher and walked faster than he usually did back to the Line, where Kate grabbed the mangos from him.

“Thank god,” she said, starting to peel the orange and green skin off the fruit. “I sent Elle in to get these like, ten minutes ago. I swear, that girl is useless sometimes.”

Jordy just stared past Kate, out into the Dining Room, looking for the familiar purple flash of electricity that meant Elle was on the move, but she must have been in the bathroom because she was nowhere to be seen and it wasn’t like there were a lot of places to hide in such at tiny restaurant.

Jordy shoved some shredded lettuce into a salad bowl and started sprinkling the necessary garnishes on so Greg could charge nine dollars for a pile of lettuce. And thought about Elle. Envisioned her head tilted back, neck exposed, mouth open, emitting screams and moans of pleasure. You knew you were doing something right when they couldn’t keep it to themselves. Get the salad up on the Pass. Greg looked pissed. Glaring and shit. But there was Elle. He could see her over the Pass, big blue eyes and that messy hair with all that purple. Greg cleared his throat from way down the line, staring at Jordy. It’s fucking ready, asshole. If he really said that to Greg, he’d get fucking fired or something worse, strung up by his toes in the Walk-In, blood dripping slowly from his ears drip drip plop drip drip plop. Dead. But fuck Greg. Fuck the way he always stared at Elle’s ass and didn’t listen when she was talking. He was short and his hair was greasy and thinning and he wasn’t even a vegan, so fuck him. He could take his frying pan and his “hurry the fuck up with that food” stare and shove it up his ass.

Jordy slammed the bowl of salad up onto the Pass and there she was. He smelled her first—coconut and hibiscus. She always smelled like that—tropical—even after a whole night of running food and cleaning up spilled booze and opening wine bottles and making coffee. He smelled her and there she was and then she was gone with the salad and for a second, he froze because she hadn’t even looked at him, just pulled the salad bowl off the Pass and looked at the ticket to see which table it went to and her eyes hadn’t even glanced at him.

But then, she looked back at him, just before she disappeared into the sea of vegan diners and flashed him one of those half smiles that made her cheeks redden, flushed.

She flashed that smile and watched Jordy shake his head and watched that smile flick across his mouth and watched him toss that salad and she wanted him to toss her. Toss her in with the sheets and she wanted her legs above her head, maybe even her toes banging against the wall or the headboard or something because he was doing such a good job of fucking her. She wanted him to toss her and fuck her ‘til she came and she was telling him that with her smile. She just hoped he was getting it.

She wanted him to get it. Badly. Because if he got it and she KNEW that he was getting it, then maybe she could figure out what the fuck all this meant. Yeah, they’d been flirting shamelessly since the first day they’d worked together, but flirting was harmless in most cases. But he’d kissed her. That was no accident in there earlier. He hadn’t slipped and fallen and landed on her mouth. He’d leaned in, wanted it from he start by the way he blocked the door with his body, unloaded all those mangos from her arms. So skinny and wrapped in all that black. She just wanted to peel it off and run her fingers all over that pale white vegan boy skin. And those tattoos. Oh, and his thin vegan boy lips, one metal stud pierced through the left corner of the bottom lip. She wanted to bite that lip, taste the metal of that piercing, taste HIM—root beer, mint, cigarettes and metal.

Oh, but she needed to stop thinking about fucking the salad chef when she was supposed to be running food, because she’d almost given that salad to the wrong table and Greg was watching her, glowering. She could practically see the steam coming out of his ears. She backtracked and set the salad down on the right table in front of the correct person, flashed them a lovely smile and then made a bee-line to the Walk-In, sweating from the heat and moving fast and thinking too much about fucking Jordy. She needed to cool down, breathe in cold air and tune out all the noise and crazy-ness and intensity of this night. She breezed past Jordy, barely glancing at him, and yanked the Walk-In door shut behind her, leaned against it and closed her eyes.

She had to figure this out, this thing with Jordy. It had started out as flirting, definitely. She’d been undeniably attracted to him, wanted to sleep with him. But that was the first week they worked together. The more they worked together, the more he walked her to her car after the restaurant closed, the more she got to know HIM instead of his skin, the more she wanted something more from him, WITH him. And she wasn’t typically the relationship girl. She was a fan of hook-ups, usually. Sort of. Well, maybe not really, that’s just what she always found herself getting into. But there was something about him, something that made her wonder—no, not wonder, just KNOW that he’d be there for her if she needed him…

The Walk-In door opened, the coolness of the door yanked away from her back and all of the sudden she was flailing backwards. She’d been leaning too hard against the door and now that she didn’t have the extra support, she was screwed, about to land hard on the floor. Her ass was gonna hurt tomorrow.

Or not? She felt arms around her, catching her, propelling her forward into the Walk-In. She recognized the tattoos on those forearms—Jordy. But then she had her back against the only un-shelved wall space in the walk-in and Jordy was against her and the door was closed and he was kissing her. Hard and full. Eyes closed, desperate. Her fingers tore at his belt and tugged at his shirt and his fingers raked through her hair and slid over her breasts and they were hot and their bodies were moving but the Walk-In was cold—freezing, actually. Jordy pulled Elle’s hips against his and she was about to rip his belt out of the loops and drop it somewhere, wherever, when the door to the Walk-In creaked open.

They jumped away from each other almost as fast as they had collided and Jordy turned his back to the door, frantically fumbling with his unbuckled belt and trying to take care of any other obvious signs that he had just been fooling around, and Elle bent down and started grabbing lemons and piling them into her arms, hoping that she looked busy and not guilty in the bright light from the kitchen now pouring into the semi-darkness.

“Chicken pies,” Rich said, poking his head into the Walk-In and handing a broken plate to Elle. “Chicken pies and commies.” Then, he pulled his head from the doorway and let the door swing shut.

Elle looked at the broken plate shard, turning it over in her hands, and sighed.

“That was close.” Jordy looked at her, clothes all ruffled and her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparking bright blue in the dim Walk-In light.

“Yeah, it was. But Jordy, I don’t think this is the best way too…the best place to do this.” She was still breathless, still crouched beside the damp, dilapidated lemon box, a few bright citruses still resting in her arms.

He gave her a slightly blank look, obviously not getting what Elle was hinting at.

“WHAT THE FUCK are you two doing in here? It’s the middle of the fucking dinner rush on fucking Saturday night and you’re in the fucking Walk-In screwing around?” Greg was standing in the doorway, his face red, livid with anger.

Elle’s face drained of color, whitening in horror, and Jordy froze, his fly still at half mast, against the shelves.

“Get the fuck back out on the floor and do your fucking jobs!”

The two of them lit out of the Walk-In as fast as they could, speeding back to their respective jobs, leaving Greg fuming in the giant fridge.

Hours later, after all the guests were gone and the were floors swept and mopped, Greg practically blew a gasket yelling at the both of them until tears welled in the corners of Elle’s eyes, but didn’t fall. Which pissed Jordy off because what kind of boss makes a little lovely like Elle cry because she spent more than ten seconds in a walk-in and thank GOD he didn’t know what they were REALLY doing in there, because Jordy wasn’t quite sure what Greg’s policy on employee dating was (although Greg’s WIFE was also the pastry chef, so…).

As soon as Greg calmed down and paid the both of them, Elle burst into the parking lot, not even bothering to punch out, and headed toward her pick-up, walking so quickly, Jordy had to run to catch her arm.

“Elle, stop. Hold up a second.” He wrapped his fingers around her arm, gently tugging her back toward him. “Can I talk to you?”

“Jordy, this is kind of a bad night. I mean, I’m just feeling kind of all over the place and having Greg flip shit like that for half an hour…I just need to go. Home. Y’know?” She was looking past him, over his shoulder at the closed back door of the restaurant.

“But I thought we could—“

Something snapped. Maybe from being yelled at, maybe from all the sexual tension that had exploded tonight—more than once, and Elle just snapped. “Listen Jordy,” she was practically yelling, but she didn’t sound pissed. Just slightly frantic. “I don’t want to fuck you—well, I mean, I do, but I don’t want it to be meaningless and stupid because even though it feels good when you’re doing it, I’m just tired of waking up the next morning and regretting what I did the night before, and I know that sounds retarded and like something straight out of a Kate Hudson movie—or some other shitty movie that I’d never actually admit to seeing, unless it’s ‘Almost Famous,’ but that doesn’t count and I know I’m rambling and talking really fast and now you’re laughing, and it’s not funny.” Elle stamped her foot, a smile tickling at her lips because Jordy was leaning against her truck, thin and dark in all his black clothing, sharp contrast against the white paint of her pick-up, and he was laughing and she was laughing and the whole night was so crazy, it felt good to be laughing.

“Seriously. Stop laughing.” She looked at the ground, blushing, and shoved him a little with her hip.

“All right, all right, I’m stopping.” Jordy bit his bottom lip, pushed at his piercing a little with his tongue. He was still smiling though, holding back a laugh.

“Really though, what I’m saying is that there were some good parts about today…”

“Yeah?” He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes.

“Yeah.” She nodded, smiling. Grinning, really. “Some really good parts. And I like you. I REALLY like you. AND I don’t want to do something retarded to fuck that up because it’s not every day that I come across someone I actually want to sleep with AND you know, BE…with. So of course I don’t want to fuck it up. I’d be crazy to fuck it up. And—“

“And you’re rambling again.”

“And you’re laughing again.”

“It’s cute.”

“Did you say cute? Did you just call me cute?”

“I did. I did, indeed.” He was leaning toward her again, smiling and looking at her lips.

“Did you hear ANYTHING I just said?” Leaning closer to him, watching his lips.

“Yeah, I did.” He was so close, their lips practically touching.

“Then why are you trying to kiss me anyway?” She wasn’t exactly backing away, shying from his closeness.

“’Cause I like you, too.”

And then, he was kissing her, leaning against her truck and kissing her, tasting her, getting used to it because he was hoping that taste would be around for a while.

As Jordy and Elle were kissing and making plans to go on a real, honest-to-god date after work tomorrow night and kissing more against her truck, Rich Peel trudged through the parking lot, lugging three big, dripping, smelly bags of trash behind him, muttering to himself about chicken pies and commies, his favorite subject, as he swung the trash bags over his head and into the dumpster, splattering trash juice all over the parking lot.