Read Online Heroine Addiction by Jennifer Matarese - Free Book Online
Authors: Jennifer Matarese
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pedestrians loudly thank the heroes convening upon the metallic corpses littering the streets, yelling out words of gratitude even as firemen and police officers extricate victims from the broken buildings the robots thoroughly trashed in their wake.
The cheers rise in volume, and I wonder why for a moment before my vision clears the rest of the way and I take a good look at the heroes perched on the defeated machine in front of me.
My father stares at me from the top of the robot's rounded dome, his arm around my beaming mother, his smile triumphant, his eyes cold and calculating.
Well, I'll be damned , I think , the son of a bitch even took time out to change into his costume.
It's a brutal and tacky reminder of just why I gave up this life in the first place. Sighing heavily, I cross my arms and teleport back home, leaving my parents and Morris to their irritating private soap opera.
6.
Saturday night is open mic night. Tea and Strumpets is open until eleven on open mic night, and from six to eleven every amateur singer-songwriter in the county shows up to perform. It's usually not the questionable disaster it sounds like it could be. Mo and Jake – two seventeen-year-old prodigies from the local high school – have had firm possession over the six-o'clock slot for the past six months by the sly cheat of each signing up for a solo hour and then having the other one play back-up. I've never been able to call them on it, not with how good they play.
The thing about open mic night is that … well, I thought teleporting home would calm my battered nerves and soak me in the relaxing and familiar hustle and bustle of a normal busy Saturday night.
I was wrong.
“I could tell her to leave.”
“You most certainly will not eject her from this cafe,” I hiss to Dixie, placing the top slice of toasted pretzel bread onto a hot roast beef and pepper sandwich a little harder than I intended. Both of us grimace at the jagged hole my fingertips tear into the bread, and I toss it aside and reach for another slice before Dixie can say anything. “I can't have her kicked out of here when she's doing absolutely nothing wrong.”
“Why not?”
“Because then I'm the bad guy, aren't I?”
“Weren't you already the bad guy when you broke up with her and kicked her out of your apartment?”
I will not fire a good waitress on open mic night, I will not fire a good waitress on open mic night … “Dixie, Hazel is my problem and I will deal with her. Which I won't right now, because she's not being a problem.” I shove the plate holding the sandwich and a dewy glass of lemonade at her. “Now go serve Jody Casey her dinner.”
Dixie drops a completely unladylike sneer before sauntering off to deliver the special to one of our loyal regulars. Thankfully, Hazel is not one of our loyal regulars, or at least she's not one anymore. She's vegan, which limits her choices considerably even before you take in her food allergies. Her shopping list can fit onto a business card.
Forcefully humming along with the guitar players currently strumming away up front, I swipe at a few wayward crumbs on the metal table in the back where I've been preparing the meals Benny doesn't have to bake, grill, or saut. Tara teased me about making a swift retreat into the kitchen as soon as I spotted Hazel in the cozy reading area in the back of the cafe, but I prefer to think of it as assessing the situation, prioritizing the troubled waters ahead of me, and deciding that the customers need their soups and sandwiches far more than I need to get into a public argument in front of forty curious and hungry onlookers.
Hazel and I broke up after a fight that started over nothing. A lost section of the morning newspaper, maybe. Spoiled milk, it might have been. I've never been quite clear on why we began to shout at one another one moment and ended the fight two hours later with me threatening to dump her, all right, in Argentina, and I'd leave
The cheers rise in volume, and I wonder why for a moment before my vision clears the rest of the way and I take a good look at the heroes perched on the defeated machine in front of me.
My father stares at me from the top of the robot's rounded dome, his arm around my beaming mother, his smile triumphant, his eyes cold and calculating.
Well, I'll be damned , I think , the son of a bitch even took time out to change into his costume.
It's a brutal and tacky reminder of just why I gave up this life in the first place. Sighing heavily, I cross my arms and teleport back home, leaving my parents and Morris to their irritating private soap opera.
6.
Saturday night is open mic night. Tea and Strumpets is open until eleven on open mic night, and from six to eleven every amateur singer-songwriter in the county shows up to perform. It's usually not the questionable disaster it sounds like it could be. Mo and Jake – two seventeen-year-old prodigies from the local high school – have had firm possession over the six-o'clock slot for the past six months by the sly cheat of each signing up for a solo hour and then having the other one play back-up. I've never been able to call them on it, not with how good they play.
The thing about open mic night is that … well, I thought teleporting home would calm my battered nerves and soak me in the relaxing and familiar hustle and bustle of a normal busy Saturday night.
I was wrong.
“I could tell her to leave.”
“You most certainly will not eject her from this cafe,” I hiss to Dixie, placing the top slice of toasted pretzel bread onto a hot roast beef and pepper sandwich a little harder than I intended. Both of us grimace at the jagged hole my fingertips tear into the bread, and I toss it aside and reach for another slice before Dixie can say anything. “I can't have her kicked out of here when she's doing absolutely nothing wrong.”
“Why not?”
“Because then I'm the bad guy, aren't I?”
“Weren't you already the bad guy when you broke up with her and kicked her out of your apartment?”
I will not fire a good waitress on open mic night, I will not fire a good waitress on open mic night … “Dixie, Hazel is my problem and I will deal with her. Which I won't right now, because she's not being a problem.” I shove the plate holding the sandwich and a dewy glass of lemonade at her. “Now go serve Jody Casey her dinner.”
Dixie drops a completely unladylike sneer before sauntering off to deliver the special to one of our loyal regulars. Thankfully, Hazel is not one of our loyal regulars, or at least she's not one anymore. She's vegan, which limits her choices considerably even before you take in her food allergies. Her shopping list can fit onto a business card.
Forcefully humming along with the guitar players currently strumming away up front, I swipe at a few wayward crumbs on the metal table in the back where I've been preparing the meals Benny doesn't have to bake, grill, or saut. Tara teased me about making a swift retreat into the kitchen as soon as I spotted Hazel in the cozy reading area in the back of the cafe, but I prefer to think of it as assessing the situation, prioritizing the troubled waters ahead of me, and deciding that the customers need their soups and sandwiches far more than I need to get into a public argument in front of forty curious and hungry onlookers.
Hazel and I broke up after a fight that started over nothing. A lost section of the morning newspaper, maybe. Spoiled milk, it might have been. I've never been quite clear on why we began to shout at one another one moment and ended the fight two hours later with me threatening to dump her, all right, in Argentina, and I'd leave
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