Read Online Smart Mouth Waitress by Dalya Moon - Free Book Online

connection. One of life's great mysteries. I'm Cooper.”
    He shook my little hand in his big, warm hand.
    “Cooper. You're one of those last-name guys.”
    His eyebrows went up. “Yes, I am. My first name is Chris, but every classroom was fifty-percent Chris, boys and girls, so Cooper stuck. And you're Peridot. Am I saying it right?”
    “You can call me Per or Perry.” Someone took a flash photo, blinding me, and simultaneously, I realized Cooper was Christopher W. Cooper, the artist, and Marc's friend. “I'm a friend of Marc's,” I said, embarrassed to be telling him what he already knew.
    He tipped back his tiny plastic cup of white wine, drinking half, then said, “Oh, I heard all about you. You're the smart mouth waitress.”
    “I'm not just a waitress. I do other things. I can sorta juggle, but only with three things, and they have to be soft.” I leaned to the side to look around the wall of Cooper, to see Marc talking to an attractive girl with blue hair and multiple butterfly tattoos across her exposed back. She kept touching his arm and laughing.
    “That would be Marc's ex-girlfriend,” Cooper said.
    “No kidding.” Suddenly I was feeling very bland and regretting wearing a pearl-button cardigan over my borrowed green dress instead of my puffy army jacket. “He dates girls with blue hair?” I asked.
    Cooper turned to study them, rubbing his eyebrow. “The exact opposite, actually. He doesn't like the weird hair and tattoos. She didn't look that way a year ago. She was sweet and innocent-looking.” He took another sip of his wine.
    “Sounds like you're pretty hard-up for her yourself.”
    He spat wine out of his mouth in a spray. “She's my sister.”
    “She's a lovely girl. Ah, I see it now, a bit. Do you both have some of that quality Scottish DNA?”
    “Not that I know of.” His mouth twisted with amusement, which made my head feel light and my smile grow wider.
    I turned back to the canvas, which truly was growing on me. “I'm actually digging the art now,” I said. “Don't get your hopes up—I'm not buying any, but I like what you're doing here.”
    “If you're not buying, I'd better go chat up some rich ladies who are.”
    “You should.”
    He continued to stand in front of me, so I grabbed him by the elbows and rotated him to face the crowd of people who'd just walked in.
    He turned his face toward me, ducking his chin to his shoulder, and said, “I'm scared, Peridot. Give me a push.”
    Standing behind him, I looped my arms under his and waved my hands in front of him, like they were his. “Don't be scared, I'll be your hands. We'll do it together.”
    Cooper transferred his empty wine glass to my left hand, then tucked his hands behind his back and pressed his arms down, gripping my arms firmly, so I was stuck with him, being his arms. I rested my face between his shoulder blades and enjoyed the contact.
    He walked us up to a lady and said, “Hello, I'm Cooper. Shake my little girlie hand.”
    The lady went along with it and shook my hand like a champ. “No wonder your work shows such sensitivity,” she said.
    “All in my magic hands,” he said.
    Someone tapped me on the shoulder—Marc, looking embarrassed on my behalf. “I didn't think you'd come,” he said.
    “Try and stop me.”
    I withdrew my arms, and Cooper carried on without missing a beat, talking to the interested lady about the relative light temperature of rooms facing north versus rooms facing west.
    Marc said something else as we walked toward an empty corner to talk, but I couldn't hear him over the noise. The gallery had filled up—there must have been a hundred people—and the bare concrete floors and white walls did nothing to buffer the noise. Back at The Whistle, we have an acoustic-tile ceiling, painted teal, to help keep the din of conversation pleasant in such a crammed space.
    Marc repeated himself for the third time, nearly shouting, “I like your buns!”
    I had forgotten my hair was twisted