Thanks to brandywine and overnighter for the beta job.
Trey sat on the patio the morning of his first full day in Newport, unsure of how much longer he'd be staying with the Cohens. He couldn't ever remember Ryan being this angry with him. Okay, that was a lie. Ryan was plenty angry the night they got arrested for stealing that car. Although looking around, that had turned into a sweet deal for Ryan. When else in his life had he not had to worry about bill collectors calling, about repo companies taking away the television, about whether he'd have hot water for the shower? Ryan should be thanking Trey for taking him out that night.
Except that wasn't why Ryan was angry now. Trey wondered what, if anything, Ryan had told the Cohens about yesterday. If Ryan had told them what had happened at the clothing store, he couldn't imagine they'd still let him stay with them. He could just hear them - he was a bad influence on Ryan with his short temper and store-trashing ways. If they were looking for an excuse to ask him to leave, he just gave them a good reason.
The Ryan he knew didn't snitch – growing up Ryan could always be counted on to keep his mouth shut - but he wasn't sure this was still the Ryan he knew. Ryan had always had the potential to be a little suck up, a tattletale; he was always so concerned about doing what was right, doing what was expected of him.
Trey noticed movement in the kitchen and stiffened up. His stomach flipped when Mr. and Mrs. Cohen came out onto the patio, carrying coffee and a newspaper. Ryan had told him how Mrs. Cohen took a while to warm up to him when he first arrived, and Ryan hadn't been a convicted felon who'd spent hard time in prison. Even if Ryan hadn't told them about what had happened yesterday, he wasn't expecting a warm reception from the lady of the house.
Trey saw a smile come to Sandy's face, which gave him hope that Ryan hadn't mentioned how he had lost his temper at the store.
"Trey! We weren't expecting to see you up this early. I don't believe you've met my wife yet."
Trey stood up to greet them. "Mrs. Cohen. Thanks again for letting me stay…"
"Nonsense. I'm so glad I finally get to meet you." She had a big smile on her face and her voice sounded genuine. "And call me Kirsten."
"Okay." Trey sat down, pleased at how his morning had suddenly turned around. Instead of being faced with a day of scrambling to find a new place to live, he was being welcomed with open arms by a woman who didn't even like Ryan when she first met him, and everyone always liked Ryan better.
"There's coffee inside," Sandy said. "Would you like some?"
Coffee was just what he needed – his stomach had been jumpy all night, anticipating being kicked out. He pushed his chair back from the table and started to get up.
"No, sit," Sandy said with a wave. "I'll get it for you."
Trey pulled his chair back in. As Sandy got up to go inside as his wife sat beside him, he realized this was just one more way Newport was different from Chino. No self-respecting Chino man would be found waiting on a guest while his woman sat doing nothing. Whenever Dawn had men over, she was always running around, getting them stuff – he'd never seen them do anything for her. Wasn't that what wives and kids were for? What was the point of getting married if the woman wasn't going to take care of you?
He glanced over at Mrs. Cohen, who seemed a bit uncomfortable left at the table with him. He was usually good at small talk – at charming women – but he had no idea where to even begin with this woman. He smiled at her and nodded before looking toward the patio doors through which Sandy had disappeared.
"So, Trey, what are your plans for the day?" Her voice sounded nervous, and he realized that while she was probably someone who was normally good at small talk too, she hadn't had the opportunity make small talk with an ex-con very often in her privileged life.
"I'm going to hit the pavement, look for a job. I figure, the sooner I'm making money, the sooner I can get my own place and get out of your hair."
Out of their hair and away from this fish bowl, he thought. He hadn't been here a full day yet, and already he felt the confines of people wanting to know where he was, and where he was going, and what he was doing. As nice as this house was – and it was very nice – he'd just spent the last year and a half having his every move monitored; he was anxious to be somewhere that he could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
"There's no rush – you're welcome in our home for as long as you need." She smiled at him and reached for the paper.
"Thanks. I appreciate it." And he did. He'd never had anyone help him and not expect anything in return. When he'd first heard that Ryan was living with rich people in Newport Beach, he'd wondered what their deal was. He had expected to find Ryan doing all their errands and chores - like a pool boy – and not actually living a life of luxury in their pool house.
Ryan had always been lucky like that. Even though he was quiet, he still managed to draw people to him – the teacher who had bought him lunches in third grade; the soccer coach who used to drive him home so he wouldn't have to ride his bike in the dark; the friend's mother who had given him haircuts when his bangs got shaggy and he got teased for looking like a girl – people had always reached out to him, helped him, gave him a leg up. Unlike Trey, who people seemed to go out their way to ignore, maybe hoping that if they left him alone, he'd disappear entirely. The Cohens were the first people who seemed to see him too.
As Mr. Cohen returned with a cup of coffee for Trey, Mrs. Cohen pulled a section out of the paper. "Ah, found it," she said. "The classifieds." She started turning the pages. "What skills do you have, Trey?"
Skills? He doubted she meant hotwiring cars. "Not much, really. I'm okay at fixing cars."
"Hmm. Let's see." She started scanning the columns.
"Did you graduate high school?" Mr. Cohen asked.
Trey felt his face start to flush even as he noted that Mr. Cohen thought to ask. High school drop-outs probably didn't exist in Mrs. Cohen's realm of existence. "No. But I got my GED when I was in – this time."
"Good for you," Mr. Cohen said and again, he sounded genuine, not patronizing like Trey expected.
Mrs. Cohen was circling some job listings. "I'm not sure what you're after. There are a few counter staff positions…"
"A job's a job," he said. Anything to get him out on his own again. A job would give him freedom.
Mr. Cohen clapped him on the shoulder. "That's a good attitude to have."
"I see movement inside," Mrs. Cohen said with a glance towards the doors that led to the kitchen. "Looks like the boys are up." She stood up to go inside.
"Give me the paper so we can see what you found for Trey to do." Mr. Cohen held out his hand, waiting for his wife to hand him the classifieds, which she dropped into his palm. He looked it over as he stood up too. "We should go in and say good morning."
Trey stood up reluctantly. He wasn't sure what sort of reception he was going to get from Ryan or what the Cohens would think if it was an icy one.
Ryan could be really moody when he wanted to be and was known to hold grudges for days at a time for infractions far less than yesterday's outburst. Before the silence of the last year – for which Trey couldn't entirely blame him, after the arrest and then the whole Gattas thing – his last grudge against Trey had lasted for three days. Trey had eaten leftovers Theresa had sent home with Ryan, even though – as Ryan had pointed out in an icy voice – the enchiladas had clearly been labeled 'Ryan's'. He had no idea what trashing a store would get him.
It wasn't the silence that was so bad – after all, Ryan never talked a lot – it was the cold judgment. Ryan was the only person he knew who could make silence feel like a punishment.
He realized Sandy was talking to him and expecting an opinion only as they walked through the double doors into the kitchen.
Oh, here's one. A barista at a local coffee joint.
After breakfast, Trey couldn't believe his luck. Ryan was plenty pissed, but at least he was still talking to him. And not only did Mrs. Cohen give him the keys to the Range Rover for the day to help in his job hunt, but Mr. Cohen gave him another handful of bills. Plus, he still had money in his pocket leftover from the wad he'd been handed the day before and there were tons of job opportunities circled in today's newspaper. By the end of the day, he'd have a job. By the end of his first pay period, he'd be rolling in money, and ready for a place of his own.
Mentally counting all his money, both in pocket and to come, he decided he could afford to treat himself. No, not even treat. He could meet a need – a job-hunting need.
He didn't own a watch. What if one of the places he went into today told him to come back in forty-five minutes? If he didn't have a watch, he wouldn't know when to return and then he might not get the job. A watch was really a necessity in his job hunt. It wasn't like he was just throwing money away.
He pulled the Rover into the parking lot of the mall. It was a little early to start job hunting anyway – the places would just be opening. He'd give them time to start their days by shopping for himself and then hitting the pavement.
With a sideways glance he hurried by the store he had been in yesterday with Ryan and Marissa, but relaxed after no one made a move to stop him. After a few minutes of diligent window-shopping he found a different store, one that carried the same watch he had admired the day before, but without all of the drama
He had barely even entered the store when a cute brunette looked him over – in a good way. "Did you want that watch?" She leaned on the counter, giving him a great view down her top, and Trey grinned at her. This, he could do.
"I'm not sure. Do you think I could try it on?" He watched the way her long legs disappeared into her short skirt as she walked away from him to get the keys. She smiled at him when she turned around and caught him staring.
She unlocked the case and pulled the watch out. "Hold out your arm," she said, and he obeyed like the obedient ex-con he was. Of course, none of his C.O.'s had ever looked quite like this girl, either.
"What do you think?" she asked as she bent low over his wrist to shut the clasp.
"Very nice," he answered, and was pleased to see the blush he caused rise up her face.
Trey thought the whole situation was awesome. He'd never owned a watch, or anything actually, that cost this much and he could get used to being waited on by a beautiful woman. "I'll take it," he said.
"It looks good on you," she said. The hand that had fastened the clasp was still wrapped loosely around his wrist, her fingers resting just above his pulse point, holding his hand out as if to admire how the cool metal looked against the fine, blond hair on his arm.
"Do you want me to wrap it up?"
"No, that's okay." He turned his wrist slightly in the loose circle of her fingers in order to catch the light. "I want to wear it." Before he could change his mind, he peeled off a number of Mr. Cohen's bills and paid for the watch.
He went back to the Rover and drove himself to the first place on his list – the barista job at the coffee shop. He walked in and looked around, amazed at all the people willing to pay so much for a coffee when you could get a large black for eighty-five cents at the 7-11 down the street. He wondered if this was Ryan's sort of place, now. Ryan probably bought into the whole "expensive is better" attitude. He was so easily influenced – everything was always better than what they had. He could see it in his attitude here – Cohens were better than Atwoods. He'd push Trey to the side if he threatened to interfere with his good life.
He approached the counter and asked the guy behind it about the job. The guy looked him carefully up and down before handing him an application form. He bought an expensive coffee – he had the money so why not – and sat down at one of the tables to fill the application out.
When he finished, he brought the form back to the manager. He stood and waited while he looked the forms over. When he got to the second page – the page where Trey had to declare that he was a convicted felon – the manager paused and looked Trey over once again. Then he closed the application. "I'm sorry," he said. "We just don't have anything right now that suits you."
"Yeah, I get it," Trey said and left the store, his expensive, half-drunk coffee still sitting on the counter. They didn't think he was suited to work with their upmarket clientele. That was all right. He still had lots of options left. He didn't really expect to land a job at the first place he tried. It would have been nice, but he knew job hunting was going to be a bit of work.
His next stop – some kind of designer-food boutique – was even worse. The older woman appraised him and then pretended to look for application forms in a pile of takeout menus. Without looking up again, she told him that "if he could just come back tomorrow," she'd have located them by then, or maybe he wanted to leave his résumé?
Trey snorted as he walked away, letting the door slam behind him with a satisfying bang. A résumé. Right. He didn't know the first thing about making a résumé and besides, he didn't think proclaiming that he'd spent the last eighteen months incarcerated was going to turn those menus into application forms any time soon.
He decided to lower his sights a bit for his third try. No more swanky food – just a convenience store, which was more his style than the trendy shops he'd tried first. The woman there was not nearly as cute as the watch-store girl, but she was genuinely nice as she explained that, as part of a chain, all of their employees needed to be bondable if they were going to work with cash, and as a convicted felon, he wouldn't be bondable. She said she was very sorry but there was nothing she could do.
Whatever. He wasn't a people person anyway, he thought as he stalked back toward the Rover. Why would he want to spend his days serving other people? That was more Ryan's style anyway, the little suck-up. He'd love all that 'yes, sir', 'no ma'am', 'whatever you want, miss' shit. Trey knew he was better than that.
He checked his watch. It was already after lunch; he had tried three places and had gotten flat out refusals from each of them. He sighed. He still had a few more places to try before he admitted defeat, though his decision to spend money on an expensive watch was getting stupider with every "no" he heard.
The next job he applied for was a stock boy at a grocery store. It wasn't dealing with money, so they couldn't hold that against him. It wasn't waiting on people so that was better for him too. He forced his most charming smile onto his face the whole time the manager was looking down her nose at him but he wasn't surprised when she told him they had nothing available. He knocked over a display on the way out.
He had one place left on his list to try - an industrial laundry service. He had worked in the laundry in prison, so he actually had experience, but he had hated the experience and was putting it off as a last resort.
Working in the laundry was one of the worst jobs in prison, but it was still better than not working at all because it meant a couple of hours a day of not being locked in a cell. The smell of the bleach had been overwhelming though and it stayed in his nose for hours after he left the room. The humidity from the dryers drove the temperature up and he was always bathed in sweat at the end of the shift. But the worst were the days he was assigned to the irons, when he would inevitably end the shift with his hands and arms covered with burns.
Still, in the laundry, he wouldn't be dealing with money; he'd have no responsibilities; he had experience. It sucked that his life came down to this, that this was the only job he could get, but if he was going to change like he told Ryan, he'd have to take what he could get to start.
He talked to a very friendly manager type. The man shook his hand and treated him with respect, and then told him that he was sorry, but they had filled that position earlier today. Maybe if he had come by this morning, he might have gotten it.
This morning, when he was buying the stupid watch. This morning, when he had thought he'd be able to find a job easily and threw most of his money away. If he had come here right away instead of trying for nicer jobs in places where he didn't stand a chance, he'd be employed right now and could buy whatever shit he wanted, but now he had no money and no job prospects. He hated that watch now.
He decided he would return it. It was really all he could do. He couldn't keep it when he could use the money for other things. If today had shown him nothing else, it was that he didn't fit in with all these rich people and just wearing an expensive watch didn't change things. People probably thought he stole it, he realized abruptly; Ryan would probably think he stole it.
He walked into the same store from that morning, which now felt like a lifetime ago. The same cute girl was still there and gave him a big grin. "Back again so soon?"
"I need to return the watch I bought."
Her face fell. "Oh. I'm not very good at returns. I can never remember everything I'm supposed to do." She searched under the counter, for a few minutes, pulling out drawers, rifling through papers. "Ah! Found it!"
She brought the return form over. "Do you still have your receipt?"
After a quick search, Trey found it in the front pocket of his jeans.
She started filling out the form, glancing up at him and flirting with him the whole time. "You paid cash, right?" She rang up a dummy sale, got the money out of the register, and handed it back to him.
She doubled checked the form and receipt. "I always feel like I'm forgetting something." She smiled at him. "I gave you your money, right?"
He smiled back at her. "I've got everything I need."
"Everything?" She leaned across the counter toward him, licking her lips.
Trey was about to respond when another customer came over and asked for help in the fitting room. She looked at him, apologizing with her eyes, and left him at the counter by himself.
He looked down at the watch and the receipt that she had just left lying on the countertop. After a moment, with a glance towards the fitting room, he picked them both up and put them in his pocket. He left without a backwards glance.
THE END