My Girl George - Chapter 2

         

“Jesse, there’s a girl here to see you.”
Jesse turned from his seat at the desk to see Theresa in the doorway, a tea towel slung over one shoulder.
“I’ll be there in a minute, thanks.” He watched her leave without a word, her hips swinging in tight black jeans, her long dark hair pulled up in a high ponytail that bobbed between her shoulder blades. He smiled as she disappeared. Theresa was sassy but she was also all business. She would be an asset to the bar, and she knew it. He had gotten lucky when it came to hiring his management team. His other weekday manager, Jeremy, had been poached from another suburban bar.
Jesse picked up the contract he had printed earlier and walked through to the main bar. For a moment he failed to recognise the young woman who had walked into his bar earlier in the week. Georgina, or George as she called herself, had shown up out of the blue, surprising him on a day when he had not been coping well. Getting rid of the last vestiges of his father’s beloved business had affected him more than he had thought it would. Then in walked this waif in ripped jeans, looking like she had been living on the streets, her giant brown eyes looking at everything like it was her first time in the world. When she had left that day, he wasn’t even sure what had just happened. He had offered her the cleaning job on the spot, something out of character for him. He was generally cautious of new people until he knew them well. Since then, he had begun to wonder if hiring her had been a mistake. She didn’t look strong enough to mop a floor, let alone clean the whole premises. But time would tell. He would give her a chance. Plus, nobody else had knocked on the door for the job and he didn’t want to be doing it once the bar opened. He had plenty on his plate already.
“Georgina?”
She turned from her spot by the window as he approached, looking very different now in black cargo pants, plain black shoes and a polo shirt embroidered with a red New World logo. Her hair had been skilfully pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, dark blond tendrils of hair framing her elven face. Long lashes had been painted with mascara today and her lips shone with pink gloss.
“Hey.” She gave him a timid, crooked smile. That, he remembered.
“Wow, you look—” He clamped his mouth shut.
Inappropriate, Jesse, he scolded himself. Don’t even say it. She’s all of seventeen and as of today you’re her boss.
She gave an amused laugh. “Yeah, sorry about the other day. I wasn’t at all prepared for a job interview.” She lifted her arms to the side, showing him her palms and tilting her body from side to side. “This is my other job.”
“So, you were able to change your hours to suit both jobs, then?” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “I hope it didn’t cause too many problems.”
She shook her head. “It’s all sorted.”
“You’re working today I take it?” He immediately regretted that question. Of course she was working today. Why else would she be wearing her work uniform?
She grinned at him, taking her bottom lip between her teeth as if to stop herself from making a smart remark.
“Well, I won’t keep you long then.” He placed her contract on the table beside them, trying hard to suppress a smile. “Did you have any questions about the contract?”
She tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear as she leaned forward. “No, it looked pretty straight forward to me.”
She moved in close to him as he found the page in the contract where she needed to sign. He caught the scent of her as she moved, reminding him of girls from his high school days who wafted in too many mixed scents of shampoo, body lotion, and cheap perfume.
He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and handed it to her, noticing her short unpolished nails as she took it from his fingers. He smiled to himself. Long painted nails might have indicated he might be hiring the wrong person for the job.
“Did you bring your ID?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.” She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a laminated driver’s licence. The faded yellow of the card indicated that she was still on her restricted licence. Something else Jesse observed during that movement was that she didn’t carry a bag, or even a wallet. Despite the overcast, low temperature day, she wasn’t even carrying a jacket. Maybe it was in her car. She had just dropped in on her way to work, so that would make sense.
“You drove here today?” he asked, studying the photo on her licence. In the picture her hair was shorter and had a bright pink strip dyed into it.
Again, she shook her head. “No. I don’t have a car at the moment.”
“Oh, so you had to bus all the way into the city just for this and now you have to bus all the way back to work?”
She smiled. “It’s okay, I had to bus to the exchange anyway. Work is a two-bus trip.”
“You take two buses?” Jesse frowned. The girl worked next-to-nothing hours earning minimum wage and she travelled all the way across town to do it.
“Yeah, at the moment. I’m between places right now, so I’m staying with a friend who lives on the other side of town.”
“Ah, okay.” He tapped her licence against his knuckles. “I’ll just go photocopy this for the file while you sign on the dotted line.” Jesse turned and walked back to the office, his mind buzzing with other questions about his curious new employee. He shook his head. It was none of his business what she did in her private life, but her words did send something home for him. She certainly didn’t seem lazy or unmotivated, plus she obviously had a good work ethic.
He glanced again at her licence as he waited for the photocopier to warm up, silently calculating her date of birth in his head. He got a surprise as he realised she was nineteen, almost twenty, a good few years older than he had judged by her looks.
As he took the copy and went back out to the bar, he pondered why she was still working only part-time hours at a supermarket, something girls traditionally did while they were at high school before moving on to something else. But she had been out of school since she was at least eighteen, right?
“Love the pink hair,” he teased as he handed the licence back to his new employee, then silently scolded himself again as she reddened, looking like a rabbit caught in headlights on the highway.
Her embarrassment cleared as she gave a short laugh and took her identification from him. “Aren’t all licence and passport photos supposed to be bad?” She cleared her throat and then continued, “That was a fundraiser for breast cancer. I was too chicken to shave it all off.”
Jesse laughed. “Well, pink is definitely a step up from bald.”
“I guess it is.”
Jesse stuck his hands in his pockets, curiosity getting the better of him, as he had lost his own mother to cancer. “Did you know someone with breast cancer, or was it just to support the cause?”
“Yeah, my mum.” George looked up and gave him what was quite obviously a practised smile. “We lost her a few months later.”
Jesse felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. Whatever idiotic comment he had already made before that one, this surely took the cake. “Oh, Georgina—”
She interrupted him with a shake of her head as she raised one finger and pointed it at him, looking affronted. “You and I are not going to get along if you don’t call me George.” Then her face broke into a smile, making it seem like the sun had just come out again.
Jesse couldn’t help it; he gave a hearty laugh. With one comment she had just dissipated any awkwardness that had seeped between them.
Saved by the belle, he thought to himself.
“Okay, George.” He took one hand from his pocket and extended it toward her. “Welcome to the team.”
She grinned as she shook his hand. “Thank you.”