I was making a serious mess with ketchup—the squeeze-y refill bottle was doing its fart-bomb trick again—when three reasons for why I hated, hated, hated working the midnight-to-seven shift walked into the diner. Drunken college guys with big mouths and tiny tipping abilities.
My favorite co-worker, Dottie, joined me at the servers’ station. “Gonna be one of those nights,” she muttered.
One of the three guys careened into an unoccupied table, toppling condiments and sending silverware sliding to the floor. Instead of taking care of the mess, he mumbled, “S’cuze me,” and belched. Loudly. His friends laughed and applauded.
“Yup,” I said to Dottie.
These were my least favorite variety of Ellery boys. Not brainiacs or geeks, not harmlessly happy prepsters high on the novelty of being out this late without Mom and Dad. Nope, these big fellas had the distinctive look of first-string jocks. Bulky muscles flexed beneath their letter jackets in a way that bragged, I spend many hours of my day lifting heavy things on purpose. Bleary eyes didn’t bother to make a connection with anything outside their small group. Because, hey, why bother to notice your surroundings and fellow human beings when you and your buddies were so much more excellent and important?
“You don’t need to eat here tonight…we do not have the fried food you’re looking for,” I mumbled at them, waving my fingers Obi-Wan-style in a lame attempt to make Dottie laugh.
She rewarded me with a snort.
“What?” I shrugged. “They look totally ripe for mind control.” I grabbed a nearby bar towel to wipe a sticky red blob from my hands. The towel was a victim of previous explosions and I added an array of gory smears to my ketchup collage.
I threw in the towel on the ketchup project and watched the boys with the big E’s on their jackets. The three of them took up more air and space than all the rest of the dozen or so customers in the restaurant. My luck held steady at shitty when they veered bumper-car-like toward a big round table in my section. The table was a bitch to wait on because of its too-tight proximity to all my other tables—tables that would remain empty now that a bunch of loud, giggling, probably-on-the-verge-of-barfing idiots was dominating the scene.
They didn’t sit their jock-stud bods down on a single side. No, no. They had to spread all the way around the table. I patted my apron pocket to make sure I had an order ticket—one-way fare to Crapsville—and grabbed the pot from the Bunn warmer.
“Want me to take them, hon?” Dottie’s gravel-grinding voice made me jump. Luckily the pot I held was only half-full. A hot-coffee dousing would have been an extreme method for taking care of those ketchup smears on my fingers. Guess I was a little keyed up.
“You look pale,” Dottie commented when I didn’t answer. There was genuine concern in her eyes and I forced my mouth to smile. The restaurant staff was as close to family as I got lately. They weren’t the interfering, get-up-in-your-business type of family, but the type that rallied around you when bad stuff happened. I’d been in a car wreck a month ago—cracked ribs, busted collarbone, nasty concussion—and the entire staff of the diner had sent me various get-well wishes. Dottie’s had come in the form of a balloon bouquet. It had been a little weird to have a bunch of colorful balloons floating around my tiny basement apartment but, yeah, uplifting too.
I wavered. Dottie’s grandmotherly attitude and two-pack-a-day voice were highly effective in keeping guys like these in line.
“Nah,” I said. “I can handle ’em.”
And I could. I knew I could. I don’t know why this wavery-quavery feeling in my gut was becoming familiar. I’d worked at the Ellery Inn for about a year. I was capable of dealing with any shit the customers dished out. I was equally capable of dishing out home-style eats to the variety of types who frequented the twenty-four-hour diner on the outskirts of Ellery’s ivy-covered campus.
I’d lost a month’s worth of tips recuperating from the accident, and I’d had to ask for an extension on my rent. So even though my energy—both physical and mental—was still wonky in the aftermath of the wreck, money was a monster motivator, gnashing its ugly, jagged teeth and slobbering all over me with threats of homelessness. I couldn’t afford to be a diva about waiting on drunken Ellery guys.
“Hrrmph,” grunted Dot. She eyeballed the bulky part of my midsection where I still had bandages wrapping my ribs. “It’s only your second shift back on the job. Let me know if you need help.” She gave my forearm a pat, purposely tagging the ass of my James Dean tattoo.
“Watch it there, honey,” I said in my best Dean drawl.
Her rough-and-ready cackle made me smile. I wasn’t used to seeing her on the late-night shift and her hair looked lavender under the restaurant’s over-bright track lighting. Did she dye her hair that color? Give it a tint to make the gray look funky? I wanted to ask but I knew from experience she didn’t want to discuss that stuff with me. She thought I was giving her shit when I asked about her fashion choices. Not true. Dot was like my fashion idol.
Before I could ask about Dot’s fifty shades of gray—and, no, I’d never read the book—one of the beasts at my new table waved his arm toward where we were standing at the wait station. An arm that appeared to have the length and girth of one of Donkey Kong’s prized pounding appendages.
I headed for the table, my grip tightening on the coffee pot’s handle as I sent out feelers for any civilized human vibes coming off these Neanderthals. Up close, things were depleted on the human front. Forget the Donkey Kong resemblance--the blond guy who seemed to be the leader of this small frat-pack was a full-blown King Kong. He was looking at me as if I was the helpless, half-naked sacrifice the natives were giving up to worship his god-like apeishness. Or maybe he just really wanted some coffee.
Laughter rose in my chest and zinged my sore ribs. My feet faltered. I stumbled and was saved from a face plant by flinging my arm out to grab a chair. Hot coffee sloshed onto my hand and I yelped. The chair fell over with a super-loud thud and everyone in the dining room looked over at me.
Hey, that was the way my night was rolling. Very smooth. Cool and slick as a Coup de Ville, that was me.
“Dude!” hollered the jock closest to me. “Don’t spill the java juice!”
Java juice? Dude? As I set the chair to rights, I controlled an eye roll and pasted a polite smile on my face. I tended to get more tips if I remembered to smile.
“Whoa,” the Kong guy huffed. His eyes were dull blue with bloodshot highlights. Ape-like in terms of intelligence, but not actual appearance. “Elvis!” He guffawed, pointing at me with a thick finger. “Dudes, look! Elvis is our waiter.”
“Shit!” The java-juice guy hiccupped, blinking up at me. “S’hair is purple.”
“That’s just wrong,” the blond Kong said, his deep voice grave in that way tanked-up people have of trying to sound sober.
I exhaled slowly, calling up my reserves of patience.
The blond giant’s green-tinged, shiny complexion was ringing my barf alarm. Better start with him and get some liquid in his bruiser bod to counteract the alcohol. I sidled between tables and overturned his mug. As I carefully poured coffee, my nostrils stung from the fumes rising from his bulky frame, beer-scented and burn-your-eyes strong. Double ugh.
“It is wrong.” The third guy spoke up. I hadn’t really been paying attention to him because he’d been silent ’til now. “Elvis had light brown hair.” He studied my pompadour. His mouth tipped into a small, satisfied-looking smile. Because of my hairstyle? More likely because he’d bested his friend on knowing shit about Elvis.
“Shut up,” Java Juice Guy said good-naturedly. “Even I know Elvis’s hair was black.”
“Light brown,” repeated the third guy. “Like mine.”
“Coffee?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Please,” he added, turning over his mug. “How’s it going tonight?” His friendly tone conveyed what sounded like genuine interest.
Polite drunk jock frat boy. Radical. I gave him the required response—“Fine, thanks.”—and suppressed the urge to comment on his Elvis knowledge. Best to stay firmly in server role and avoid any conversations that might reveal personal tastes. Going there was always bad with people I didn’t know. Usually with people I did know, come to that.
“Nope, nope, you are wrong.” Blond giant shook his head with scary vehemence.
“I’m right,” the polite guy calmly replied as he began to read his menu. “Elvis dyed his hair. He had his own barber who traveled around with him and everything.”
Wow. That was some pretty specific knowledge about the King. I checked out the polite guy with a bit more interest as I rounded the table to fill Java Juice Guy’s mug.
Polite Guy’s hair was, in fact, light brown. Thick and shaggy—maybe a conservative cut that hadn’t been maintained for a long time. The outer edges of his ears peeked out from the mess like ridges of shell poking out of sand. They were the kind of ears my mom called “pokey outers” and I bet they’d earned Polite Guy impolite nicknames like “Dumbo” and “Alfred E. Neuman” when he was little.
The rest of his features were the clean-cut, boring, white-boy-of-privilege variety I saw so much of around campus—somewhere between righteously hot and ragingly ugly. His eyes had more than a small spark of smartness, as if he was way more intelligent or a lot less drunk than his friends. He was biting his lip as he continued to scrutinize the menu.
With a fast move that nearly had me sloshing coffee onto the table, he dropped the menu, leaned back in his chair and looked straight at me. His lip slipped free from his white, straight teeth. I froze, watching blood refill the plump pads of his lower lip. Maybe I had rock on the brain because of the Elvis chatter, but I was thinking that Polite Guy had a nice classic-rock thing going on with his mouth. Not an Elvis quirk, but a bad-boy pout. A serving of Jim Morrison with a small side order of Mick.
Guess his mouth wasn’t nearly as boring as the rest of him.
As his gaze held mine—okay, his eyes weren’t particularly boring either—I got zapped with another weird jolt of…something. I don’t really know what you’d call it. Awareness?
Not sexual awareness because, God, that would be way, way weird. The guy was not my type. I mean, laughably not my type. Maybe it was just the unexpected I-know-you vibe his gaze communicated. Had I met him before but forgotten him? It was possible. I’d only been an “official” student at Ellery for three semesters and I’d spent most of that time wasted or asleep.
“I’ll be back with water.” The words came out croaky. I cleared my throat. “Ready to order now, or do you need more time?”
“Tell us about the shpecials,” slurred the blond giant, studying me with dreadful concentration.
“Um…” I narrowed my eyes at him, gauging if he really wanted to know about chicken fried steak and clam chowder.
“You’ve been here eight zillion times, Mike,” Java Juice Guy said. “You always order the same thing.”
The blond giant—apparently his name was Mike and not Kong—shrugged. “I want to hear Elvis say what the damn specialsh are.” His drunk-droopy eyelids lifted as they traveled from my face to the place where my legs disappeared behind the table. “He can sing ’em if he wants. ’Kay, Elvis?”
This time I didn’t control the eye roll. “I’ll be back in a few,” I said, falling back on my most practiced polite server tone.
“Aw, come on.” As I turned away, Mike snared my arm with his blunt Kong fingers. “Sing for us.” He reeled me in close to his chair before I could dig my soles into the carpet. Scrambling for balance, I braced my thighs against the chair’s arm, wincing at the thought of coffee dousing the giant “E” on his jacket. Not that it wouldn’t be satisfying to douse him, but my wallet couldn’t afford the damages and my boss didn’t deserve the grief.
“Cut it out, Mike,” Polite Guy growled.
Mike ignored him. The hand clasping my forearm was the size and color of the ham slabs I served up on my usual breakfast shift.
You’ve handled idiots before, I reminded myself. “Hands off,” I said, not bothering with painstaking politeness anymore.
“Hey.” He peered at my tattooed arm. “Are you a girl? Or a…” He belched. “A chick?”
I sighed. Did we really have to travel down this boring, well-trodden path? I tugged my arm away as Java Juice Guy hooted, “You mean is he a girl or a guy, fucktard!”
“Yeah. That.” Kong’s bleary blue gaze fixed on my face. “Whatchu got in your pants, freak?”
He delivered the line with fake street-punk humor, but the way he re-gripped my arm wasn’t funny. I’d been stupid not to move away faster. My mouth went sticky and I tried to swallow down the whine in my throat. He wasn’t hurting me. I was just…tired. Suddenly weary down to my bones. Guess I wasn’t recovered enough from my injuries to be back at work. The backs of my knees felt funky. What would Kong do if I simply sat on the grungy carpet at his feet?
His eyelids performed a slow blink-blink and I had to wonder what his brain was processing about my appearance. I had a thing for androgyny and it usually showed in my hairstyle, my tats, my jewelry choices. Some days I wore makeup, some days I didn’t. I couldn’t remember what I had on tonight—seemed as if three days had passed since I’d been at home getting ready for my shift.
Three pairs of jock-boy eyes were focused on my body, likely seeking clues to answer Kong’s obnoxious questions. Clues were gonna be hard to come by. I was skinny. The lug soles of my Red Wings put my height at a little over six feet. My server’s uniform was unisex—slouchy khakis, an oversized oxford (the only thing I owned that would fit over my bandages), and the diner’s required full-length apron.
When I pulled away from blond Kong this time, I took a big step back and let the fact I was ticked off show on my face. I had it on good authority that my fuck-you expression was epic, but Kong didn’t seem scared or apologetic.
“Hey!” he squawked, all uptight and indignant. “Where you going?”
Like other drunks I’d been around, his mood was teeter-tottering and I didn’t want to be there for the teeth-jarring bump down to pure nastiness. I was too tired for this shit. I turned away again, eyes fixed on the door leading to the kitchen where I could find my boss, a phone and a couple of tough fry cooks if I needed back up.
“Come back here and sing for us, faggot-chick!”
Man, oh man. We were having quite the time here at table eight. Indeedy-deed.
I rolled my shoulders, fighter-style, testing to see if the slur would slide off my back or hang there, screaming in my ear. There were, in fact, times when I let slurs slide, but tonight the word knocked me hard in the throat, taking my breath away. My lungs ached as I turned to look at him.
I heard one of his friends say something like “Jesus, Mike!” but my eyes couldn’t focus on anyone but the big blond bigot in front of me.
One of the few things that was semi-okay about living in this small, campus-dominated New England town was that nobody really gave a shit how you dressed or looked. I mean, as long as you didn’t have wiggling purple tentacles dangling from your chin and you were wearing something other than a loincloth, you wouldn’t get many second glances. (Actually when I’d lived in the dorms there’d been a guy who loved to traipse around in a jock, which was technically smaller than a loincloth, but I’m talking public appearance here.) Also, the Ellery administration made extra sure that its conscientiously selected student body was fashionably adorned with PC variety. But attitudes got shifty when drunkenness smashed its way onto the scene and, no matter where you happened to live, drunkenness plus stupidity equaled a strong possibility of bad shit happening.
I had plenty of personal experience with bad shit happening, which meant I should be sober and smart about dealing with this asshole, right? I should shrug this off, walk away, put one more item in my reasons-my-life-had-turned-to-crap column.
I should have done all that, but I didn’t. I stood there and let the hot, lumpy embers in my gut catch fire and burn.
“The fuck did you say?” The hot words slid through the tightness in my throat. My feet took a few steps forward without my brain’s permission.
“You heard me.” His smile seemed genuine—bizarrely friendly for the situation. A dimple dented his rounded cheek. He had a baby face. He’d probably been equally adorable and adored when he was a kid. What would his mom say if she knew her baby boy had just called someone a faggot? Maybe she wouldn’t care. Maybe she’d taught him to say shit like that…
Fire crept up my cheeks and electricity jolted through my limbs. I wanted to smack that friendly smile off his fucking face. I took a step forward, hand clenching the coffee pot.
“Whoaaaa!” sung Java Juice Guy. “Watch out, Mikey. Elvis has hot coffee.”
Of course he was more fired up about defending his friend than defending me. Who cared that a guy who outweighed me by about a hundred pounds had just slammed me with a crass slur?
“Bring it,” Mike said, grin widening.
Something big shadowed my peripheral vision. I realized Polite Guy was standing next to me. “You need to apologize, Mike,” his deep voice rasped. “Now.”
Polite Guy’s chiseled-from-rock expression matched the hard-edged ache in my gut.
“Aw, come on, Wyatt, look at the guy.” Mike’s guffaw had a nervous edge. “He’s used to hearing that kind of shit. He knows I don’t mean anything by it.” His gaze reeled toward mine. “Right, Elvis? I was just joking.”
Polite Guy—Wyatt—was quite a bit taller than me and I didn’t know whether to feel comforted or freaked by the unusual sensation of being loomed over. Man, what was he—six-four? Six-five? Not as beefy as his two friends. Mile-long legs, lean hips.
He crowded Mike’s chair. “Say you’re sorry.”
Mike hunched his shoulders, wrapping a big hand protectively around his coffee mug. A pup chastised by his alpha. “Awww.” Whined like a puppy too.
“I’m not gonna ask you again, Michael.” Wyatt’s voice swiped at his friend with growling, wolf-like effect. “Say it or we’re leaving. You get no pancakes, no fries, no shake, no nothing.”
I realized I’d misread the power structure in their group. Wyatt was definitely in charge. Interesting that the guy who most closely resembled Homo sapiens was the leader of their pack. His eyes shifted to mine. I could see their color now. Green. A funny feeling rippled through my chest and for a few seconds it was hard to breathe. I didn’t know who was riding my nerves more—wasted, foul-brained Mike or his buddy with the alpha vibe real enough to touch.
“Sorry,” Mike mumbled. He blinked down at his menu, bobbing on his chair, a red-faced buoy floating on a sea of Sam Adams.
Not bothering to acknowledge his apology, I headed to the servers’ station on feet like over-roasted marshmallows, puffy and crispy, the nerve endings on my soles charred and rendered useless. When I picked up a water pitcher, Lisa, the night shift manager, put her hand on my shoulder.
“Dot’s taking these guys now, Ray.”
My fingers slid through the condensation on the pitcher.
“It’s okay.” I tried to swallow, my tongue wrestling with the lump at the back of my throat. “I got this.”
“No,” Lisa said. “You don’t.”
I wiped my fingers on my khakis and looked down into Lisa’s hard but kind eyes. The corners of my own eyes were wet and hot. I blinked. What the hell? Was I gonna cry about this? A stupid little incident that was nothing compared to other stuff I was dealing with?
Air puffed feebly through my chest, my lungs functioning like slashed latex balloons. Maybe the car accident had jarred something loose beneath my busted ribs.
“You can take the four that just walked in.” Lisa tipped her head to a group of high-school types sitting in Dot’s section—a mix of guys and girls who looked joyful and smiley and oblivious to anything crappy or complicated.
I exhaled slowly, testing out my insides for leaks or holes.
“You okay, Ray?” Lisa asked.
“’S’all cool.” I rolled my shoulders into a slouch, making my smile turn lopsided, trying to look like my regular self and wishing I had a couple of props. Maybe a fifth of Jack wrapped tight in my fist, or a cigarette dangling from my lip.
Although the former prop had been failing me lately—booze and I hadn’t been very good partners (I loved it a hell of a lot more than it loved me, story of my life)—the latter prop would be welcome. I’d cut back on smoking in a serious way since my accident, but right now I felt like I could hot-box an entire pack of Camel straights and not feel any effects.
I went about my business waiting on the four and a couple of two-tops that came in a few minutes later, keeping my eyes trained away from the jocks. My spine went rigid when I heard the word “Elvis” uttered in a sneer, but the abrupt growl of “shut it” that came after seemed to curb any more trouble.
As the post-bar-closing crowd trickled in, I got busy enough to ignore the jocks entirely until I heard loud voices and forced myself to look in their direction. They were in the process of leaving and Blond Kong had knocked an elbow into a nearby customer’s head. There was a small scuffle of words between Dottie, the customer and Blond Kong’s two buddies. Everything must’ve been straightened out, because a minute later the loathsome threesome made their way out the door.
Things got quiet around four, and I went back to the kitchen to snag the lunch order I’d put in for myself. Struck me as funny they called it lunch even on the night shift but, whatever, I could always use a free lunch.
After sharing friendly insults with the fry cook, I gratefully took my plate into the now-mellow dining room, sitting in the back booth where the staff always ate. As I bit into a veggie burger with the works, I saw a tall, lanky figure heading down the aisle toward my table.
Shit. It was Polite Guy. Wyatt. Classic movie buff that I am, my mind filled with images of Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral. Striding through the streets of town at dawn. Ready to make the bad guys pay because that’s what real men did when they ran up against amoral assholes…
I blinked. Actually the Wyatt coming toward me did look bold and righteous and sheriff-y. Shoulders back, stride confident, eyes steady on mine. I swallowed the bite of burger too quickly and a blob of cheese stuck to the roof of my mouth. I took a gulp of water.
“You okay?” he asked. He stopped about an inch from the table’s chrome edge, casting a spiky shadow across my lunch. I didn’t look up into his face. Instead I watched the bulge his hands made in the pockets of his track pants.
“Yep.” I made the word sound sharp, final. I didn’t want a conversation.
“Good. I, um…wanted to apologize for earlier.”
“Okay.” I ran the tip of my tongue over the inside of my cheek.
“We aren’t usually assholes like that.”
I let that comment ride. I toyed with a fry, drawing a circle in the ketchup on my plate. I waited for him to say something else. Or leave.
“We, uh, lost the regional championship last week and the guys are feeling kind of down.”
Really? Was I supposed to express sympathy? Or understanding? I didn’t even know what championship he was talking about. Hockey? Basketball? What sport did they play this time of year? Didn’t matter. The guy was deluded if he thought losing some kind of sporting event was an excuse for nasty-assed bigotry and a vile personality.
I tipped my chin, looked at his face. He was biting his lip again. Guess it was a habit. His eyes were narrowed, sparking that intense green, and when they hooked up with mine I felt the same unexpected jolt I’d felt earlier. I shrugged, quickly shifting my gaze back to my fries. “Yeah, well, we all have a touch of sliminess in our souls, right? Some days are just oozier than others.”
He was bright enough to detect the note of sarcasm in my voice, because he tried another apology. “I’m sorry we took it out on you. I know what it’s like to work at a place like this, and you didn’t deserve to deal with our shit.”
His sparky green eyes scanned the dining room—the empty tables, the server’s station, the door to the kitchen. He was acting as if he wanted to commiserate but no matter what he thought, I knew his life experiences and mine were about eighty gazillion galaxies apart.
Frustration scrunched the muscles at the base of my neck and I hunched, sinking lower on the booth’s squeaky seat. Why was he here? Why wasn’t he back in his frat house or his cushy dorm suite, passed out with the rest of his buddies? Or at his girlfriend’s place, using his super-conditioned muscles to take her into the happy orgasm place of beautiful college person ecstasy? Maybe he was out this late because he didn’t have a girlfriend. Maybe he—
Oh.
His gaze came back around to mine. His tongue darted from between his lips, smoothing over that cushy lower curve. He was nervous.
Oh wow. Polite frat guy with the pretty mouth and interesting green eyes was maybe…hitting on me?
The bite of veggie burger I’d swallowed earlier felt like it was lodged in my esophagus. I wanted another sip of water but I couldn’t seem to lift the glass. My fingers were frozen. I’d never been in this situation. I mean, I’d been propositioned, sure, and I’d said yes to some casual hook-ups in the past, but they’d always been with friends or people who knew the score with me. I was flexible about the sex-ay and I got hot when I found partners who shared the same flexible sexolosophy. This guy…well, he didn’t seem flexible. Exactly.
Could be my signals were out of whack because of lack of use. I’d been in an on-off twisted, ugly kind of relationship—which, yeah, wasn’t really much of a relationship, I suppose—that I’d finally broken off for good over a year ago. Recovering had been a surprisingly long process.
I ran my tongue over my teeth, wishing again for a cigarette. I couldn’t help but wonder if Wyatt would be all shifty-footed and lip-bite-y if I was a smiling, sweet-faced coed—the kind of creature who licked up cute jock boys like scoops of mint chocolate chip on a hot summer night.
His discomfort should have pleased me, but…it didn’t. I wanted to ask him what the hell he was thinking, but what could I say? Exactly which parts of mine do you think would fit up with yours, big guy?
His fisted hands moved restlessly in his pockets, the ridges of his knuckles creating dragon-spine bumps beneath the smooth, shiny fabric. My own fingers flexed. I had a thing for hands. Other people’s hands, my own hands—a jones for tactile sensation I guess you’d call it. As the nerve endings on my wrists and forearms and palms blasted awake, I thought about the fact that I hadn’t been touched in a serious, sexy-making sort of way for a long time.
A shudder—definitely sexual, there was no fooling myself this time—quaked through my belly and suddenly the situation seemed more than slightly hilarious. A smile cracked my lips and I had to bite down hard on my cheek to keep from giggling.
“What?” he asked. I slanted a glance at his face. His mouth curved. The kind of smile that happened when you saw someone else laughing and even though you didn’t know what the hell they were laughing at, the funniness hit you too. It was cute. And the fact his expression struck me as cute—really? cute? I didn’t even like that word—meant I needed to end this exchange. Now.
“Nothing,” I said. “Apology accepted.” I shoved my plate toward the center of the table and slid my butt across the booth’s seat. “I’ve gotta get back to work.”
“Okay.” He took a hesitant step back. “I really just came by to give you this.”
He pulled some paper out of his pocket. My cheeks caught fire because for a second I thought he was giving me his number or address—hard to interpret that as anything other than blatant interest, right? I was gonna have to be plain and tell him that tonight I was not up for being anybody’s “strange”, even if I did think his mouth was sexy and his smile was cute.
But then he plopped the paper down by my plate and I saw it was money.
“You guys paid your bill, right?” I focused on the bill’s green print. A twenty.
“Yeah. This is a tip. For waiting on us earlier.”
“Dottie was your waitress. She’s still on duty.” I craned my neck so I could peer around the booth, feeling a sudden desperate need to see Dot’s lavender head.
“I know. We tipped her when we paid our bill. I wanted to give this to you. For your trouble.”
Staring down at the twenty, I blinked at the picture of Andrew Jackson. I wasn’t sure what I should read into it. I grimaced, tired of myself, tired of the way the gears in my brain seemed to whir and grind and never move anything forward.
Nothing. That’s what I should read into it. It was legal tender. Cash. Exactly what I needed. Money was a big hang-up for me, but not in the way people would guess. I hated all the things the small, rectangular piece of paper resting by my plate stood for, but I wasn’t going to go all noble and throw it in Wyatt’s face. I wasn’t going to give him any coy looks and pretend it might be an invite for the kind of exchange that might happen behind the diner’s Dumpster or in the employee john.
“Thanks.” I tucked the bill into my apron pocket, keeping my eyes focused on my plate. I was afraid if I met his eyes again I’d do something awkward. Maybe giggle for real. Or strike up a conversation. Or stare.
“Okay, then,” he said. “I…I guess I’ll see you around.”
I wanted to say, “I hope to hell not,” but instead I shrugged. I couldn’t control who walked through the diner’s doors.
His neon green Nikes made a shuffling sound on the carpet as, once again, he shifted his weight from foot to foot. I held my breath, waiting for him to say something else. I sure as heck wasn’t going to say anything else.
Finally he left and my breath escaped in a slow, relieved gust.