I have no idea who this angry man is. In my shock, I stand still, my muscles clenching, and I’m blocking his exit. Our bodies have barely a sliver of space between us, and an unyielding magnetic pull plays between us… or maybe it’s just pulling me to him. He stands there, looking down at me, his dusky green eyes narrowed, and me, looking up at him, my brown eyes wide open.
Who are you? But the words catch in my throat.
“Get out of my way,” he spits, hatred lacing his words, and I don’t know if it’s his anger or his heart-stopping beauty that throttles my heart.
My adrenaline kicks in, and I jump back, blinking, confused. He storms toward the exit, and the little bells jingle violently as he jerks the door open and walks out.
What was that about? Who the hell was that? I stare after him for a moment, in a daze, and I pick up the money and his empty plate and coffee cup. I exhale.
He must’ve had the wrong person.
But no, he said my name.
I stand there dumbfounded for a moment, when my brain reminds me, I’m busy. With Mystery Man gone, I draw in a deep breath and shake my head to clear it while walking into the kitchen. My confidence finally enters the ring, and I think of the things I should’ve said to that fucking weirdo. I hate the uselessness of hindsight. I put the surly man’s dishes in the sink and rinse them, and my mind, clear of him.
“I heard you added to your swear jar,” I call over to Mom as she rolls out dough for the next shrimp and cream cheese quiche she’s making. I also smell the salty, rich bacon cooking for her regular Gabby’s Quiche recipe, and my mouth waters. I take another deep inhale. If it’s not bacon I love smelling, it’s my cherry pie. Hm. Inspiration hits. I should make a bacon-cherry pie! I grab my phone from my apron pocket and type a reminder into my Recipe Ideas List.
Our restaurant looks like a diner, but we serve bistro-style food. And pies. Mom specializes in the savory pies, like quiche, and I make the dessert pies. They’re my passion. The restaurant is small, like our menu, with only five purple booths nestled against a window overlooking the parking lot we share with a Burger King, a CPA, and an orthopedic shoe store. Red, leather-topped stools that kids like to spin on when I teach baking classes line the cream-colored, retro-style, laminated counter. The counter seats six, and it’s normally packed with regulars coming for Mom’s famous quiche or a slice of my pie.
“Yeah, I’m almost caught up to your jar,” she snickers.
We both have giant, glass swear jars on the counter, fashioned from quart-sized pickle jars and decorated with each of our names. Hers says Mom. Mine says Daughter. Some restaurants have tip jars by the register… we have swear jars. We’re trying to break our sailor-mouth habit. My excuse is I got mine from her, so it’s both nature and nurture—lord knows, we spend every waking minute together running this place. She has no excuse though. She blames it on a hard life with four difficult husbands.
The jars have become a joke amongst our regulars, and they place bets on who’ll fill hers first. Last month it was Mom. She was trying out a new sauce recipe, and things didn’t go as planned. The month before that, I burned my hand and I filled my jar first. Not only did I cuss up a storm from the pain, but my frustration at making pies one-handed was more than my efficient self could handle. It fucking sucked. (I’m allowed to think cuss words all I want.)
I walk over to the cash register and put in Mystery Man’s hundred-dollar bill, and I take out the enormous tip he left for my coworker, Jessica. I walk over to the end of the counter, where she has her head buried in her phone, oblivious to what just happened between her customer and me.
I hand her the eighty-five dollars and say, “Here’s your tip from that guy.”
Her violet-blue eyes shimmer, and, as she shakes her head in disbelief, her mass of tight black curls follow suit. “Are you kidding me?” She holds out her hand. “Wow!”
Jessica is our one other employee, and we depend on her like the desert depends on the rainy season. She’s young, gorgeous, and trustworthy… which is scarce in the restaurant business. We don’t keep long hours here; well, the restaurant doesn’t. I do. So we don’t need a lot of hands on deck. We open for breakfast and lunch, but we close by 2:00 p.m. every day, with Sunday reserved for me teaching baking classes here, working on my next big goal, baking pies for commercial clients, or sleeping.
“Do you know who he was?” I ask her.
“No, I’ve never seen him here before, but—daaaayum!—he was hot, right? I love a man with fancy facial hair.” She laughs and then asks, her eyes slanted like a cat’s, “So, do ya think he’s bucket one or bucket two?”
“Pfft. Totally bucket two. A control freak,” I huff.
I have a thing where I lump men into one of two buckets. Either the Will Probably Cheat bucket, number one, or the Control Freak bucket, number two. My experience living with both, during Mom’s marriages, taught me a lot.
Though Mystery Man was weird, I don’t have a bucket for weird, but I say nothing more about that to Jessica.
“But if he looks that good, maybe it doesn’t matter,” she laughs. Jessica loves men and always has a hot date lined up. At one point, she was so busy dating
