“So, if someone was in their booth what would you do? They don’t come in every day, do they?” Laura asked.
“No, about once a week, usually Tuesdays,” I said.
“But you don’t pay any attention to him, right? I mean, his comings and goings, where his kid likes to sit and why… it’s not like you’re obsessed or anything.”
“I’m just being a good waitress, attentive to what my customers like.”
“You’d throw some trucker bodily out of the diner if they were in that booth right now. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Not bodily. I’d just—offer them a free piece of pie if they’d switch tables. And then give them some banana cream,” I said with a grin.
“Right. Not calculating at all,” she raised an eyebrow. “Do you run into stuff and drop trays when he’s around? Because you haven’t taken your eyes off him.”
“Shut the front door, Laura. I’m a professional. I don’t drop shit just because there’s an unusually hot man here with shaggy black hair and green eyes and the biceps and shoulders of an actual lumberjack.”
“I’ll grant that he’s good-looking, but he’s a little too Hollywood for me. He may be a lumberjack, but he doesn’t have that rough-hewn, mountain man face. He’s too handsome. It distracts from the backwoods Paul Bunyan vibe he’s working.”
“Maybe if he grew a beard,” I wondered aloud.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” she laughed. “Tell him to grow a beard. It might rough him up a little, make him less of a pretty boy.”
“He’s not a pretty boy,” I said, “he’s a woodchopper with an exceptionally handsome face. Like Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling had a black-haired son.”
“You know those are both men, right? I mean, do you know about the birds and the bees and how neither of those guys ovulates?”
“Shut up. He’s sitting down. I’ve got to go get their order.”
“What about my new pie?” she demanded. I shrugged.
“I’ll get to it. These are paying customers.”
I fixed my ponytail which was getting a little droopy after five hours at work and glided on over to their table. Max’s eyes were fixed on his six-year-old as she knelt at the window and pointed out the place where the flowers were starting to push up out of the soil.
“Hey, Sadie-Lady, are they blooming yet?”
“Nope,” she said. “But they will be soon. We just gotta keep watching them. You got any crayons?”
“For you? You bet,” I said, taking the box of crayons out of my apron pocket for her. “I’ll be right back, just you hold on a sec.”
I went back behind the counter and dug out the new coloring books I’d hidden in our stack of used ones we let customers’ kids color in.
“LOL or Paw Patrol?” I asked, offering them to her. Her green eyes lit up.
“LOL! This is new!”
“It’s a sad day,” I said, turning to Max. “A year ago it was all Zuma and Everest. Now she doesn’t care anything about Paw Patrol. She’s too grown-up,” I sighed.
“Yesterday she was bugging me to get her ‘big girl’ sheets for her bed,” he said with a head shake. “Because the Baby Shark sheets are too baby.”
“Baby Shark is so last year,” I said. “So, am I bringing her the wine list?” I teased.
“You have a wine list here?” he said dubiously.
“Nah, but I have a pie list.”
“Bring me that!” Sadie piped up and we laughed.
“You have to eat more than two bites of food first,” Max said.
She drooped a little in her seat.
“Hey, we have chicken strips today,” I told her conspiratorially.
“Can I have barbecue sauce to dip in?”
“May I,” her dad corrected.
“May I?” she said brightly.
“I think I can work that out. You want some garlic toast while you wait on your food?”
“Only if you don’t want her to eat the chicken at all,” he grumbled. “Sorry,” he said, seeming to remember himself. “We’re having the picky eating wars at home. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
“It’s fine,” I said, “when I was little, my mom swears I lived on peanut butter and crackers and Rice Krispies treats.”
“At our place it’s Goldfish crackers and gummy fruit snacks,” he said. “Not exactly the entire food pyramid.”
“I understand. Now, Sadie-Lady, are you giving Dad a hard time?”
“No. I just don’t like meat. It’s squishy.”
“What about vegetables?” I pressed.
“They taste like feet.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “Have you tasted feet lately?”
She giggled and I smiled at her. She was a mini version of her dad, for sure, her unruly black hair pulled into a lopsided ponytail that failed to keep it back out of her face.
“Let me see what I can do,” I said. “And for you?”
“I’ll have the fish sandwich and a salad,” Max said and handed me his laminated menu.
When I brought his salad, I brought some carrots and celery cut up and a little side dish of two dressings for her, ranch and French. “I want you to try two bites of each one. Then you can pick the winner. I’ll be back in a minute.”
I cleared a table, picked up my tip, took another couple of orders, and then ran a slice of cherry pie to Laura.
“Took you long enough. If I was a hot single dad, maybe I’d get better service. I only have about a decade's worth of blackmail-worthy pics of you.”
“Do you want me to spit on your pie or what?” I asked. “I have customers.”
“Why don’t you just flirt with the man already? You’ve been looking at him with get-me-naked eyes since he walked in.”
“Untrue. My eyes don’t say things like that. I just have an astigmatism so maybe they look that way to hussies like you,” I teased.
“Hey! You’re a hussy!” she laughed and took a bite. “But you’re a damn fine cook, for a nasty little tramp.”
“Don’t you forget it. My Tinder profile says that. Good cook, nasty tramp. Shame I don’t get more right swipes on that thing.”
“Probably geography. You live in
