Holy hell, vagina! Could you shut up already?
Needing time to pull myself together, I focus on refilling all the coffee mugs at my occupied tables.
My coworker and best friend Darla approaches Shawn and George, looking anything but enthused. Darla is Billy’s twin, and she has made it clear to everyone who’s ever sat in her section that she would ratherbe anywhere else than working in her family’s diner. The Cornfields don’t seem offended by their adopted daughter’s surly attitude, and lots of the regulars find her curt service charming.
I live to hear Darla say the things I wish I could. Whenever I struggle to keep a smile in place, I gravitate toward my friend and find relief in secondhand bitchiness.
Also, watching my brother try to charm her is prime-time entertainment.
“What do you want?” Darla asks, with zero of the sparkle I try to infuse my voice with when greeting customers. She sounds like a solicitor showed up on her front porch with an armful of roadkill.
My brother leans forward and flashes his expensive smile—he wore braces for three years and gets regular whitening treatments—at her.
“I’ll have the Shawn Special.”
The waitress’s lip curls in a silent snarl that looks out of place on her sweet, elfish face. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Come on, you gotta know.” He leans closer, maybe hoping his designer cologne will entrance her. “I get the same thing every time.”
Darla stares at my brother with undisguised loathing, unmoved by his charismatic smile.
“Beth.” He turns imploring eyes on me. “Youknow what the Shawn Special is.”
I do. I shouldn’t encourage him, but I don’t want to lie. Not when I’m sitting on a huge falsehood that’s about to burn me bad. Best to be honest in all other ways.
“A cheeseburger with extra pickles,” I supply as I top off Mr.Fraser’s coffee. With my rotation of the diner at its end, there’s no avoiding Shawn.
And George.
“Exactly,” Shawn crows. “See?”
Darla grips the pencil she uses to write down orders with white knuckles, and I can tell she’s imagining stabbing the dull point into my brother’s eye.
“Extra pickles is not enough to make a burger special. You don’t get to slap your name on something because of a slight increase in condiments. Is your life really that devoid of accomplishments?”
Sally appears then, as if she has a my-daughter-is-about-to-commit-murder radar. With one arm, the older woman pulls the waitress into a half-embrace, half-restraint.
“Darla,” she chides. “Remember what we talked about.”
The waitress growls. “But—”
“Darla.” There’s a note of warning that I fully expect my friend to ignore.
Instead, she glares at the tiled floor and mutters, “Don’t actively destroy the self-confidence of the customers.”
I have to bite hard into my bottom lip to keep from laughing, but I hear a snort somewhere else in the restaurant and realize Sam Cornfield has come out of the back office in time to hear her daughter attempt some personal growth. The silver-haired Black woman is one of the friendliest people I’ve ever met. Even kinder than her wife. And yet the pair adopted two children that lean toward grumpy at all times.
“That’s my girl.” Sally gives her daughter a proud little squeeze.
Darla pulls away from her mother, stomps over to the coffee maker, snatches a pot, and aggressively pours the steaming liquid into a mug before gently placing it in front of my brother.
“Here’s your one-of-a-kind totally original coffee. Because you’re a super-special boy. Now let me go see if the chef can handle your complicated food order that no one else in the world has ever thought of ordering.” She stalks away, so annoyed with my brother that she didn’t even ask George what he wanted.
Any other day, I’d risk permanent bodily harm by trying to flag down Darla.
But yesterday George took me up in an airplane and then saved my life, which I guess still counts, even if he was saving his own at the same time. With a sigh, I come to a stop in front of him and manage a smile because I’m a pro at faking it. “And what can we get you today?”
George’s eyes flick from the menu to my face and back to the menu. I wonder if he’s contemplating returning to his well-established habit of leaving without acknowledging my existence. The thought makes me itchy.
