He blinks up at me, face blank. Well, my mind is shorting out, too, because it sounds like the man was just complimenting me.
“I didn’t think it mattered,” I mutter. Lies. I thought it would matter too much.
He drops his eyes to his empty coffee mug, and I realize I never filled it. I reach to do so now, still clutching the same pot.
“With the way you go on and on about your flights, I would’ve thought his name would come up,” Marge presses. “She loves flying with you, you know?” My stepmom leans across the table. “I don’t understand half the jargon she spouts off, but I can tell she adores it all. You’re probably her favorite person.”
“Marge! He’s not…” My face flushes red and I fumble with the menus, slapping one down in front of each of them. “He’s my instructor. I’m just his annoying charity-case student. We’re not even friends.”
The words whip out. Cracking through the air like a bolt of lightning, leaving the singed sting of awkwardness in their wake.
They both stare up at me—Marge confused, and George…well,once again the man is unreadable. He’s probably just thinking,Duh, isn’t that obvious to everyone? Why does she feel the need to point it out?
I suck in a shuddering breath and flip open my notepad. “Food. What food can I get you?”
“Beth.” Marge’s voice is so gentle when she says my name that I panic.
“One Bunsen and one turkey club—mustard, no mayo—coming up.” I rattle off their usuals, then escape while trying not to look like I’m running away.
Billy grunts out a thanks when I pin the guessed food choices in the pass, and I busy myself wiping down the counter farthest from where the two of them sit.
Not that I can escape them forever.
Are they talking about me? Are they sitting in the awkward silence left in my wake?
Is George being a condescending ass?
Marge can handle herself around douchebags, but as my hands clench in my cleaning rag, I realize how much I hate the fact that she might have tohandleGeorge at all. That he turned out to be the pompous prick I first suspected he was. That I actually had started to relax around him and maybe even not totally intensely dislike him.
Naive. Too trusting.
My adrenaline crush–muddled brain has made me soft.
“Order up! One Bunsen, one turkey club.”
Since I’ve had a moment to myself, I’ve forcefully recovered my waitress persona, wearing a perky mask as I drop the food off at their table.
“Beth,” Marge says in the same softly coaxing voice, and I try not to let my shoulders shoot up to my ears. “Did you know George has a cat?”
I blink once. Then again. “A cat?” I repeat, trying to understand this entirely new direction of conversation.
In my peripheral vision, I spy his perfectly shaped head nod once.
“A cat.” He spreads his napkin in his lap.
“Are they friendly?” I ask, a reflex.
George’s lips twist. “When she wants to be.”
Sounds like most cats.
I find I like the idea of George living with a small fuzzy fiend who he can never fully trust.
“We’ve got one of those,” Marge offers with a chuckle, pulling out her phone to show him a picture of Grumps reclining in his plush chair, glaring at the camera.
“He’s cute,” George says.
“He’s a cantankerous bastard. But we knew that going in.”
