She shrugged. “I’m not a parent, but I get it. I do. Losing my mother gave me all sorts of complicated thoughts, and I would be lying if I didn’t say my anxiety gets pretty intense. Sometimes when someone compliments you out of the blue and it directly contrasts with what your trauma is telling you, it can be pretty triggering.”
How did a woman who barely knew me understand me so well? How could sheknowme so well? It seemed like sorcery.
“You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head,” I said, instead of accusing her of being a witch or otherwise non-human entity.
“I do like to think I’m pretty perceptive. If you’d like, you can ask me about anything you’re curious about. I’m not a shining example, but I’ve made a lot of progress and figured out several coping mechanisms that have helped me.”
Some people would consider the whole conversation pretty emasculating, but those people were idiots. My pain, my PTSD, didn’t make me any less of a man. I was analpha.It would be insane if I wasn’t deeply affected by what had happened.
I was hurting because I cared, because I was a red-blooded alpha and designed to be a protector. Because I wassupposedto be nurturing and tending to an entire pack, but they were all dead because I was a fuckingidiot.
“Actually, I?—”
“And here’s your flight!” our server said, popping up out of nowhere. She moved awfully quiet for a human. “Again, sorry this took forever. We have a fifteen-top along with the ten-top I mentioned earlier, and the kitchen is slammed. But I talked to the manager, and he said this app is on the house. Just as a thank you for being so patient and understanding.”
Although moneyreallywasn’t an issue for me, I still appreciated it. “Thank you. You didn’t need to do all that.”
“Please, you treated me like a reasonable human. You wouldn’t believe how rare that is.”
Giselle raised her hand slightly, and I wasn’t even sure she knew she was doing it. “I’m a teacher, so I absolutely believe it.”
“A teacher? Yeah, you get it. But anyway, the kitchen is trying to catch up, so hopefully your meals will be brought out a bit, uh, moreexpediently.”
“Oh, nice vocab,” Giselle chimed in.
“Thank you! Can I get you any refills?”
“Yeah, I’d like to try the other German lager, then a big glass of ice water, extra ice.”
“And for you, ma’am?”
“Not a ma’am, please. I’m still in my twenties.” Giselle chuckled. “And I’m good. I might need another water with my food, but I don’t want to fill up on liquids.”
“Totally understand! I’ll get right on that for you then, sir, and let me know if you change your mind,Miss.”
“Thank you,” Giselle said with a chuckle.
Our conversation drifted from there. She told me more about her disease, which sounded intense. I was glad to hear that it usually wasn’t life-threatening with management, but that was the key part.Management.I could imagine that was growing increasingly harder to do with the way the economy was going.
We talked a little more about her mother, but didn’t linger on that topic. I didn’t want Giselle to have to trot her trauma out like a show pony to soothe my frayed nerves. But still, it was nice that she trusted me.
We didn’t only talk about heavy backstories and childhood wounds. We talked about the weather, but only because we’d gotten sidetracked in discussing the wild environmental divides between different prehistoric eras. We talked about shows we liked, movies we were looking forward to, and of course, the kids.
We laughed. We joked. And when the food finally came, we dug in. It was delicious, and very welcome. It’d been long enough since I’d eaten to make my stomach rumble, but the food wasn’t anythinglife-changing.It affirmed my opinion that just because something was more expensive, it wasn’t necessarily better quality.
It really could have gone on forever, but after another hour, our food was either completely gone or growing cold, and it was getting close to closing time.
Wow, I couldn’t believe it. It never should have worked, and yet, I was having a really great time—better than I’d had in a long time.
“I suppose we should wrap this up,” I murmured, not all that eager to leave. “We’ve been camping here a while.”
“Have we?” Giselle looked at her phone, which had been sitting unused next to her purse. “Oh my god! We’ve been here two-and-a-half hours?How?”
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” I said, pulling out my wallet and placing my credit card on top of the bill our server had dropped off about a half hour earlier. Normally, I never camped out, so I was going to give her an utterly ridiculous tip.
Did I wish that servers were paid fair wages and restaurants didn’t exploit them and their own customers to subsidize their own business? Absolutely. But until that happened, I made sure anyone who served me was properly compensated.
“Thank you again,” Giselle said, her eyes a bit misty as she gazed at me. “This was even better than I imagined.”
