Hector stood behind his desk like he’d been positioned there by design. He had a coffee cup in one hand, and he looked like he’d been awake since dawn and had already accomplished more than I would all month. He had a dark sweater that fit him perfectly, sleeves pushed up to his forearms in a way that managed to look both casual and completely put together. Not a hair out of place. Not a paper out of order. Everything about him screamed control and competence.
He looked at me the same way he had that first night at the restaurant—assessing, deciding whether I was worth the investment or just another disappointment waiting to happen.
Today, his expression said disappointment was winning.
My brain did that annoying thing where it dragged me back six months without permission. To the first day I met Hector Valdez.
I’d been pulling a double at Aurelio’s—this upscale Italian place in Midtown where businessmen took clients to impress them and tourists came to pretend they could afford the wine list. My feet hurt. My back ached. But the tips were decent, and decent was infinitely better than drowning.
Then I saw them.
A man and a little girl sat at a corner table. Pink balloons were tied to her chair, and a cupcake sat in front of her with a single candle, wax already dripping down the frosting. Everything about the setup implied a birthday celebration.
But the little girl sat completely frozen, staring at the candle flame like it might leap off the cake and burn her.
The expression on her face stabbed something sharp into my chest. I’d seen that exact look before, on Colin, back when his stutter was so severe he couldn’t order food without other kids laughing.
The man sitting across from her looked completely lost. He kept glancing at his daughter, then at the cupcake, then backat his daughter like he was waiting for something that clearly wasn’t coming.
The birthday song started playing over the speakers—the generic instrumental version restaurants use so staff don’t actually have to sing. I watched Maria, another server, walk right past their table without stopping. Not her problem. Not her job to fix sad rich kids.
I should have done the same, delivered my carbonara to table seven, collected my tip, and gone home.
Instead, my feet carried me straight to their table.
I knelt beside the girl’s chair, lowering myself to her eye level. She looked at me with these huge, wary eyes. Not scared exactly. Just careful.
I started singing. Not loud or performative like we usually did for birthday tables when clients requested it. I sang simply, the same way I used to sing to Colin when his stutter got so bad he’d come home crying.
The girl watched me the entire time. I felt her father watching too, but I kept my focus on her.
When I reached the last line, something happened.
“Hurray,” she whispered.
I smiled at her and ruffled her hair gently, the way I used to do with Colin when he finally got a sentence out without stuttering. She didn’t pull away.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” I said as I stood.
The father stared at me like I’d just performed literal magic. I gave him a quick smile and moved on to my next table, already half forgetting about it.
My shift ended at eleven. I was tired but satisfied with the night’s tips. I grabbed my jacket from the break room and headed for the exit, already planning my subway route home.
The man was waiting by the door.
Not creepy waiting. Not blocking my path or doing anything threatening. Up close, he looked older than I’d initially thought. Mid-thirties, maybe.
“That thing you did,” he said. His voice carried an accent I couldn’t quite place. Spanish, maybe, or Portuguese. “With my daughter. Where did you learn that?”
I adjusted my bag on my shoulder, confused. “Learn what? Singing happy birthday?”
“The way you approached her.” His eyes were dark and intense, studying me like I was a puzzle he desperately needed to solve. “Most people make it worse.”
"I work with kids sometimes," I said carefully, not sure where this was going. "I'm studying speech-language pathology."
Something changed in his face. Interest, sharp and immediate. "You're licensed?"
"Not yet. I finished my master's, but I'm still in my clinical fellowship year." I trailed off, heat creeping up my neck. "Once I finish my supervised hours, I can sit for the Praxis and apply for my CCC-SLP."
