Our gazes clash. “Does this get old for you?” she asks.
“Nope.” And I mean it. I will take her through this sequence a thousand times if, at the end, she comes back to me.
Inside, a smattering of people sit at tables. Two couples play beer pong on the bar side, and a cluster of college kids throw darts on the back wall.
“Okay, the smell of this place is making me want to eat fried food,” Ava says.
“Your clothes always smelled like it.”
“I can almost taste it.”
Big Harry emerges from the back office. “Ava! You’re darkening my door again!”
I start the camera as he walks straight up to her and envelopes her in an oversized embrace. He wouldn’t give up his Ava hugs either.
Ava peeps out over the tattoos of his meaty arm with a look ofwho the heck is this?
“This is your old boss, Harry,” I say.
“You’re still no bigger than a mite,” he says. “Can I fix you your regular?”
Ava looks up at his grizzled face, mostly hidden by a scraggly beard. “What is my regular?”
“The concoction you drank to pretend you wereboozing it up like the rest of them,” he says with a laugh. “As if we didn’t know.”
He walks behind the counter and expertly flips a glass from one hand to the other. “Let’s see, I believe it was Sprite, a splash of Grenadine for color, and a wedge of lemon?”
Ava shrugs. “Maybe?”
Big Harry drags a shovel through a trough of ice. “You worked here during a pretty good run. Everyone got along, and we would talk in the wee hours when the crowd was light.”
“Ava was a force to be reckoned with,” I say.
“Oh, she was.” Big Harry passes the glass to Ava and pours himself a beer in a big pewter stein. “She was like a whirlwind. Nobody messed with her. If they didn’t catch on quick enough, I made sure they didn’t mess with her.”
He leans over and stares me in the eye. “I seem to recall tossing you out on your can the first time you showed up here.”
Ava laughs. “I’ve heard this story!”
“He earned it,” Big Harry says. “And I woulda kept doing it, but he was smart enough to sit on the bench outside.”
Big Harry sets his stein on the bar with a thump. “I never saw a boy more determined to woo a girl than this fella right here. He sat out there on that bench, sometimes for hours, just to get a glimpse of you. It coulda softened an old codger like me, if I still had a heart.”
“Now that’s a lie,” Ava says. “I’ve only known you for five minutes, but I can already tell that your heart is bigger than your beer mug.”
He holds his mug aloft. “Don’t you tell a soul, or I’ll have to feed you to the sharks.” He laughs again. “Well,from what I understand, you two have a big day ahead.” He claps my shoulder. “Good luck, young man.”
He rounds the counter to envelop Ava in another hug that almost makes her disappear.
“Give him a listen, girl,” he says. “This boy only has your best interest at heart.” He turns to me. “But I still don’t regret throwing you out on your can.”
I shake his hand, and Ava kisses his cheek. We head out of the diner to my car.
“Since you’ve been drinking so heavily,” I say. “I guess I should drive.”
Ava laughs. “It’s hilarious to know I would lie about my drink to fit in. That was fun. Where are we going next?”
“It’s an unusual stop,” I say. “I had to make special arrangements. But I got it done.”
