"Nothing."
"Joel."
I slid into the booth across from her. A child two tables over was shrieking about something, the high-pitched wail drilling into my temples. The mother looked exhausted, her hair escaping from a ponytail, her coffee untouched and going cold. She kept making apologetic eye contact with the other customers. I looked away before she could try it on me.
The waitress came, young and cheerful in a way that seemed practiced. She had a small tattoo behind her ear, a crescent moon, and she smiled too much. I ordered dry toast and an egg white omelet with spinach. When she asked me about coffee, I hesitated, glanced at Natalia, and ordered a vanilla latte with whole milk instead of my usual black coffee.
Natalia raised an eyebrow. "Feeling rebellious today?"
"I'll burn it all off in a run later," I told her.
She shrugged and pushed her eggs around the plate. Near the counter, a man in a wrinkled suit was arguing with the manager about his order, his voice getting louder with each exchange. The wrong kind of milk, apparently, as if anything about a cup of coffee could matter enough to make a scene over. I watchedhim gesture at the cup, watched the manager's face go flat and professional, and wondered what it was like to care that much about something so small.
"So what happened at the rink this morning?" Natalia asked.
"Some hockey player showed up during my session," I said. "Double booking."
"Oh." She dragged the syllable out until it could carry furniture. "You want me to call the manager and fix it?"
I started to answer and then stopped. "It's not a big deal." He probably won't show up tomorrow anyway.
"Is he hot?"
"He's not—" I stopped. Hot wasn't the right word. He had freckles and a crooked smile and a scar on his chin, and hair that went in six directions at once. He looked like someone who'd help you move apartments and refuse gas money. "He's just some hockey player. You know how they all are. Arrogant. Stupid."
"Toothless," she added.
"He wasn't toothless," I blurted before I could stop myself. "Look, it's not a big deal."
"Uh huh."
The waitress came back, dropped off my coffee and the eggs at the same time. Her smile was still fixed in place, but her eyes looked tired underneath it. I wondered how many hours she'd been on her feet. I wondered if she had another job after this one, or a class to get to, or just an empty apartment where she could finally stop performing.
I frowned at the toast. It was slathered in butter. I plucked it from the plate and set it aside because I was not going to fuck up my macros that badly. The latte was enough of an indulgence.
"Your mom called the business line," Natalia said.
My fork stopped.
How much? That was always the question. How much money, how many hours, how far would I have to drive this time? What mess had she made that she needed me to clean up?
"What did she want?"
"Wouldn't say. She said she'd call back." Natalia watched me. "I can deal with her. Tell her you're slammed."
"No." If I let Natalia handle it, my mother would escalate. She always escalated when she couldn't reach me directly. Better to control the damage myself. "I've got it."
"You sure?"
"I said I've got it."
She held up her hands.
I didn't pay her enough to deal with my mother. I didn't pay her enough to deal with me. That she stayed anyway was something I tried not to think about too hard.
The child was still crying. The man at the counter had given up, stalking out with his wrong-milk coffee and a slam of the door. The waitress passed by again, still smiling that empty smile, and I thought about how exhausting it must be to perform pleasantness for strangers all day. At least when I performed, I got scores for it. At least there was a point.
Outside, the morning had turned bright, the sun catching the dust in the air and turning it gold. Somewhere out there, a hockey player with red hair was probably climbing into his rusted truck, probably not thinking about me at all.
