“Both it is.” I handed her my menu.
“Alrighty then. I’ll go put that in for you, darling.”
“Thank you.”
I leaned forward, resting my head on the table that was no doubt covered in sticky syrup and who knew what else. The thought barely phased me. Not when my brain was busy replaying the events of this evening in 4k resolution and surround sound.
This was not how tonight was supposed to go.
This was not how mylifewas supposed to go.
The bell above the front door chimed, and I looked up, naively hoping that someone—anyone—had come after me. Erica, maybe? My sorority sister and former roommate. I’d held her hair back on several occasions over the years and was the maid of honor at her wedding, so I didn’t think I was asking for the impossible. Or maybe Jesse, whom I'd met during the Junior Miss pageantry circuit over a decade ago. We’d lost touch, but that didn’t stop her from calling to ask for a personal loan last year after her divorce.
That’s what friends are for, right?
Much to my unsurprise, it was not one of my bridesmaids entering the Waffle House, but instead, a grizzled man in tattered clothing that looked like they hadn’t seen a wash in weeks.
“Hiya, Jeff. Coffee?” Trixie called over her shoulder, coffee pot already in hand.
“Thanks, Trix.”
The man set his oversized backpack down beside the counter and began fishing through his pockets for change.
Geez, Louise. Here I was, inner monologuing about my failed engagement and lack of friends in a four-hundred-dollar outfit, and meanwhile Jeff was literally counting coins to pay for his coffee.
What an asshole.
Me, not Jeff. I was the asshole.
I swiped a wayward curl away from my eyes. It was hard to tell what had deflated more, my hair or my ego. Reality was a bitter pill to swallow, and as any of my ex-boyfriends would unabashedly share—all two of them—I had never been much good at swallowing.
The harsh reality was this: never in my twenty-seven years had I struggled.
Not really, at least. Not in the ways that most people struggled.
From my prestigious, private school education to summers spent abroad and extracurriculars, like sailing and show jumping, it was safe to say that my upbringing wasn’t that of the typical American teenager. However, I was ashamed to say that it took far too long for me to one, realize that, and two, recognize how uncomfortable that made me feel. To know that some girls were selling door-to-door magazines to fund their scholarship dreams, while I read magazines by our backyard pool was enlightening, to say the least. Call it naivete or ignorance, but that was all I'd known.
The purse, however, came with strings. And unfortunately, those strings had been used to puppet me for years.
Even now, as a fully grown, twenty-seven-year-old woman, I was living in a townhome south of Broad Street my parents had bought for me and Walden. I was driving a gas-guzzling Range Rover they had given me, regardless of the fact that I wasn’t comfortable driving an SUV. I was marrying a man they might as well have picked out of a catalog calledSons of Charleston’s Most Affluential Families Monthly.
And I had let it all happen. I had let them dictate my life.
Well, not anymore.
My phone vibrated across the table, sending a wave of shivers down my spine. Walden had called nearly thirty times in the span of an hour before I'd blocked and deleted his number. But that didn’t mean anything. He could have just as easily borrowed a phone to use. Maybe from the woman he’d been fucking inourbed. Then again, better him than my parents. To say I was dreading that call would be an understatement.
I flipped my cell over, heaving a sigh of relief when I saw my sister’s name instead.
“Clarke, where are you?” Viv shouted through the phone before I could even get out a greeting.
“Oh, you know.” I paused just as Trixie set down the tray of dishes on my table. The sugary sweet aroma had my toes curling better than any orgasm I’d had—or pretended to have—with Walden during our five-year relationship. “Eating waffles.”
“Are you kidding me? Waffles?”
“And hashbrowns,” I said around a mouthful of carb-loaded goodness. “Mm, so good.”
“I just got off the phone with Mama.”
