They just didn’t fit.
Last, he was realizing all of that brought him right here.
Sitting across a booth.
From Mabel.
Mabel ordering like that with Heidi.
Funny.Cute.Natural.At one with herself.Wearing jeans that did great things to her ass, a peach Henley thermal with a scarf wrapped around her neck, her boots, her silver, her hair down, her makeup minimal.
She’d been through it since birth as well, her story far worse than anything that had hit him, and she found a professional to help her to deal with the worst parts of it, she adjusted and simply kept going.
She wasn’t an imposter.
She was a marvel.
“What?”she whispered, and it was only then he noted how she was watching him.
And it felt like another bullet hit him.
He opened his mouth.
“You.Move out.”
At these words, they both turned their heads to see Kimmy standing there.
“Oh my God,” Mabel breathed with sheer, unadulterated delight.
This might have to do with Mabel being Mabel and Kimmy wearing a Rudolf sweater, its nose glowing with a red light, an antler headband on her head decorated by colored Christmas lights that also turned on (and they were), and earrings that were a fall of old-fashioned, fat, colored lights, and they glowed too.
“Please tell me you’re Kimmy,” Mabel breathed.
“My reputation precedes me, I see,” Kimmy said.“Now get out.You’re gonna sit over there.My butt is too big to share a booth.”
Before Hutch could find some polite way to tell Kimmy to back off, or just go the impolite route, Mabel scrambled out of the booth and headed to his side.
Since obviously Mabel wanted this interaction, with nothing for it, he slid out, she slid in, he slid back in again, and of course, Heidi was there with a water tumbler for Kimmy.
Kimmy didn’t miss a beat.“Tuna melt.Extra tuna.Extra cheesy melt.Curly fries.Dr.Pepper.And a chocolate malt.”
Evidently, Kimmy was having dinner with them.
“Wait, Heidi.Should I get a chocolate malt?”Mabel asked.
“Instead of the apple pie?”Heidi asked back.
“No, in addition to,” Mabel told her.
Hutch had been on the verge of starting a conversation that would change his life, and Mabel’s, and he’d been interrupted by fucking Kimmy.
But still.
He wanted to bust out laughing.
Heidi stretched her lips out in a you’ll-regret-that-choice look without, as a waitress, directly telling a patron not to order more food.
“Okay, I’ll come in tomorrow and get one,” Mabel said.
