“You okay?” Saylor asks, holding the screen door open.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out thicker than I intend, like I’m shouting underwater. “I just haven’t been here in a long time.”
The interior is small—maybe fifteen tables, vinyl booths along the walls, a counter with swivel stools. The lighting is warm and slightly yellow, the kind that makes everyone look like they’re in an old-timey film. There’s a chalkboard menu above the register with items written in colored chalk, and someonehas drawn a surprisingly talented cartoon burger wearing a cowboy hat in the corner.
I scan for the corner booth with the only round table—mine and Whit’s favorite—and it’s open. Of course it is. The universe has a sick sense of humor today.
“That one.” I point. “If you don’t mind.”
Saylor nods toward the “Seat Yourself” sign planted at the hostess station like a scarecrow in an empty field. As I remember it, this sign is code for:I’m out back smoking. Don’t rush me.
The vinyl protests as we slide into the booth. I spot the familiar wobble in the table—the same one I’ve stabilized with folded napkins a hundred times before. My fingers automatically reach for a napkin, folding it precisely. Before I can wedge it under the uneven leg, Saylor’s elbow bumps the table, sending ripples across the surface. He grips the edge and rotates the entire table with surprising force, like a parent trying to launch their kid on a playground carousel. When he presses down, the surface holds firm. I test it with a little shake—nothing. Whatever Saylor did, the wobble’s gone.
Eventually a waitress appears. Right around the time my hunger has devolved into hanger. I haven’t had much of an appetite, but the last thing I ate was a mini Kind bar on Friday morning and the grief distraction has run its course. My stomach is trying to digest itself, and I’m about three minutes away from becoming feral.
The waitress is not the teenager I expected, but a woman around my age with sun-streaked hair and a pen behind her ear. She sets down two waters and a basket of warm rolls with their famous sour-cream dip.
“You guys know what you want, or you need a minute?”
Saylor doesn’t even look at the menu. “Do you have a weird peanut-butter-jelly burger? And then a spicy Hawaiian one?”
The waitress looks over her shoulder and screams toward the kitchen. “I need a Sweet Nut and a Burnin’ Love.” She looks back at Saylor. “Circles or sticks?”
His eyebrows lift. “Sticks?”
“It’s diner talk. Sticks are fries. Circles are the house-made kettle chips,” I say, looking to the waitress who gives me a single, validating nod. I can physically feel the memories. The soft vinyl melding to my ass, the clink and clank of a bustling kitchen. Fryer grease, wood smoke, the sweet undercurrent of homemade ice cream—these smells could transport me back a decade in an instant. Back when everything seemed simpler, when laughter came easier, when aging was something that happened to other people. Back when Whit was still here. Back when I still recognized myself.
“One with circles, one with sticks, and we’ll share? Is that what you and Whitney would do?”
I grin. “Yes. That sounds great.”
It’s such a sweet sentiment, I will never ever tell him how Whitney had an aversion to potatoes of all types. We’d get our burgers without any accompaniment.
“Anything else?”
“A milkshake?” I ask Saylor. “We can share. They are huge. Whatever flavor you want.”
“I get to pick?”
I nod emphatically.Please say chocolate, please say chocolate.
“Vanilla with fudge on top?” he more asks than orders.
Fudge is chocolate. He almost got that right.
“Two cups or two straws?” The waitress’s gaze bounces between me and Saylor, trying to make it make sense.
“Two cups, please,” I say.
“Straws,” Saylor answers at the same time.
She scribbles and disappears, apparently making the final call on that herself. I settle back into the booth and for a moment, I let myself just be here. In this place that Whitney and I claimed as ours during summers that felt infinite.
There are no paper menus at Riptide. Instead, you have to order by squinting at the giant wraparound whiteboard on the far wall of the restaurant. Regulars don’t mind. Tourists hate it. But that’s half the fun. There are so many options, you have to panic-order in a pinch and most often the thing you thought you’d hate, turns out to be a masterpiece. Hence my love affair with the Sweet Nut burger. The menu looks much the same except for the addition of a new section called “TikTok Famous” which is an uncomfortable reminder of inevitable evolution. But the counter. The stools. The wobbles. The bones are all the same, and I needed that today. I needed familiar.
The front door screeches open, as the bells on the door protest their disturbance loudly.
“Saylor!” a voice I vaguely recognize calls out.
