As I crossed the street, something tugged at me, not physically, but there was a pull in my chest that made me turn right. There, on the corner, stood a diner, its neon sign flickering the name,Rosie’s. The windows were fogged with condensation, and I could see the blurred shapes of people moving inside.
My mind flashed with images, each one spiking a white-hot lance of pain in my head that made me stagger. I gripped the edge of the brick wall to steady myself, my vision swimming. The pill I’d taken earlier wasn’t working. Nothing was working. Ineeded to sit down, and just maybe, have a real breakfast. I can’t state the last time I’d had one of those.
Rosie’s looked like every other greasy diner in the city, but the moment I stepped inside, I was hit with a wave of deja vu that was almost violent in its familiarity. The air was scented with burnt coffee and fryer oil, and the walls were the same shade of faded mustard I remembered from somewhere deep in my bones.
Booths lined two sides under the window, all of them patched with duct tape. The counter was crowded with regulars, old heads mostly, nursing bottomless mugs and watching the news on the television hanging on the back wall.
At the door, a young woman with copper skin, tiny red freckles, and a smile that was too genuine for this hour greeted me.
“Just you?” she asked as she grabbed a menu.
I nodded, my eyes slowly perusing the room. A booth near the far wall, half in shadow, called to me. There was something about its angle and the way it dipped out of sight from the rest of the patrons that pulled me in its direction.
“Can I sit there?” I pointed.
The hostess grinned, flashing a gold tooth. “You sure can,” she said, leading me over.
Once at the booth, I slid in before she could set down the menu, all but hiding behind the skinny laminate table. She set the menu, a mug, and a paper-wrapped set of utensils in front of me.
“Someone will be over to take your order in a moment. Can I get you something to drink?”
“I’ll have a coffee, three splashes of cream, extra sweet,” I replied, and she set off to grab my drink.
I looked at my hands, then chewed-up cuticles, and flexed my fingers as I tried to focus on my heartbeat instead of the static in my skull.
“Here’s your coffee.” The hostess was back faster than I anticipated.
“Thank you.” I grabbed the warm mug from her hands and flashed her a polite smile.
She disappeared back toward the kitchen, and I wrapped both hands around the mug, letting the warmth seep into my palms. The coffee smelled like it had been sitting since yesterday, but I didn’t care. I needed something to hold onto, something real and present.
I was halfway through my first sip when the hairs on the back of my neck began to rise. Setting my mug down, searching for whoever was watching me, and that was when I noticed Booda. He sat three booths down, on the opposite side of the diner, partially obscured by a support column, and his attention was fixed on me.
He hadn’t moved or done anything but sit there, but somehow his presence still found me. It crept in, slow and sure, slipping past every wall I had put up and settling into the parts of me that remembered him best. My fingers tightened around the mug without me meaning for them to, and my breath caught, just for a second.
It didn’t matter how much space sat between us or how hard I tried to shift my focus to anything else. He was there. Not across the diner, not in another booth, but right here with me, pressing in on my thoughts, and pulling at parts of me that I wanted to keep hidden.
And that was the problem.
I held his stare for a second, then looked back down at my coffee, dismissing him without a word. Hopefully, he got the hint, because I didn’t want, nor did I need, him thinking Iwanted him in my face. I’d had enough of his bullshit yesterday, and after the night I had, I wasn’t in the mood.
For a second, it seemed like he understood. Then he slid into the seat across from me without checking to see if I wanted to be bothered.
I exhaled through my nose and set my mug down. “Sit somewhere else. I’m not doing this with you right now.”
Booda leaned back in the booth, taking his time looking at me. “You good?”
“I was before you came over here.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t look good,” he replied, his dark, assessing eyes taking in every detail of my face. “You look stressed. When’s the last time you slept for more than two hours?”
I wiped my palms on my pants legs and found something else to look at other than his face. “That’s not your concern.”
“Everything about you is my concern,” he said so matter-of-factly that I pictured myself punching him in his face. “What’s bothering you? Let me know so I can handle that shit.”
“Maybe it’s the company I’m keeping.” I stared him down, but even as I spoke, the distance between us felt like a chasm I didn’t want to cross.
I was angry, yes, but beneath that was a desire to bridge that gap.
