Chapter 1
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Claudia
People always went on at length about how much they hated Mondays, but I loved them. It felt like I was getting a fresh start. Monday was the day to plan everything that would happen during the week, and discover what lay ahead.
Mondays were full of possibilities.
I wanted to believe that I was full of possibilities as well. After a full day of schoolwork, I rushed to my job as a waitress at Ray’s Diner. It was a great place, and the evenings were relatively steady. I still had two more college courses to complete, and in addition to some freelance writing, I worked Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursday nights at the diner. The tips did a lot to supplement my tiny income.
When I started here last year, I didn’t even know if that was going to be possible. How could a girl who was naturally shy show enough personality to earn real tips?
But I dug deep, and drew on the acting classes I had taken in high school. “Claudia the waitress” was the bubbly, sometimes cheeky hit of the diner.
It made everything so much easier. If there was something wrong with an order, I simply made terrible fun of Scotty, our cook, causing him to come to the pass-through and shake his fist at me in mock anger. Customers loved it when we joked around, and would forgive any small mistake. Although now that I’d been working here for almost a year, everything was smooth sailing.
Ray, the owner, was only here during the day when it was busiest, and he trusted me enough now to leave the second I arrived so he could get home to his new baby.
I was actually going to miss the diner when I started a full-time job in October. With six weeks of summer left, I was hoping to find just a bit of excitement.
Dashing into the restaurant with ten minutes to spare, I used the back door to cut through the kitchen to the staff changing area.
I didn’t like customers seeing me when I wasn’t in my uniform. Somehow, the separation between my public self and private one was more defined that way.
Once I was in my blue and white dress with my hair tied up in a ponytail, I stuck my head into the kitchen. Diane, the daytime waitress, waved from the other side of the pass-through.
“Your boyfriends just sat down,” she said with a wink.
She disappeared with two plates of food as Scotty looked over his shoulder from the grill with a raised eyebrow. “Those guys eat like horses. Are they good tippers at least?”
“Yes, absolutely,” I said. “Everything good in here?”
“Yeah – get out there before they start chewing on the seats.”
I tied on my apron, grabbed menus, and headed out to the two huge construction workers in the end booth. They’d been coming in for the past few weeks, and I liked them a lot. They were great, hard-working guys who loved to tease everyone and get them laughing.
As soon as I reached their table, I stepped away with the back of my hand against my forehead. “Good Lord. I knew that my gentleman friends would be coming in to see me today. Must be my psychic powers.”
Taylor laughed loudly, as he always did, making the elderly patrons by the front door turn around and shake their heads in bemusement.
Bob reached over to give him a smack on the arm. “Pipe down. Don’t freak out the normal people.”
“I’m sure you’re not including yourself amongst the normals,” Taylor laughed just as loudly as he had before.
They were both broad-shouldered men, at least six foot one or two, with sandy brown hair. I had pegged them as brothers the first time I served them.
I handed them the plastic laminated menus, not without bopping them both on the heads first. “You boys are going to settle down for me, right?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Taylor said, rolling his eyes.
“We have to settle down today,” Bob said. “And we’ll need another menu. Our boss is on the way.”
“Sure thing.”
I brought them another menu, and three glasses of ice water, smiling to myself as much as to them. It would be fabulous if more of their friends and coworkers could start coming in on my shifts. Great guys, great tippers. Plus, it was nice to have a few more people to talk to. The seniors mostly kept to themselves at the other end, and the late night coffee and laptop crowd wasn’t very chatty.
I’d only moved back to Kingsville last year, and my friends had scattered to the four winds. School, relationships, families moving around…people didn’t tend to stay in one place these days. It was proving hard to build up friendships again, especially when I was naturally a bit timid around new people.