1
Rachel
“So, where’s my girl?” I said, pouring Laura a cup of coffee.
“Brenna’s with my mom today. She has to have a chance to spoil her every couple of days, or they’ll both have a panic attack,” Laura joked.
“So, you’re saying you knew you were coming in here for coffee and pie and you deliberately left my precious Goddaughter somewhere else?” I asked, hand on my hip.
“Yes. You’re stuck with just me.”
“You? I’ve been putting up with you for thirty years. She’s new and cute. Step aside,” I teased.
“You’re saying I lost to a two-year-old?” she said.
“She’s two and a half. Jeez, you’d think you’d know that since you gave birth to her,” I said.
“I do know that. And it’s not weird AT ALL that you can tell me how many months old she is at any given time.”
“Thirty-one months. And six days,” I said with a grin.
“Seriously?”
“I don’t know about the six days. I just tacked that on to freak you out. I’m not obsessed. She’s just incredibly cute.”
“Yeah, you say that because she didn’t wake you at one in the morning because she wanted juice. And Mickey Mouse on TV. It isn’t so damn cute when you’ve got dark circles under your eyes that could double as Halloween makeup,” Laura sighed.
“You’re gorgeous, shut up. And I don’t think Brody has a problem with your dark circles. Since he always looks like he wants to jump you.”
“He does always want to jump me. But that’s men. They’re not picky,” she laughed.
“Trust me, hon, Brody was the pickiest of the lot. Nobody ever thought he’d get married again after his first wife died.”
“Then I came back to town with my unique sex appeal,” Laura joked with a goofy grin.
“You two are so adorable I could gag.”
“Speaking of gagging, who the fuck made this banana cream pie, ‘cause I know it wasn’t you.”
“Hugh. The old man goes through spurts of thinking he could run this place without me, even though I’ve made all the pies and managed the joint since high school. So he tried his hand at baking.”
“It’s nasty. I’m gonna go throw it at him. He will lose his entire customer base if he keeps serving whatever this is—soap and slime?”
“Once he sees all the leftover unsold banana cream—”
“Do not call it that. It’s an insult to bananas. You could’ve warned me when I ordered it, you know,” she said.
“What fun is that? If you’d have brought Brenna in to see me, I never would’ve let you get it, because you might’ve given her a bite.”
“Good to know where I rate these days.”
“Yep. What do you want instead?”
“Cherry. I need a true classic to cleanse my palate. You did make the cherry yourself, right?”
“Yes.”
“Just checking. I wouldn’t put it past you to keep bringing me shitty Hugh pie without comment just to watch me gag.”
“He won’t spring for live entertainment, so I do what I can to pass the time, what can I say?”
“When are you gonna buy this place? I mean he can’t hang on forever. He’s gotta be seventy,” she said.
“He told me five years ago that he’ll quit when he’s seventy-two. That’s a little over a year from now, and I’ve been budgeting and saving to have the down payment scraped together by that time. It’ll be close. I had to dip into my savings when my furnace went out last year. That set me back four thousand dollars, which is a shit ton of money.”
“Yeah, it is. I would’ve just started busting up furniture and burning it for warmth.”
“Yeah, don’t ever let your brother hear you say that. He’s like Mr. Fire Safety.”
“He gets it from our dad. Third generation fireman. We didn’t even get to have candles on our birthday cakes because it was ‘too risky.’”
“I remember. You always pretended though. And blew on the cake anyway out of spite. Like, fine, no candle to make a wish on, but I’m gonna spit on this crap anyway.”
“That’s me in a nutshell, babe,” she said with a grin. “Now get me some decent pie.”
I glanced over my shoulder, “Give me a second.”
“You can’t go to the counter because Max just came in? This is so middle school.”
“I want to give them time to sit down. Their booth’s clear. Sadie likes the one in the corner because you can see the daffodils starting to bloom outside the library.”
“So, if someone was in their booth what would you do? They don’t come in every day, do they?” Laura asked.
“No, about once a week, usually Tuesdays,” I said.
“But you don’t pay any attention to him, right? I mean, his comings and goings, where his kid likes to sit and why… it’s not like you’re obsessed or anything.”
“I’m just being a good waitress, attentive to what my customers like.”
“You’d throw some trucker bodily out of the diner if they were in that booth right now. Tell me I’m wrong.”