Gabriella Holland deserved to die.
There was a ninety-nine point nine percent chance I was going to kill someone in this diner this sunny, unassuming afternoon.
The teenager with the yellow Drew hoodie, colorful braces, and stoned expression deliberately dropped his fork under the table of the red vinyl booth he occupied.
“Oops,” he drawled wryly. “Clumsy me. Are you gonna pick that up, or what?”
He flashed me a grin full of metal and waffle chunks. His three friends cackled in the background, elbowing each other with meaningful winks.
I stared at him blankly, wondering if I wanted to poison or strangle him. Poison, I decided, was better. Might be a coward’s way to kill, but at least I wouldn’t have to risk a broken nail.
My gelled, pointy, Cardi-B-style nail art was precious to me.
His neck, decidedly, was not.
“Don’t you have hands?” I popped my pink gum in his face, batting my fake eyelashes, playing the part this town gave me, of the airheaded bimbo with the big blonde hair who was barely literate and destined to serve them burgers for eternity.
“I do, and I’d love to show you what they’re capable of.”
His friends howled, some of them rolling into a coughing fit, clapping and enjoying the show. I felt Jerry, my boss, glaring at me from across the counter while wiping it furiously with a dishcloth approximately the same age as me.
His gaze told me not to “accidentally” spit my gum into their fountain soda (Tim Trapp had it coming. He’d insinuated I should become a hooker to put my son through college). Apparently, we couldn’t afford the legal fee nor the problematic reputation.
Jerry was the owner of Jerry & Sons. The only problem with this wonderful name was that there were no sons.
I mean, there were.
They were alive and everything. They were just lazy and burned their unearned paychecks on women, gambling, alcohol, and pyramid schemes. Exactly in that order.
I knew, because they were supposed to work shifts here, and yet, most of the time, it was just me.
“Gotta problem, Turner?” Jerry chewed on tobacco. The leaves gave his teeth a strange hue of urine-yellow. He eyed me meaningfully from across the counter.
Dang it.
I needed to bite the bullet and just do it.
But I hated horny teenagers who only came in to check what was under my dress.
Jerry’s waitresses (or: me. I was the only waitress here) wore pretty skimpy dresses because he said it got them (again: me) better tips. It did not. Needless to say, wearing the uniform was a must. White and pink striped, and shorter than a bull’s fuse.
Since I was pretty tall for a woman, half my butt was on full display whenever I bent down in this outfit. I could always squat, but then I ran the risk of showing something even more demure than my tuchus.
“Well?” Yellow-hoodied boy slammed his fist against the table, making utensils clatter and plates full of hot, fluffy waffles fly an inch in the air. “Am I going to have to repeat myself? We all know why you’re wearing that dress, and it ain’t because you like the breeze.”
Jerry & Sons was the kind of small-town diner you saw in the movies and thought to yourself, there’s no way a crap-hole like this truly exists.
Checkered black-and-white linoleum flooring that had seen better days—probably in the eighteenth century. Tattered red vinyl booths. A jukebox that randomly coughed up “All Summer Long” by Kid Rock entirely unprovoked.
And Jerry’s claim to fame—a wall laden with pictures of him hugging celebrities who’d made a pit stop in our town (namely, two professional baseball players who got lost driving into Winston-Salem and a backup dancer for Madonna who did come here intentionally, but only to say goodbye to her dying grandmother, and looked every inch of a woman who had just said goodbye to a loved one).
The food was questionable at best and dangerous at worst, depending on whether our cook, Coulter, was in the mood to wash the veggies and poultry (together) before preparing them. He was truly a great guy, but I’d rather eat crushed glass than anything his hands touched.
Still, the place was full to the brim with teens sucking on milkshakes, ladies enjoying their refreshments after a shopping spree on Main Street, and families grabbing an early dinner.
What Jerry & Sons lacked in style and taste, it made up for by simply existing: it was one of the very few eateries around.
Fairhope was a town so small you could only find it with a microscope, a map, and a lot of effort. Your-worst-ex’s-dick small. And a real time capsule, too.