Just for Her

She missed her boyfriend, so she borrowed someone else’s.

You can never tell where a story will come from: a musing, a memory, a dream, or maybe a bit of all three. How much is real here? I’ll never tell. But some of you will have fun guessing!

I was just in the middle of my second week working for Cathy. She’d been so nice to give me a job and a room, I owed her a lot. She’d thought I was a runaway, and I guess I must have looked like one with my little luggage on wheels and a long-bus-ride look about me when I wandered into her diner for an egg and a glass of water.

Even though I was “running away” I couldn’t really be called a runaway. My boyfriend, Wayne, had gone off to college and so I ran from the emptiness. He was my first and only. I missed him like crazy and didn’t have any interest in staying at home to be sad. So I left to “experience life.” Part of the experience was what happens with poor planning, which was why all I could afford was an egg and a glass of water.

I’d spent a long time nursing that glass of water, hours. Eventually after the crowd thinned Cathy had come over and sat in the booth with me and we talked a long time, even after closing. I told her my story and she shared enough of hers to see we weren’t that different. When it had gotten late, she offered dinner if I helped her close the diner. By the end of the evening she’d offered me a job waitressing, a job that came with a room in her home for as long as I would be around.

On that particular day I was the only waitress while Cathy worked the grill. I’d come to recognize a few of the regulars, mostly older men who were interested in the new girl and chatted me up even when the crowd was hopping. But they were nice, tipped me well, and understood when my feet hurt from running around.

A small group of guys and girls came in. Close to my age, they came in raucous and loud but waved too many of the regulars. They took a table by the front window with a view of the bus station cattycorner across the street and a traffic light over the intersection with the road to town.

I brought a tray with four ice waters and set a glass by each one at the table, two guys and two girls. One of the guys caught my attention. He was bigger than Wayne, taller and bulkier. His arms were cut…

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