Bev brought the pot over and refilled his cup. “Morning, Chief.”
He looked around from his sports page and smiled. “Morning, lovely.”
“Anything good going on in the world?” She checked his cream pitcher and found it near empty, so she refilled that, too.
“Thanks, hon. Sox won last night. They’re starting off strong this year. But otherwise, it’s the usual gloom and doom.”
“Bummer. Get ya anything else? Another jelly stick?”
He chuckled and let go of a side of the paper to pat his nonexistent belly. “Better not. One of those a day is my limit. Man’s gotta watch his figure, y’know.”
She grinned. The front door opened just then, and a middle-aged couple came in. Bev grabbed a fresh ticket pad and passed Sky as she came out from the kitchen. Sky winked at her, and Bev winked back. That was all the greeting they needed. They got each other on a level that transcended words.
~oOo~
Bev and Skylar worked through the lunch rush together, and then Sky clocked out at two. Brooklynn came in at four, excited to get the gig. Except in the summer, dinner was their lightest meal time. They spent the first couple of hours wrapping silverware and filling condiments. When the dinner traffic picked up, Bev took all the tables and let Brooklynn shadow her, so she’d have the basics down by the time Bev clocked out at seven.
It wasn’t the first time that Bruce’s eldest kid had worked in the diner, but it was the first time she’d be waiting tables. She was tall and skinny, and there was no uniform that fit her, so she was slumping around in one that was far too large, from a waitress before Bev’s time. She kept getting the pockets caught on the corner of the counter. But she seemed to be enjoying herself.
Bev wondered how long that would last. She figured by the end of the summer, Brooklynn would not be so sanguine about leaving work each day smelling like a coffee-soaked deep fryer. With burns on her fingers from the heat lamps and bruises on her ass from jerkface summer men who’d left their manners in their city houses.
It was definitely her coworkers who made the job bearable.
By the time she clocked out and changed back into her jeans, t-shirt, and jacket, Bruce was sitting at his desk, looking a little frazzled. Mario was the cook on the clock.
“How’s she doin’, you think?” Bruce asked as Bev was packing up her uniform and Keds.
“Brook? She’s fine. She’ll be fine tonight. It’s not rocket science, as they say. If you made us do diner speak, that’d be one thing, but you’re too cool for that, thank God, so there’s not much to learn. What’d Sheryl have to say about her being here tonight?”
He chuckled. “Oh, I’ll be sleeping on the sofa for a while, but I think I’ll keep all my parts. Speaking of sofas, you better go get yours.”
As if on cue, Mario poked his head in the door. “Bev, Chris is here for you.”
“Cool. Gotta go. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” She kissed Bruce on the cheek and went out to the front, where Chris waited.
Chris Mills owned Cover to Cover Books, a little shop a couple of blocks down Gannet Street from the diner. He was her best friend, had been for more than ten years, and was the reason she’d decided to move to Quiet Cove the summer before. He grinned when she came out to the counter, his scruffy, normally hangdog face brightening considerably.
“You all set for this?”
He made a show of flexing his muscles. “Chris haul,” he grunted. “Chris heft. Chris smash.”
“Chris better not smash. Or get any kind of man grunge on my pretty white sofa.”
He scoffed. “Only a woman would buy a white sofa. And this woman should be nicer to the person who’s hauling and hefting said white sofa for free.”
She punched his arm lightly. “Not free. I bought you beer.”
He made another animal noise. “Beer? Chris happy.”
“Chris easy, you mean. Let’s go.”
~oOo~
Getting the sofa into Chris’s van was no problem. Getting it into the building was no problem. Getting it into the service elevator was no problem. But getting it around the hallway corner and to her door was looking potentially impossible. Bev had expected to be able to stand it on its end and swivel it around the corner, and from there, it was a straight shot to her door. But she had neglected to consider the quite firmly attached stained-glass light fixture hanging sturdily from the ceiling right at the corner.
And the door to the corner unit was right there, too. They’d crashed the sofa into it twice now. Hopefully, the tenant wasn’t home. He scared her. A little. He seemed really intense, from the little she knew.