Chapter Five
With the last dinner customer gone and only the neighborhood drunks and late shifters expected between now and close, the quiet of the diner settled over Jennifer as she worked. Swiping a damp cloth over the table, her friend Sally finally broke the silence. “I wish you’d stop moping around.”
“I’m not moping. I don’t mope.” Jennifer’s shoulders slumped.
“Say what you want, but it’s been a month and a half since you last saw him, and you’re still walking around here like someone poured salt into your sweet tea.”
Sally had a southern drawl as thick as her midsection, and a spunky personality that made her impossible to ignore. She was also the kind of woman who wasn’t going to put up with any unnecessary droopiness from the likes of one Jennifer Cleary.
“I’m not moping. I’m just thinking.” She picked up the sweetener holder and dumped the packets onto the table. Sorting them by color: yellow, pink, blue, white, she then took her time placing them back into the holder. Pink first, then yellow. Blue, then white. All day she’d nursed a killer headache, and now she had to pee again. It’d only been ten minutes since the last time, though, and Sally kept giving her strange looks. So instead she crossed her legs and focused on sweeteners. Finally she couldn’t hold back. “I just don’t get it!”
“Oh, here we go again.”
“No, really. I don’t know who Rebecca is, but Mark just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would cheat. Do you think I got it all wrong?” She looked hopefully toward her long-time friend.
Sally shook her head and shrugged her shoulders, her curly brown hair bouncing with the movement. “All I know is that you maybe aren’t the best judge of men. Just think about Mitch and everything he did to you. Not to mention you haven’t really dated anyone since him.”
Not that she’d really dated Mitch. “Maybe you’re right. I just thought...I guess I hoped Mark would be different, is all.” Even as she said the words Sally wanted to hear, convincing her heart did not come as easily. She would have done almost anything to get her time with Mark back. Those couple of days had come to mean more than a lifetime of off-and-on dating.
Valentine’s Day hearts hung around the diner. If there’d been a time for Mark to find her, that would have been it. But he hadn’t come. And now, with Cupid long gone, those stupid hearts still swayed back and forth every time the front door opened. Brashly she snatched at one of the hearts, yanking it from the ceiling. The string slipped from her fingers and the heart fluttered before it hit the floor.
If Rebecca wasn’t significant to him, why hadn’t he come to the diner?
Or even just walked up the stairs to her apartment?
“I’m not moping,” she insisted again, yanking the heart up from the floor.
Sally snorted and moved behind the counter. “We might be able to close up early tonight. No one’s been in for at least an hour. What do you think, Albert?”
The cook grunted, but didn’t speak.
Jennifer reset the center of the table she’d been working on. “That would be fine by me. I’m feeling pretty crummy again, anyway.” With her last table washed, she sat down as a wave of nausea moved over her. And she still had to pee. “I think whatever virus I had during the snowstorm is back. I wonder if one of the customers brought it in. How’ve you been feeling?” The storm had passed but left behind frigid temperatures, sometimes dipping into the single digits. But no more snow.
“Oh, I’m fine.” Sally said. “And I’m pretty sure Albert’s been fine, too.”
Jennifer looked over in time to see her friend eye her up and down.
“And I don’t think it was one of our customers that brought you a virus, either. I think you caught something a little more permanent from that Mark fella of yours.”
Jennifer looked at Sally, then over to Albert who’d stopped bustling behind the window, whose blue eyes now drilled intently back at her. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She laughed. “It’s not that. I’m not pregnant. There’s no way I’m pregnant.” But, Lord, she had to pee!
“You seem awful confident for someone who didn’t use a condom. It only takes one time. I ever tell you about my cousin Sylvie...”
“I’m not your cousin, Sally.” Jennifer sat for a moment, dizzy and still nauseated. “And I can’t be pregnant. I know we didn’t use a condom, I just didn’t even think about it. I hadn’t been with anyone since...well, since you know when. And I don’t take the pill because I don’t have sex. I just didn’t think about it.”