Page 70 of Ask Your Mom If I'm Real

“When did you have chicken pox?” I asked.

“When I was fifteen,” she said. “Which, they say, is way more awful than getting them when you’re young.”

“I actually had chicken pox last year,” Eliska said. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

“Here ya go,” The waitress came back with the drinks and set them all down onto the table, not bothering to pass them out. That would take too much time, and she had a ton of tables to cover that were all looking at her, wanting her attention. “Your order’s been put in.”

Then she left.

“She seems frustrated,” Lance noted.

“She’s probably worked to the bone because she’s the only waitress here,” Gisela murmured. “Didn’t they have four or five waitresses working last week when we came, Mer?”

“Yeah,” she answered. “But all of them sucked. I didn’t see a single waitress that had a table that looked happy.”

“I actually noticed that myself,” I pointed out. “I even mentioned it to the owner when he came by to check on our table.”

“Wow, you got the owner to talk to you?” Gisela asked. “One time a waitress spilled an entire plate of hot wings into Mer’s lap, then tried to make her pay for them anyway. When she asked to speak to the owner, he’d refused to come out. So we left.”

“I wouldn’t have come back,” I murmured.

“I tried, but everyone else sucks at making hot wings like this place.” She shrugged. “I’ll deal with the bad service if I get my chicken wings cooked the way I like them.”

The dinner went well.

I enjoyed every second of being in Merriam’s presence.

It was completely natural for us to talk like we’d been together for years.

By the end of our dinner, with her face covered in barbeque sauce, I felt like being around Merriam was easy. She didn’t expect anything from me. She didn’t try to hide any of her personal life. She didn’t try to pry into mine without me first bringing it up.

Not to mention, she was sexy as hell.

“I’ll be right back,” she said as she got up. “I’m fairly sure I’m wearing more sauce than I ate.”

I agreed with her.

While she was in the bathroom, I looked up the candy place she’d said her father owned.

Brinkley’s.

I made a notation in my notes on the address, then shoved my phone back into my pocket in time to see her heading back to me with a clean face.

She smiled and took a seat beside me.

“I’m back, Kermit.”

I blinked at her words. “What?”

“Kermit.” She paused. “You know, Jeremiah the Bullfrog? Then it twisted in my brain to frog, then Kermit. And yeah…Kermit.”

I chuckled. “I guess that’s pretty inventive. I’ve never heard that one before.”

“At least it’s not Mia,” she offered up.

“True.” I glanced at Bryson. “Not sure how that came about, because it’s more like Mya and not Meeya, but whatever. Bryson’s an odd duck.”

“He’s a nice odd duck, though,” she said as she watched the four other people at our table talking and laughing about helping old ladies up.

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