Page 8 of Love & Rockets

“Deal,” she replied with a brisk nod. “Now you boys behave. I don’t want to have to get the manager out here to keep y’all in line.”

Turning on her heel, she let their guffaws carry her through the dining room. They’d opened the doors at eleven on the dot. Barely thirty minutes had passed and already they had only two tables open. By the time she made it to the kitchen to check on her orders, she’d drained the pitcher of tea she’d been carrying.

“Order’s up, Boopsie.”

Darla chose to ignore the nickname as she ignored Zelda Jo’s thousands of other foibles. Life was easier that way. The other waitress had seniority by about six months and she never let Darla forget it. She was also Bubba’s perma-fiancée.

If Darla’s mama had ever had the pleasure of encountering Zelda Jo, she would have proclaimed her to be brass with no polish. She colored her hair a nearly blinding white blond. Looking at the super-teased cloud of fluff actually hurt when the harsh fluorescents caught it at right angle. The glare was almost enough to distract a person from the feathered hairdo popular in the early nineteen-eighties. She also wore her tops cut low to show off her gravity-defying cleavage, and heels that made nosebleeds a credible threat. Every day, Zelda Jo chewed a bright pink wad of bubble gum, and she smacked it when she talked.

She also had nicknames for almost every person to ever cross the threshold of The Pit.

Celebrity nicknames, in most cases, because Zelda Jo had a serious jones for everything and everyone famous. Didn’t matter much to her how they were known—politics, movies, television, and even cartoons. There was no one and nothing off-limits. And, Zelda Jo wasn’t happy until she assigned each person a famous name to go with their face.

Darla’s changed in accordance with her hairstyle. When she gave in to the urge to grow her unruly curls out a bit, Zelda Jo called her Snow White. The unfortunate wedge cut she’d attempted when Grace was a baby led to a brief stint of being called Demi. Then, she made the mistake of falling in love with a slightly modified pixie cut, and the die was cast. For the past five years, Zelda Jo refused to refer to her by any name other than Betty Boop. Or one of the thousands of variations she cooked up.

Though more than a little annoying, Zelda Jo’s name game was harmless. Everyone got one. Well, everyone except Jake’s little brother, Brian Dalton. He’d actually gone off to Hollywood and become a star of sorts, so Brian simply got to be Brian.

Most of the time, the names she picked for people were pretty flattering. Hell, she called Bubba ‘Clooney’. The only resemblance Darla could find between the Hollywood heartthrob and Mobile’s premiere purveyor of heart failure were a full head of hair with a dash more salt than pepper. True, the men were about the same age. But George was fit, handsome, and breathtakingly urbane while Bubba… Well, Bubba looked a lot like you’d expect a man called Bubba to look. Soft. Scruffy. And, more often than not, covered in the rich red barbecue sauce.

At first, the two of them grated like cheap cutlery on bone china. But little by little, Darla had fit together bits and pieces of a past that wasn’t pretty. The more she learned, the easier it became to see how Bubba might look like George to someone who’d been through some of the things Zelda Jo had survived.

The man himself smiled as he tossed slices of thick, spongy white bread into the baskets arrayed on the butcher block counter like he was dealing cards for a hand of poker. “There you go, D.”

“Thanks, B,” she said. She checked the tickets and slid the tray from the end of the counter. “Your daddy said he wants brisket.”

“There’s a shocker,” Bubba muttered. Without missing a beat, he pulled down four more paper-lined baskets and began scooping up sides of potato salad, slaw, and baked beans. “Tell him mama said chicken or starve.”

“You tell him. I can’t go over there. He threatened to sue me for sexual harassment,” she called over her shoulder as she paused to add a handful of individually packaged wet-wipes to her tray.

“One of these days, he’ll take you for all you’re worth.”

Darla laughed at the notion. “Seems like a lot of trouble for a buck-seventy-five.”

“Don’t you worry, Betty baby,” Zelda crooned as she sashayed back into the kitchen with her empty tray. “John-John is here and he asked for one of your tables. You’ll be rollin’ in the dough pretty soon. But don’t forget who gave him up for you.”

Ignoring the ridiculous nickname, Darla rolled her eyes as she hoisted the heavy tray to her shoulder. “As if you’d let me.”

The second she spotted Jake Dalton sitting alone in her last empty booth, her heart leaped into her throat and swelled like a bullfrog. Regret and nerves did a tango in her tummy. Ducking her head, she busied herself with delivering her orders. She managed to kill another three minutes refilling water glasses and depositing hastily scrawled tickets on several table tops before she forced herself to fill a cup with sweet tea, drop two wedges of lemon on top, and make her way to him.

He had new glasses. This pair was rimless and the lenses cast a faint greenish tint at certain angles. His hair wasn’t as neat as it had been at the gala. The dark waves had runners. Like he’d spent the better part of the morning raking his fingers through them. She liked that hint of messiness. He wasn’t perfect and didn’t bother pretending he was. He didn’t seem to think he was God’s gift to womankind because some putzes down at Upwardly Mobile magazine named him the bay area’s catch of the year.

Jake was Jake. The same nice guy he’d always been. Even in high school, when being genuine seemed to be against some unwritten rule. She had to go over there. She’d still owed him an apology even if Gracie weren’t insisting on one. As much as she hated saying she was sorry to anyone for anything, spewing mea culpas to a St. Pat’s grad was particularly galling.

From the moment she left her parents’ house, she did her level best to have little to do with the life she’d lived before Gracie came along. Severing ties hadn’t been terribly hard. Most of her so-called friends had stopped talking to her the second she began showing. The rest fell victim to natural attrition. While they were going through sorority rush, she’d been learning how to early-bird rush yard sales in order to get the pick of the baby clothes. The majority of her classmates had moved on to bigger and better things, but they all came home for the holidays, graduations, births, and deaths. And even the most far-flung alums made a point of visiting The Pit.

Over the years, she’d become adept at sidestepping, or outright ignoring, their nosy questions. She looked past the speculative stares and pretended not to notice the whispers stopped whenever she came near. At least, for the most part. There were still a few jerks who could get to her, but she didn’t waste much time worrying about them. They’d been jerks before she’d become a St. Patrick’s pariah.

“Hey.”

Darla flinched as she snapped out of her reverie. Sugar-sticky tea sloshed over the side of the glass and onto her hand. Big brown eyes stared up at her.

“You okay?”

The combination of warmth in his dark eyes and genuine concern evident in his simple question ripped through her pride like a torpedo. “I’m sorry.” The apology burst from her with shocking ease. Plopping the glass down on the table, she slid into the seat across from him without even stopping to blink. “I’m so sorry. I was a complete bitch last night and you didn’t deserve it.”

A tiny furrow appeared between his brows. “I don’t know if I’d say you were a bitch—”

“Oh, I was,” she insisted.

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