Page 2 of Chaos

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Eris

“Hi,my name is Eris. I’ll be your serv—”

“You can skip the theatrics.” The words boomed outward from the deep depths of his dark facial hair, with a faint smell of whiskey trailing quickly behind them. There was a mouth underneath all of that beard, I was certain, but my eyes darted away too fast from him and to the pad in my hand to notice.

I slowly nodded my head and gave him a sideways glare, flipping his mug over and filling it to the brim with coffee. I started to offer him a couple of aspirin instead, or at the very least to fix him a hot totty, but figured by his rudeness he wouldn’t accept either anyway.

“It’s not going to earn you any more money,” he continued his asshole rant, glanced up from beneath his eyebrows and then back to his newly poured coffee. Red lines streaked across the whites of his eyes, a look that was all too familiar to me. He clearly had a reason to his abruptness. He was hungover.

My shoulders simply rose and fell in response. I’d been there. It hadn’t been too long ago, in fact. I didn’t drink daily, but when things seemed a little too intolerable, I did. It took the edge off and helped me keep what sanity I still had.

“I want it black,” he sharply clarified, covering the top with his hand and shaking his head as I pulled a few creamers from my apron.

Most days I would have found the energy to be as rude to him as he was to me, but today I didn’t have it in me. Last night was nightmare after nightmare. After a while, I fought sleep entirely, trying to run from what my subconscious had placed on repeat, but it was useless. Some things couldn’t be forgotten. I wished they could. The mind is a wondrous thing. There are memories you cling to every thread, desperate to remember every detail, and you still lose them. Yet, the most wretched of things seem to seep from your gray matter and intoxicate you. Today I was drunk on nightmares and hate, a bad combination given my line of work. This was especially true when my newest customer seemed to be battling a hangover of his own.

“Would you like a few minutes to look over the menu?” I quickly asked. My words rushed into one another, creating a train wreck of syllables. I realized I had been staring into the coffee I poured and tried to disguise the lost time.

He shook his head. I studied his face—what I could see of it—wondering what led him to drinking so much, his choice last night still apparent on his breath. Not that I really cared. I was just curious.

His brown eyes had tiny golden flecks swimming around in his irises, the type of eyes you could easily get lost in, if they weren’t bloodshot, of course. Even with the red lines, I still wanted to dive into their depth. His nose was narrow and the end was rounded, but not too much. He ran his fingers through his thick beard and scratched his upper lip. He had nice lips. The kind that shouldn’t be hidden by all of that hair, and I liked beards, so that was saying something. They were full, and despite the harsh words that seemed to naturally flow from them, they looked soft and very kissable.

He ran his dirt-stained hands along the exterior of the menu until he had touched all four corners twice and hummed a tune that was oddly familiar. The dirt on his hands made it clear he worked for a living, but his knuckles weren’t cracked open, so he probably wasn’t a mechanic. I watched his fingers long enough to decide they weren’t calloused enough for him to be a construction worker or a rock climber. I wondered what he did that allowed him to appear so handsomely unkempt, something I had thought impossible until now. His eyes flickered to my face, and after a momentary pause, his focus went back to the outside of the menu.

I waited for him to say something. Anything to break the silence. His eyes roamed my face as I took in everything about him. He traced the corners again. With each new point his fingers touched, my heart thundered against my ribcage as his eyes dared my mouth to speak.

Point. Thunder. Dare. Point. Thunder. Dare.

What was happening between us was a mystery to me. I couldn’t decide if I liked it or hated it. I loudly breathed outward, getting frustrated with myself for overthinking the situation as I did most anything.

He faintly smiled and opened the menu. Breaking our staring contest, he closed his eyes and pointed to an item a tad right of the center. Automatically, I knew his finger landed in the pancake section, something most servers wouldn’t know, but I had worked at Dad’s Skillet for six years and the menu hadn’t changed. Except for the occasional special, that was. Even then, the new items were printed on a piece of paper and placed inside the menu. I wasn’t sure I’d ever look at the menus the same after today. Either they would annoy me for the rest of eternity for the time spent staring at someone who would probably stiff me on a tip or I’d welcome the distraction, because even if it was only brief, I forgot what day today was and what significance it held.

When he opened his eyes, he chuckled. “I guess I’m having blueberry pancakes.”

“Blueberry pancakes it is,” I simply said and walked away from the table, stopping at tables five and four, refilling their coffee without speaking to them.

“Sam, we have another odd one at table seven. He’s the reason it took so long to get in here. Sorry,” I apologized, knowing he wouldn’t mention the food was getting cold, but without looking knew his foot was silently tapping on the other side of the counter.

“Sug,” he said, moving a toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. “It’s your tip you’re ruining, not mine.” He winked, curled his tongue around the toothpick to keep it from falling out of his mouth, and then smiled. “’Sides, sometimes, staring at a stranger, it’s good for ya.” His head fell back as his deep, throaty laugh filled the kitchen.

Ray came out of the walk-in cooler, his arms full with heads of lettuce. His face was barely visible, because as usual, he carried too much, not wanting to make more than one trip.

“Sug’s got an admirer at seven, Ray. Whatcha think about that?” Sam said, nearly choking on the words as they left his lips.

“Shew! When’s the wedding?” Ray laughed, kicking the walk-in’s door closed with his foot. One head of lettuce fell out of his arms and rolled across the kitchen floor. No surprise there. He usually dropped something when his arms were full. He wasn’t nearly as well-balanced as he liked for people to believe.

“Stop it, y’all!” I grumbled, setting my order pad down and picking up the plates of food for tables four, five, and six.

“Listen at her. The country is coming out now,” Sam said as he picked the lettuce up and tossed it into the sink, pushing against the handle with his elbow to turn the water on to a steady stream.

“Watch out. Someone might think you’re one of us,” Ray said, sticking out his tongue at me, his brown eyes glistening with humor.

I stopped just shy of the door. “I am one of you. Ain’t that right, Sam?” I said, returning the gesture to Ray, but distorting my face into the ugliest expression possible, wanting to one-up him.

“Sure are,” Sam agreed and Ray shook his head as he finished what Ray had begun by rinsing the lettuce and shaking the excess water back into the sink. A few droplets slung onto Sam’s arm and he eyed Ray, pushing his toothpick between his teeth and tongue, and then went back to prepping dishes.

After dropping off four and five’s food to them, I delivered six’s steak and Cobb salad. Gretchen had six in her section, but she was outside smoking or texting her boyfriend, or whatever she did when she was outside. I wasn’t even sure she smoked. She never smelled like cigarettes when she returned to work. Typically, the customer should have received his salad a good while before he had his steak, but he could have requested they be brought to the table at the same time. I didn’t know, and it really didn’t matter to me either way.

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