Page 10 of How to Lose at Love

“Uh-huh.” I get to work unscrewing the salt and pepper shakers so we can top them off.

“Maybe he’ll come out while we’re sitting here,” she says. “I saw him go in last week around the same time, which is odd since they’re only showing black-and-white movies from the forties.” Winnie pulls a face. “Boring.”

“You think everything that doesn’t include hair and makeup and music is boring.”

“Facts.”

We make short work of our mundane task, finishing so we can do actual work as customers begin pouring in for the dinner hour. It’s not a rush but a slow, steady trickle, totally manageable for the three servers who are working this shift.

Winnie watches for the almighty Dallas Colter to reappear. She hasn’t said she’s watching for him, but her interest in the building across the street is a dead giveaway as she wipes down tables and brings customers their food. Fills their water glasses. Brings extra napkins.

All the while, her eyes are gazing outside.

I watch Winnie watching the window, obviously—people-watching is what I do, and my friends are no exception. Plus, she’s fun to observe.

All in all, work is the same as it is the rest of the nights of the week, uneventful because I only have to work the dinner shift and not the night shift, when students come in drunk and hungry after hitting the bars.

Sometimes they’re high.

We get the occasional rowdy crowd, too, and sadly I’m more than adept at kicking people out.

Le sigh.

“Up to anything tonight?” I ask Winnie when it’s time to clock out, punching my card in the machine hanging next to the walk-in refrigerator against the back wall.

“Yeah, Rookie and I are going to a party.” She wraps a scarf around her face, pulling a pair of mittens out of her pockets like it’s winter outside already. “Thirsty Thursday and all that.”

Thirsty Thursday—big night of the week for drinking, if you don’t count Trashed Tuesday, Wasted Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday among them.

“That sounds like fun.”

Actually, it doesn’t, but that’s neither here nor there.

Winnie presses her hands against the exit bar across the back door, ready to push through it to the back alley.

“Want to study tomorrow night?”

“Uh, yeah.” I nod. “I have a quiz Monday in my biology class and I got a D on the last one, so…”

Lucky for me, I only have to take a science class to meet a general core requirement and there are no more needed for my mass comm major.

“It’s a date then.” Winnie hugs me before stepping out into the cold—I’m assuming Rookie is grabbing her at the end of the alley in his beat-up pickup truck, the one they had sex in at the beginning of the semester, in the bed of it.

She’s gone before I can open my mouth again and ask for a ride.

I zip my coat to my chin, ready to hunker down for the walk home, grateful it’s still somewhat light outside. And not snowing. And not negative temperatures.

“Why did I choose a school in the Midwest?” I grumble to myself as I walk through the restaurant to the front door, doing a double take when I see a guy leaning against the building, one leg bent, foot up on the brick, hands in his pockets, bright blue baseball cap on.

He rises to his full height when I pass by, walking in the same direction.

Shit.

Shifting my gaze so I don’t make eye contact, I pull the jacket collar higher to shield my face from the wind.

“Hey.”

I don’t stop. Why didn’t I turn around when I first saw him? Why didn’t I just—

---