Page 2 of Hello Handsome
Another stroke of gratitude passed through me for my friend. He’d made this as easy on me as he could.
Still, when we walked inside, I caught the pitying looks of the few people in the diner. An older couple sipping coffee in a booth near the entrance. The guy who managed the diner leaning against the counter up front. Even the haggard, eternally single farmer sitting at a table near the back gave me a sad smile before quickly averting his eyes.
Ignoring them, Jack led the way, sliding into a swivel chair at the counter near the coffee pot, and I sat next to him.
A waitress came from the back, carrying a swaying stack of Styrofoam cups. I could just see her face through the parting stacks—wide brown eyes, dark brown hair, and dark golden skin.
“Oh no, oh no,” she whined, moving to stop the swaying but overcorrecting and hurrying to move the other way.
Instinct took over and I got up from my chair, rushing around the counter to help her steady the stacks. I made it there just in time. “Here you go,” I said, taking one long pile of cups from her. She grabbed the other one and stepped back.
“Thank you!” she said. Then she glanced toward the register where the guy was back to leaning his head on his hand as he flipped through a magazine. She lowered her voice and added, “My boss would have killed me if we had to throw all these cups away.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” I whispered back as I set the stack on the counter by the coffee pot.
She gave me a grateful smile that squinted her eyes and made the apples of her cheeks rise. It felt good to have someone smiling at me when it felt like all I’d done lately was screw things up.
Once her stack was set down, she held out her hand and said, “I’m Agatha.”
I shook her hand. “Gray.”
Agatha
The cute, older cowboy with the sad eyes came in a couple more times that week and ordered the same thing—a burger, fries, and a glass of iced tea. His outfit was always the same, too—jeans, a T-shirt, and a plain gold wedding band on his left hand. And even though he always sat at the counter, he didn’t hit on me or insist on telling me his life story like some of the regulars did.
In fact, the one time a guy got too pushy asking for my number, Gray cut in and told the guy he could have Gray’s number instead.
That’s when I realized it was the first time a man had made me feel safe without expecting anything in return.
My stepdad treated me like a piece of gum stuck under his shoe until the day he died. My ex acted like I was keeping him from his dreams. Guys in the diner just saw me as someone to help them pass the time.
But not Gray.
At least not yet.
I could tell there was something going on in his personal life, but we didn’t talk about it. Just like we didn’t talk about how my deadbeat ex said he was going to grab diapers and hadn’t beenback in a month. Or that I now had to work fifty hours a week at the diner to make it as a nineteen-year-old single mom with my two babies.
Instead, we talked about the cold winter weather. The diner shifting from Folgers brand coffee to Maxwell House. Who was better, Garth Brooks or Tim McGraw. (Gray said Garth Brooks, but he was wrong. Tim McGraw sang about love and life like a man whounderstood. But I told Gray we could still be friends even with his taste in music.)
Friday afternoon, when Gray left the diner, the cook went outside for one of his smoke breaks. I brought the dishes to the dishwasher and wiped down the counter with a cold, soapy rag. Owen, the owner’s twenty-five-year-old son with pale, freckled skin and an eternally bored expression, got up from his seat at the register and said, “Need some lemons cut?”
I eyed him skeptically. Last time he’d gotten up from that seat, a pretty girl had sat down at the counter. But it was just him and me here in the deadest part of the afternoon. “Sure?” I finally said. I wondered what he wanted.
Owen shuffled past me to the small fridge under the counter and pulled out a tray of lemons, then got a cutting board and a knife while I pulled out the big salt container to fill all the shakers. I liked having small tasks like that to keep me busy. Sitting still just made the day drag on.
“Gray’s been coming in a lot,” Owen commented, slicing through a lemon.
“Uh huh.” I pulled a saltshaker over and twisted off the dented silver lid.
“His wife just died, you know.”
My hand stalled, and I nearly spilled the salt. Setting it down so I wouldn’t make a mess, I glanced over at him. “What?” It felt like my heart was frozen, like I was learning more than I had permission to yet desperately wanting to know more.
Owen nodded sadly and dumped a few wedges of lemon into a silver tray. “Cancer. She’d been sick a couple years. You didn’t hear about it?”
I shook my head. Now the sad look in Gray’s eyes and the wedding band made sense. My heart sank for him. He was a good guy—he didn’t deserve a tragedy like that.
Numbly, I finished filling the saltshaker and twisted the lid back on. Then I moved farther down the counter to fill the next one.
