Page 62 of His Best Friend's Baby

“It’s killing me,” Jodi whispered, pulling her ponytail tighter. “I dumped him and he’s getting remarried before I’ve even had a steady boyfriend.”

“You got to stop acting so desperate when we go out,” Nell, another one of the waitresses, said without looking up from her crossword puzzle. “Hey,” she said, turning to Julia. “You should come out with us next weekend.”

“Ah…” Julia laughed. “I have a baby—”

“Don’t we all, sweetie.” Nell sighed. “Get yourself a sitter and kick up your heels. You look like you need it.”

I do need it.

“Thanks.” She smiled at the three women and kept rolling silverware into napkins. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Someone just sat in your section,” Lynn said. “And I tell you what—” she whistled “—if you don’t hurry, I’m going to steal that seat. That is one good-looking man sitting there.”

All three women stood up on their tiptoes to look over the huge bank of coffee machines. Julia found herself on her toes, joining them.

It was Jesse, sitting with his back to the women. But she’d know him anywhere.

“Well, well. Something tells me this isn’t an accident,” Nell teased good-naturedly, watching Julia as she blushed.

“That’s Jesse Filmore,” Jodi said. “You know him?”

Julia nodded, unwilling to go into all the details.

“Oh, man.” Jodi sighed. “I had the biggest crush on him in high school. He was so tough, you know, and quiet.”

“The strong silent types always get you in trouble,” Lynn murmured and bent back to her crossword.

“Amen,” Jodi agreed. They all started talking about where they were going to go out next weekend and that was the end of the Jesse conversation.

Julia wondered if the hatred Jesse felt for this town wasn’t all in his head.

She touched a nervous hand to her hair and headed out to see what Jesse wanted.

“Hi,” she said as she stood at the end of his booth. His shirt was red and his eyes were bright and she wished she could slide into that booth with him.

“Morning,” he said with a smile.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as her heart tripped and hammered in her chest. Just the sight of him, the look of him, made her knees weak.

“Craving for meat loaf.” He tapped the menu.

“For breakfast?”

“Cravings are cravings, Julia. Why fight it?” He smiled again, but then seemed to realize what he’d said. All the things they were fighting exploded around them.

“I, ah…I knew it was your first day. Thought I’d come in. As a friend,” he said, denying her the sweet memory of his heated kisses in his kitchen and the tender press of his lips to hers in his garage.

“Sure,” she finally managed to say. “I mean, right. Friends. You want a meat loaf?” She scribbled nonsense on her pad, sure her hair was on fire she was blushing so much.

“That’ll be great.”

“Potatoes?”

“Mashed. Thanks, Julia.”

“Well, it’s my job,” she said in an attempt to make herself feel better, and less like a fool. She walked away before she did any more damage.

“Ordering,” she hollered back to the guys in the kitchen as she put her guest slip on the circular ticket holder in the window between the servers’ station and the kitchen.

“Got it!” one of the men back there yelled.

She turned around to see Nell, Jodie and Lynn all grinning at her.

“Now I know why you don’t want to go out with us.” Jodi laughed. “It’s got nothing to do with your baby.”

They pressed her for details about Jesse, but she held them off, the whole time secretly pleased that anyone would even care.

The next few days chugged along in a steady rhythm and Julia’s confidence slowly grew. Agnes and Ron weren’t crowding her and seemed to have come to some kind of understanding about her having a job.

And Jesse. Jesse came by the restaurant regularly for meat loaf. When it was slow she sat down with him and had a cup of tea. It was torture, sitting across from him with her hands clenched against the need to stroke his arms, his lips and eyebrows. It hurt to pretend that her feelings had mellowed into friendship when every moment spent with him only sharpened them. As his defenses dropped and his smiles came with more frequency, she knew deep in her bones that she was falling more in love with him every second.

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