Chasing Shade

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She found herself watching him again, not even realising it, as she wiped down the deserted end of the counter. Everyone was taken care of and she just needed to clean up and pray for no new diners before her shift ended.

He waved her over and Betsey went, half afraid he’d just tell her to stop staring, it’s creepy.

‘Do you need a takeout box?’ she asked.

He waved a hand at his now empty plate – but for fruit – and laughed. ‘Not really.’

‘You were supposed to save some of that, weren’t you?’ She couldn’t help but smile.

‘I was. But I didn’t.’

‘Did you need more coffee?’

‘Sure. And water? And just to say hi.’

The last bit set her body buzzing. Betsey trapped her tongue between her teeth and tried to keep a sharp focus. ‘Hi.’

‘Did you know there’s a dead woodchuck out there on Main Street?’

‘Woodchuck?’ She glanced at Tony. He sighed, waved his spatula and made a placating motion with his hands. All intricate pantomime for ‘sit down, for God’s sake’.

She sat.

Archie smiled at her. It did strange things to her insides all over again.

‘It was actually, I’m fairly certain, a hairpiece. A weave.’

Betsey put her head in her hands and started laughing. ‘Oh, my God. There are way more of those things around here than you’d believe. Bus stop, roads, lawns! I find them all the time at the trailer park.’

‘So this place – what’s it called?’ He pointed outside and actually ate one of the wrinkled grapes off his plate.

‘Turner’s Corner.’

‘Turner’s Corner.’ He nodded. ‘Which is Deep Creek Adjacent. It’s just a place for old weaves to die?’

‘Seems to be.’ She spun a spoon on the table. Round and round and round again just to distract herself from thinking about how nice it was to be sitting here. How good it felt to joke with someone.

‘Is the trailer park far from here?’

‘Not really. About a mile. I usually walk unless someone –’ She cut herself off, realising what she was about to say would sound like a hint. ‘I usually walk.’

‘It’s cold today,’ he said. Then he peeked under the table and she felt her body grow unbearably hot, as if she were being baked from the inside. Yet Betsey didn’t move a muscle because if she did it could be construed as…what? Entrapment? Wooing? Something!

His handsome head came back up and she swallowed hard. It was torture, this flirting stuff. She’d forgotten just how much. ‘You’re wearing stockings.’

‘I have to,’ she said.

‘That’s gotta be cold.’

‘It can be.’ The spoon went round and round and round.

‘I can give you a ride. Since you’re taking me to your place and I’m going to try and become gainfully employed. Is that OK with you?’

‘Yeah. It is.’

Tony banged that bell. She started. There wasn’t an order that Betsey knew of. ‘Be right back,’ she said. She snagged his plate by the edge. ‘All done?’

Archie grabbed the fruit from the edge. Three small orange smiles and the rest of his sad green grapes. ‘Now I am.’

‘You really must be hungry,’ she said and laughed.

Tony had called her up to tell her to beat it early. She hadn’t even bothered giving him perfunctory arguments. She’d simply said her goodbyes, clocked out and grabbed her bag. Tony had then stopped her for one more small thing before she hurried back to Archie’s table. The hurrying part worried her. It meant she was way more interested in this guy than she wanted to admit. And just in a matter of less than an hour.

She didn’t believe in instant attraction. She didn’t believe in much, she realised.

‘Ready?’

Archie looked at his watch. ‘Early.’

‘They took pity. Let me go early since it’s dead. The breakfast–lunch rush was more of a breakfast–lunch trickle today.’

‘What’s that?’ He stood and grabbed his jacket. When he swung it on his Henley rose up just a hair. Just enough for Betsey to catch sight of a small slice of nice flat stomach. Just a touch of dark hair. The treasure trail, her best friend in high school had always called it.

She felt her face turn red again and quickly looked away. Clearly it had been too long for her. She was a sex-starved walking hormone clutching takeout boxes.

‘Food. Tony sent us home with some lunch. I told him I was going to take you to the park and try and make an honest man out of you. Job to work, hovel – I mean employee accommodations – to live in.’

He chuckled. ‘Nice. What’s in there?’

‘Still hungry?’

‘Nope. Just curious.’ He popped the last of his grapes in his mouth and snagged his truck keys off the table. Betsey pulled her coat on.

‘Salisbury steak. First batch for the late lunch rush. It’s the best. Tony is a Salisbury steak master. And mashed potatoes.’

‘Is he a master at those too?’ Archie asked.

When he opened the diner door cold air gushed in and ran right through her. A chill ran up her skirt. Betsey found herself grateful for the ride for more reasons than time alone with the new stranger in town. She shivered and hurried after him. It wasn’t her imagination, she knew, that she sensed all eyes in the diner were on her and Archie.

‘No,’ she gasped when they were finally in the cab of the truck. ‘He’s not a master at those too. He’s a master at reconstituting them from a box.’ She snorted. ‘But he does make the gravy so all’s fair in love and mashed potatoes.’

‘You’ll have to tell me how to get where we’re going,’ he said.

For a split second her brain got cross-wired and she thought he meant where they were going in her already imagined relationship. But then she realised he meant the park and she sighed. ‘Easy. Take a left out of here, follow Main Street, go until you see the sign TCTP.’

‘TCTP?’

‘Turner’s Corner Trailer Park,’ she said.

‘Ah, very original.’

‘It’s our specialty,’ she said with a giggle. ‘But the people who live there call it the Patch.’

‘The Patch. Much better.’

‘You’ll fit right in,’ she said.

‘Will I?’

Betsey reminded herself that she was just helping a nice guy out. Nothing more, nothing less. All this stuff she was feeling was just her having gone way too long without any human companionship.

‘You will,’ she said. ‘I can feel it.’