Marlene leaves us with promises of coffee and pie later, and Lark puts the menu down.
“You know everyone.”
“Comes with living here.”
“I hate that.”
“You’ll survive.”
“That seems to be your favorite phrase.”
“No,” I say. “That’s my mother’s.”
Her gaze drops to the table, then drifts back to the menu she already set down.
I know that look now. The way certain subjects shift something in her before she can hide it. I don’t push.
Instead, I ask, “What are you getting?”
She glances back up. “Whatever doesn’t require me to make a decision.”
“That bad, huh?”
“I’ve made about three hundred decisions today. You can pick.”
I lean back against the booth and study her for a second.
The diner light is kinder than daylight. It softens the tiredness around her eyes, catches the damp shine of her lower lip where she’s worrying it lightly between her teeth. She’s watching me now, waiting to see if I’ll joke or press or pick at the edges of the request.
“I’m ordering you a burger,” I say.
She blinks. “You sound very sure.”
“You need actual food.”
“That’s not a medical diagnosis.”
“It is tonight.”
“And if I wanted pancakes.”
“Then you should’ve answered faster.”
Her mouth curves. There it is again. Small. Fleeting. Enough.
“Bossy,” she says.
“Efficient.”
“Control issues.”
“Still true.”
Marlene comes back with coffee and a notepad, and I order before Lark can change her mind—two burgers, fries, onion rings in the middle because I know Beckett’s right about one thing and life’s better when fried food is shared, and a slice of pie to-go, which gets me a sharp look from Marlene and no comment from Lark beyond the faintest shift in her expression.
Once the menus are gone, the table feels smaller. The booth does too.
There’s something about a diner that strips pretension out of a conversation before it starts. Maybe it’s the light. The coffee. The fact that no one can posture properly with a paper placemat under their elbows and ketchup two inches from their hand.
