Chapter Two #2
“For what?” Charity pressed, her concern wrapping around me tighter than the apron strings on my waist.
“I don’t know.” My throat closed up as the answer slipped away before I could catch it.
Charity stared, searching my face. “Hope, that doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.” I looked away, blinking fast, trying to focus on the candle labels instead of the emptiness gnawing inside.
“Then why?”
“I don’t know, okay?” The words shot out, sharper than I had meant.
A couple of customers glanced over. I shrank, lowering my voice.
“I don’t know why I can’t just say yes. I don’t know why I keep pulling back.
I just... something doesn’t feel right.” My fingers curled tight around a candle, knuckles aching.
“What doesn’t feel right?”
“I don’t know.” My voice, barely a whisper, caught between us.
She sighed, shaking her head, eyes soft but tired. “You’re impossible.”
Maybe I was. Maybe that was the only truth I could hold on to right now.
My diner shift started at two. I changed in the bathroom, trading my farmers’ market clothes for a uniform.
Black pants, white button-up, apron that still had a coffee stain from yesterday that wouldn’t come out no matter how much I scrubbed it.
My feet already hurt from standing all morning at the booth, hawking homemade goods to tourists who mostly just wanted free samples.
But I needed the money. The booth did okay on weekends, but not great.
Never great enough. Waitressing filled the gaps, paid the rent, and kept the lights on.
I clocked in at 2:03, grabbed my order pad, and hit the floor running. The lunch rush was winding down, but there were still enough tables to keep me busy.
I was refilling coffee for a table of truckers—the kind who had been coming here for years, who knew my name and tipped in crumpled singles—when I saw him walk in through the glass door.
Angel.
Tall, broad-shouldered, with blond hair pulled back in a low ponytail that showed off the sharp line of his jaw.
Diamondback cut over a black T-shirt, the leather worn soft at the edges.
He scanned the room with those pale blue eyes, found me across the checkered linoleum, and his face softened into a smile—the kind of smile that made my stomach flip, even though I knew better—as he slid into a booth near the back.
I finished with the truckers, grabbed a menu, and walked over.
“Hey,” he said, his voice warm.
“Hey.”
“Didn’t know you were working today.”
“Last-minute shift.” I set the menu down. “Coffee?”
“Yeah. And we need to talk.”
I froze. “Angel.”
“Hope, please. Just sit with me for a minute.”
I glanced around. The diner was slow. Stacey, the other waitress, caught my eye and nodded. I knew she would cover my tables as I slid into the booth across from him, my hands folded in my lap.
Angel leaned forward across the small table, his eyes searching mine with an intensity that made my chest tighten. “I need to know what’s going on,” he said, his voice low and careful, like he was afraid of spooking me.
“Nothing’s going on,” I replied, wrapping my hands around a coffee cup even though it had long gone cold.
“Bullshit.” His voice was gentle but firm.
The kind of tone that cut through excuses and deflections.
“We’ve been doing this dance for months now.
I ask you out; you say maybe. I text; you respond but keep me at arm’s length.
I try to get close; you pull back like I’ve crossed some invisible line I can’t even see.
I need to know. Is it me? Did I do something wrong?
Because if I did, just tell me and I’ll fix it. ”
“No,” I said quickly, maybe too quickly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then what is it?” He spread his hands on the table between us, palms up, almost as if he were offering me something I couldn’t quite grasp. “Help me understand. Because from where I’m sitting, it feels like you want this, but you’re terrified of it at the same time.”
I didn’t know how to answer. The words stuck in my throat, tangled up with all the reasons I couldn’t say them out loud.
Because he was right. He was absolutely right.
He hadn’t done anything wrong. He had been nothing but kind and patient and interested.
Genuinely interested in who I was, not just who he wanted me to be. The problem wasn’t him.
The problem was me. It had always been me.
“I just—” I started, then stopped. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
“I don’t know why I keep pulling back. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You’re great, Angel. You really are. But something just... doesn’t feel right.”
His jaw tightened. “What doesn’t feel right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hope.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice breaking. “I know that’s not fair to you. I know you deserve better than this. But I can’t explain it. I just... I’m not ready.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes searching mine as if trying to decipher some hidden code written across my face.
Then he leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking slightly under his weight, and ran a hand over his face in a gesture that seemed equal parts exhaustion and resignation. “You’re waiting for something.”
I blinked, caught off guard by the statement. My mind scrambled to catch up with where this conversation had suddenly veered. “What?”
“You’re waiting for something. Someone. I don’t know what, but you are.” He crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw tight. “And until you figure out what that is. Until you stop holding part of yourself back, you’re never going to give me, or anyone else for that matter, a real chance.”
His words hit me like a punch to the chest, knocking the air from my lungs. I wanted to argue, to tell him he was wrong, that he didn’t know what he was talking about. But the protest died on my lips before it could form.
Because he was right. He was absolutely, painfully right.
I was waiting.
I just didn’t know what for. Or maybe I did, somewhere deep down in a place I was too afraid to look.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Angel slowly stood, his chair scraping against the worn linoleum floor as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill.
He tossed it on the table between us with a flick of his wrist, the bill landing right next to my untouched coffee.
“When you figure it out, let me know,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless, his eyes refusing to meet mine.
Then he walked out without another word, without looking back even once.
I sat there alone in the booth, staring at the twenty-dollar bill like it held all the answers I didn’t have.
My chest felt tight, constricted, like someone had wrapped steel bands around my ribcage and was pulling them tighter with each breath.
My eyes were burning, hot and stinging with tears I refused to let fall. Not here, not in public.
Stacey slid into the booth across from me. “You okay?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“He’s right, you know,” she said quietly. “You’re not here. You haven’t been for a while. It’s like you’re waiting for something.”
I looked up at her. “What if I don’t know what I’m waiting for?”
She shrugged. “Then I guess you’ll know it when you see it.”
I drove home later that night in silence, the radio off, the windows down.
The March air was cool and smelled of rain.
That earthy, electric scent that came just before a storm rolled in.
I thought about Angel. About the way he looked at me at the diner, his eyes searching mine for answers I didn’t have.
About Charity’s questions, which had been more pointed than usual, cutting through my carefully constructed deflections like a hot knife through butter.
About Faith’s concern, written all over her face despite her attempts to hide it behind small talk and forced smiles.
About the hollow ache in my chest that wouldn’t go away, no matter how many miles I put between myself and that conversation.
It sat there, heavy and persistent, like a stone I had swallowed that refused to digest.
I was waiting for something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what, but I knew it was out there.
Something I hadn’t found yet. Something that had eluded me despite all my searching, all my wandering through life’s twists and turns.
Something I would recognize when I felt it. It would hit me like a bolt of lightning or maybe wash over me like a warm wave. I would know it instantly, without question or doubt.
I just didn’t know what it was. Not yet, anyway. But I had faith that one day, when the time was right, it would reveal itself to me.