Chapter 12
Ava
The week following the wedding went slowly. Every day, I spent an hour or so with Tucker, looking at pictures and videos. Then, an hour with Vinnie, trying to figure out my camera and photo software.
But being with Harry was when I felt the safest. I knew he was ignoring his restaurant for me, so when another boring week had passed, I asked him to let me work there so I could do something with myself.
Big Harry’s turned out to feel more like home to me than the blue house. It smelled right, like fried food and beer. It was busy, and I liked seeing people for only a short while. With the variety of experiences, accents, and personalities in the diner, I was learning fast.
But today, I had trouble.
Big Harry told me to try to handle it, and he’d step in if he was needed. I liked that. He trusted me to figure things out, unlike Vinnie and Tucker and my dad, who all acted like I was made of glass.
I closed the cash drawer with a bump of my hip, dodged a bar back who was refilling the ice trough, and steeled myself to confront the four middle-aged men laughing at a table near the jukebox. The song playing was “All My Exes Live in Texas,” which was probably their doing.
I could totally believe they were up to their eyeballs in exes.
“You forgot one of the tickets,” I told them, slamming their pile of cash and printouts onto the middle of the table. “You gotta pay all four.”
A man with a bushy beard sat back in his seat, revealing a huge belly with the words, “My kid beat up your honor student,” stretched over it on a faded T-shirt.
Classy.
He sniffed before saying, “Now, little lady, it’s not our fault if we asked for three checks, and you brought four. We paid the three we said we would.”
They had asked for three, with two of them on one ticket. And I had messed it up. But still, I wasn’t born yesterday. Not quite.
“So, obviously you pay two of them together. Where is the unpaid check?” I stood firm, aiming the fiercest stare I could manage.
Maybe I’d seen these scumbags before in my life, maybe I hadn’t. They could have been regulars from way back.
But this crew hadn’t been in Big Harry’s Diner since my memory reset. I had too little rattling around in my head to miss that.
I also had deep abiding knowledge of every episode of Schitt’s Creek I’d seen in the last week. That and Harry’s battle documentaries were the only TV shows I’d watched so far, so I had room to store all the details.
Including David Rose’s stare of doom.
Which now was mine.
Another man snorted. “Seems like it got lost, sugar pie. Guess you’ll have to take it out of your tip.”
As if the paltry three dollars extra they’d thrown in would cover the double chicken-fried steak and two beers.
“I’ll reprint it, then,” I said.
“We’re on our way out,” the first man said, standing up to hitch his jeans back into place. “Gotta get back to that demo job.” He shoved a yellow hard hat on his head to cover his bald spot.
The other men followed suit in a squeal of table legs on the concrete floor.
I was not getting shorted. Not today. Time to call in my backup.
“Harry!” I called. “We got walkers!”
The first time I heard the term, I thought my coworker literally meant people who could walk. But a couple of days into waiting tables here, Big Harry explained it meant someone who was trying to walk the check, or leave without paying.
Maybe the ground didn’t exactly shake as Big Harry lumbered out of his office beyond the bar, but I bet it could have if he’d stomped much harder.
Big Harry had owned this diner for thirty years, right in this spot on South First, and nobody messed with him. He’d once tossed an entire football team out on their butts when they’d gotten too friendly with one of his servers.
My coworkers loved telling me all the Harry stories I’d forgotten.
“Stop right there, or I’ll break a leg on each of ya,” he bellowed at the men, who were halfway to the door.
They glanced over their shoulders. The last two sped up, but the first one stopped, and they smashed together like the accordion a man had brought in on my first day when he’d played a few songs for tips. Harry let people do that sometimes, particularly if they seemed down on their luck.
Joseph, one of the other servers, raced to the door and locked the deadbolt that used a key on both sides.
No way out.
The lunch crowd quieted. Most of them were regulars and enjoyed a good Harry show. A couple of them hid smiles behind their hands.
I waited by the table, my fists on my hips. “It was another fourteen dollars, if memory serves.” My memory didn’t serve me whatsoever, but I knew my numbers.
The man in the honor student T-shirt fished out his wallet and flung a twenty-dollar bill in my direction. It fluttered through the air, landing on another table. A young guy, all red hair and freckles, picked it up and passed it to a woman at the next table, and she handed it to me.
Joseph silently returned to the door and unlocked it.
“Out with ya,” Harry roared. “And I don’t need the likes of you in my establishment ever again.”
The one who tossed the twenty looked like he wanted to clap back at that, but he thought better of it and pushed through the door.
When the four of them had taken off down the bright sidewalk awash with afternoon heat, the other customers cheered.
I stuffed the money and tickets in my apron pocket and stacked their plates. The fourth ticket was stuck to the bottom of a cup using congealed gravy as the glue. Jerks.
Harry patted my shoulder. “There’ll always be a few of those. The good people outnumber them all.” He gestured to the other tables. “Don’t worry. You did right fine.”
I piled silverware and napkins onto the plates. “How did I used to handle customers like them? You know, in the time before.”
“A little tougher than today. But when you first arrived, no more than a wee mite of eighteen, you were as skittish as a dragonfly.”
“So, I got better.” I hefted the stack of dishes to take to the back.
“You did.” Harry grinned at me, and all the anxiety in my belly over the encounter evaporated. I knew I should think of my actual dad as my dad, but it was Harry who understood me best.
I pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen.
I also knew from my notes that Tucker was a good one. And he’d been very patient, moving back in with his Gram to only visit each day to try to get me back into my old life.
But sometimes I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
My tattoos warned me that my life was not always safe. I glanced at the one on my wrist for the thousandth time.
Trust only this handwriting.