Prologue #2
"Point taken," he chuckled, and, just as he replied, Pam mercifully broke the quiet between us and waved me over.
"Here you go," she told me, pushing his plate towards me. "I’ll take care of the last couple orders. You should head off."
"No, it’s okay, I’m meant to be on till nine tonight…"
"I’ll be fine," she assured me, waving a hand. "I’m not totally decrepit yet, you know. Go on, get yourself an early night for a change, you’ve been working every day this week..."
I thought about arguing further, but I could tell she had already made her mind up about how this was going to go. And besides, it would give me time to call Danny before he did whatever it was college students did at nine on a Saturday evening.
"Thanks, Pam," I told her, and I glanced back towards the man I had just been serving, wanting to make sure that he had everything before I took off. "You need anything else?"
"All good," he replied, and I could have sworn that the way his gaze rested on me was a little more weighty than I would have cared to admit to. I knew that look, I recognized it at once; the look of a man who had hit the road looking for an adventure, and felt like he might have found one in the form of the woman standing on the other side of the counter from him. But I wasn’t about to be another game someone like him could play, another fantasy they could tease out while they were adventuring. No, I had a life of my own, and I wasn’t about to put it on hold for a man.
Well. Not again.
"You have a good night," I told the man, and I waved at Pam as I grabbed my coat, stepping out of the diner and drawing in a deep breath of fresh air.
See, even after being cooped up all day, there was a part of me that would never get over how good it felt to be here in the stillness and quiet of the town.
These were my favorite parts of the day, when I got a few minutes to myself, outside the demands of customers at the diner and before I had to face up to the mess I had no doubt left behind in my studio apartment when I had left that morning.
Sometimes, it felt like my life was nothing more than getting to work and then getting out, but when I could take a second to breathe deeply and bring myself back down to earth, everything seemed to run a little more smoothly.
I wandered towards the road, glad for the walk home; during the colder months, I would speed back or even call a taxi if I was feeling particularly flush, but right now, I just wanted to check in with Danny.
As I walked home through Whisper Falls, I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed up Danny’s number, lifting it to my ear and listening to it ring a couple of times.
I wasn’t sure if he would answer, if he would have been too busy with studies or his social life, but-
"Hello?"
"Danny," I greeted him, a grin spreading across my face at the sound of his voice. When I heard him talk like that, it took me back to when we had all been living under the same roof together, before he had left for college three years ago. The way he had studied late into the night in his room, when I would sneak past the door coming back in from work and see light spilling from underneath it, the thrill when he opened the acceptance letter from Auburn University and found out that he had been officially accepted. And the bittersweetness of hugging him goodbye at the door on the day he climbed into his beat-up old car and left, holding Mom’s hand as we watched him drive off to the future he deserved so dearly.
"What’s up?" he asked, and I could almost picture him, that curly brown hair flopping everywhere as he slumped back into his desk chair.
"A sister isn’t allowed to check in on her little brother these days without getting the third degree?" I shot back playfully, and he laughed.
"One question isn’t the third degree, Dina."
"Oh, I can make this an interrogation if that’s how you want to go about it," I teased him. "What have you been doing? And who have you been doing it with? And how many hours have you studied this week? And…"
"Hey, hey," he protested. "Slow down, give it to me one at a time..."
"I’m just kidding," I promised him. "But how have you been doing, Danny, really? How are things going? You keeping up with everything?”
"Yeah, pretty much," he replied, and I heard papers shuffling like he was re-arranging something on his desk right in front of him. "It’s been a little tougher this year, but I’m still keeping on top of it. Just about. I actually started this new module recently, the history of brutalist architecture, and it’s really interesting... "
He filled me in as I headed home, and I couldn’t help but smile as I listened to him catch me up on everything he had been working on this semester so far.
He was studying architecture, a dream of his since he was a little boy.
Well, just as soon as he found out what it was, of course.
He had applied to dozens of schools all over the state, but had settled on Auburn University, renowned for its architectural program.
As expensive as it had been, Mom and I had pooled all our resources to make sure that he’d have a chance to experience it.
Even if we couldn’t, that didn’t mean we had to deny him what he so clearly wanted, and I was glad that we had been able to make certain that he’d followed his dreams.
"What about you?” Danny asked, once he had finished up, and I found that the question caught me slightly off-guard.
"Uh," I replied, looking around, as though I might suddenly be reminded of something interesting that I’d been doing since the last time we had talked. "You know, just the usual. Work. It’s really busy here in town at the moment..."
"Oh, yeah, always is at the end of summer," he agreed. "Anything interesting happening?”
"Oh, nothing much," I replied. "You know how it is. Just the same old, same old."
"You should come visit me," he told me, his tone brightening at the thought. "Maybe you and Mom could come up, and I could show you around..."
His voice was so bright with hope, I didn’t have it in me to tell him that the chances of something like that happening were virtually nil.
I couldn’t take the time off work, and even if I had been able to, we wouldn’t have been able to muster the money to get both of us to Alabama and into a hotel for a weekend.
"Yeah, maybe," I agreed noncommittally, hoping that he wouldn’t take me at my word. "So, what were you saying about that class...?”
I turned the conversation back around to something I knew he would be able to fill the time with, and continued on the last twenty minutes or so of my walk, glad to have my little brother for company.
We might be far away from each other geographically right now, but we were still family, and I was beyond proud of him that he had managed to stick it out with the best of the best in that college.
Even if I wished that I’d had a chance to try my luck at something close to it, too.