Monster Diner

Chapter 1

LIZZY

Lizzy was going to jail today. She was going to kill her good-for-nothing boyfriend, Steven.

She kicked the pile of Steven’s delivery boxes sitting in the hall outside their apartment, toppling them over and out of the way of the door.

They were likely purchased with her credit card, which was infuriating in itself.

As was his lack of steady work in months.

She jammed her key into the door, hands shaking, as she glared at the landlord special paint job on her millennial gray door and the fly beneath a glob of paint.

Murder wasn’t on the agenda, because of money—or lack thereof. The job she hated had fired her today. The company was replacing human telephone operators with a convoluted artificial intelligence phone tree. Two years of her life, countless hours of overtime, all to be replaced by a robot.

It was the fact that as she approached her front door, she’d been struck by a wave of lust. Steven was in the mood, and her vagina felt as dry as the Sahara.

But her repulsion had quickly turned to rage, however, when she’d sensed a second person’s lust. Steven wasn’t alone.

He was cheating on her, and she was ready to commit homicide.

She burst into the apartment. The door banged against the wall and knocked loose the one painting she’d nagged Steven for months to hang.

It crashed onto the floor next to the half dozen other thrift store finds he hadn’t hung, glass shattering.

Steven and his lover’s impassioned moans continued uninterrupted, which was somehow even more infuriating.

She hated conflict. It was hard to stay angry when the other person’s anger was amplified inside you, overshadowing your own emotions. But she was blinded by rage.

Her hands shook as she yanked open the bedroom door.

A curvy redhead straddled Steven, who lay on the bed she was financing with his arms folded behind his head.

Of course he was making her do all the work.

His eyes flew open, and the redhead stopped flopping on top of him long enough to look back at her.

“Lizzy, what the fuck?” he shouted.

“That’s what I should be saying!” she shouted back.

The redhead jumped off him and grabbed a blanket to cover herself. Her shock rolled off her in waves, but Lizzy’s attention was focused on her boyfriend, who hadn’t moved or covered up. The only feeling she sensed from him was annoyance. Not even an ounce of shame.

“You’re supposed to be at work,” he said, slouching.

“In what world does that make cheating acceptable?”

“You’re not poly?” the redhead interjected.

“We are?—”

“We are not!” Lizzy shouted over him.

The girl assessed Lizzy, and the swirl of her confusion and their mutual anger thrummed through Lizzy.

Rage pumping through her veins, Lizzy turned and marched into the kitchen.

The dishes she’d asked him to put into the dishwasher this morning were crusting over in the sink and the kitchen knife she’d cut up fruit for her smoothie, sat at the edge of the cutting board on the counter.

Steven’s anger was rising, and the redhead was confused, and it all buzzed inside Lizzy, mixing with her own rage, ready to burst from her like a swarm of bees.

Lizzy reached for the knife, but as she did, there was a snap, or maybe a pop.

And silence.

For the first time in her life, she felt absolutely nothing. Not their feelings, not hers. She was as cold as stone.

“Lizzy, can we talk?” Steven asked, stepping into the kitchen, his eyes darting between her and the knife she’d almost picked up.

He was still naked, his mediocre dick swinging in the wind.

It was as if she were watching the scene from a distance.

Even her murderous rage had dulled to nothing, replaced by cold, calculated rationality.

If she killed him, she’d end up in jail, with a high chance of being sent to a privatized prison, which was enough to walk back her murder plans.

Steven took her silence as permission to speak. “Look, I was going to talk to you about this. You’re never in the mood, and I have needs…”

She let the words linger without response.

“I figured we could open things up…”

Steven was pitching an open relationship after getting caught cheating.

How typical of him, she thought distantly.

But wasn’t this the same slippery slope they’d gone down time after time?

She’d caught him stealing her credit card.

He didn’t ask permission, but begged forgiveness and then it became permission.

He’d quit his job because he hated it, and she’d agreed that they both deserved to do what they loved.

It wasn’t just Steven either. She had a pattern of doing this. Letting others’ emotions eclipse her own. She never thought for herself; she let others’ wants and desires dictate hers.

The redhead slipped out of the bedroom, dressed in some slinky black dress that looked expensive.

Maybe he’d charged it to Lizzy’s card and gifted it to this woman.

Or maybe she was his next sugar mama. Lizzy realized she didn’t really care.

She was seeing him clearly for the first time, her mind no longer clouded by his emotions.

Steven was a mediocre leech who she’d wasted years of her life on because he was a weasel shifter and the first magic person she’d met since moving from Pumpkin Hollow.

She’d stayed with him for the same reason she’d stayed in a dead-end job she hated. Because it felt easier.

“Lizzy, are you going to say something?” Steven asked.

“I’ll come back with a truck later for my stuff.”

She’d collected a vast array of vintage furniture and memorabilia. Steven hated her collection, said it smelled musty and gross. But she loved it. She wouldn’t stay with him or in this shithole apartment. He could have it, but she wasn’t going to lose her stuff.

She strode out the door. She didn’t expect Steven to try and stop her, but she was shocked at what a relief it was walking away.

The only things in that apartment she wanted were her antiques.

She sat in the driver’s seat of her old car and realized she didn’t know where to go next.

She didn’t know anyone in the city—she moved around too often and worked too much overtime to maintain old friendships, and making new ones were rare in your forties…

She contemplated her next move as she stared at the cracked and faded leather steering wheel.

The fuzzy seat cover’s elastic was worn and slid each time she fidgeted in her seat.

She supposed she should call her mom and ask to crash at her place, then store her furniture in her mother’s garage until she got her life together.

But the prospect made her stomach churn.

They’d gone through this before. Lizzy would end a relationship or quit a job, uproot her life, and go back home to reset.

Her mom would lecture her about her wasted potential and the pointless uphill battle of dating past forty.

Maybe her mom was right, and it was time to be single.

Before Lizzy could work up the courage to call her mom, the phone rang and her heart dropped. Steven was going to try and weasel his way back in.

She picked up without looking at the caller ID.

“You’re not convincing me to come back,” she said, deadpan.

The other line was silent for a beat. She’d never known Steven to be stunned into silence.

“How did you know I was going to ask that?” a deep voice rumbled.

Her face flushed with embarrassment as she straightened up in her seat and put on her customer service voice.

“Sorry, I thought… Who am I speaking to?” she chirped.

“Ah. My name is Victor. I don’t know if you remember me. We went to high school together.”

“Victor Shelley?” Her high school friend hadn’t spoken to her in over twenty years.

It was natural to lose contact over the years.

They’d tried keeping up with each other online after she’d moved away from Pumpkin Hollow, but they’d drifted apart.

Even their mutual love of Hero Club couldn’t keep them in contact.

They’d been total opposites in school—he was a hot jock, valedictorian type and she was a nerd who loved English homework and history class.

“Yeah.” He gave a small, self-depreciating laugh.

Lizzy felt as if she were high, or drunk, maybe both. That was the only thing that could explain this truly bizarre day.

“Why are you calling me?” It came out blunt, but she felt too detached to care.

“It’s about your father, Frank. I, uh…” He paused.

“What does Frank Jr. want?” She was instantly suspicious and even more confused. She never heard from Frank outside of a brief ten-minute phone call on her birthdays. And her birthday was months away. Had he tracked down her high school friend as some convoluted attempt to talk to her?

“Well, he’s…ah…dead,” Victor replied.

Lizzy held her breath for a few beats, waiting for him to say just kidding.

“What?” she said.

“Yeah, I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you. It was rather sudden… a heart attack.”

“Thank you for telling me. Is there someone at the hospital I need to talk to?” The numbness threatened to drown her. She should be screaming, crying, but she felt as if she were floating underwater as she focused on what needed to be done. Keep moving.

There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

“You don’t have to worry about that. He didn’t want a funeral, and his will stated he’d be cremated. It’s being handled.”

It was a simple phrase, but hearing it in his deep, soothing voice caused something to pop inside her, and all her feelings flooded in like a dam gate being opened.

“Thank you.” Her voice cracked, and a sob ripped out of her.

She tossed her phone down onto the passenger seat so as not to cry into Victor’s ear, as all the anger and grief burning in her throat erupted from her like lava.

She slammed her hand against the horn, and it gave a meek little beep.

And that led to hysterical laughter rising out of her.

She seemed to swing between all the emotions at once.

Her body couldn’t decide what to feel—anger, grief, frustration.

“I’m here if you want to talk.” The voice from her phone cut through the noise buzzing in her head.

She stared at the phone as if it were a physical threat.

She hated burdening others with her feelings and had assumed he would hang up.

Who was she but practically a stranger? Then, like a faucet being turned off, the numbness came back as she stuffed down her feelings to accommodate Victor, who was guiding her through perhaps one of the worst moments of her life.

He didn’t need to do this; she had no idea why it was him, of all people, breaking the news.

But she was thankful for the friendly voice on the other line.

She took a few calming breaths to compose herself and picked the phone back up.

“Sorry. This is shocking,” Lizzy said.

“Yeah. I was surprised too. He’d been working a ton. No sign anything was wrong…”

A thousand questions buzzed in her mind. But she didn’t want to waste any more of his time.

“Thank you for everything.” She was grateful it was him, someone friendly, instead of some exhausted overworked nurse or someone from the city asking her to pay for an impersonal burial. Her father had never remarried and had no other siblings, and his parents were long gone. All he had was her.

“No need. It’s the least I could do for him…”

There was more. She should probe deeper, but she was so tired.

“Thank you for handling everything, but I should be there,” she said.

“If you’re able to come, there are things to discuss about his will.”

“I can drive out straight away, actually.”

“Oh, that’s great! Then, I’ll see you soon?”

“Yup! See you soon,” she chirped as she ended the call.

She leaned back. Unfortunately she had nothing but time and desperately needed to get away. In a twisted sort of way, this was exactly what she needed right now.