17. Calliope #2
My stomach answers before I do, a small twist of hunger that makes me remember the half sandwich Mara had already judged from a distance. Dash must hear enough of whatever shifts in my breathing, because he looks toward the diner’s direction and leaves the choice sitting there.
“Okay,” I say, and the word feels larger after it leaves me.
Dash walks me to the driver’s door before heading back across the lot toward his own car. I sit with my hands on the wheel for a few seconds after the door closes, watching his figure move along the first stretch of the chapel path beneath the lights.
Seven minutes there.
Seven minutes back.
Most nights.
The diner sits near the edge of downtown, its windows fogged from the heat inside and its neon sign flickering over a nearly empty parking lot.
I arrive two minutes after Dash, who waits near the entrance with his coat collar turned up against the wind and one hand braced on the door so I can go in first.
Warmth folds around us, carrying the smell of coffee, fried potatoes, and old vinyl booths wiped down too many times.
A waitress with silver hair and a pencil tucked behind one ear tells us to sit wherever we want, so Dash gestures toward the back corner and waits until I choose the side facing the room.
He notices that too.
The menu is laminated and slightly sticky at the edges.
I read the soup list twice even though I know what I want after the first pass, and Dash gives me the time without making the silence into something that needs filling.
When the waitress comes back, he orders a burger and coffee.
I order tomato soup and half a turkey sandwich, then add fries after Mara’s message flashes through my mind.
Dash’s gaze flicks to me when I do.
“She’ll ask,” I say.
“Then the fries are documentation.”
“That’s exactly what they are.”
He smiles faintly and hands the waitress both menus. The expression settles quickly, returning his face to its usual calm, but I catch the warmth before it goes.
For the first few minutes, we talk about campus because it is easier. Dash tells me the review subcommittee has started hunting for volunteers with the energy of a trapped animal, and I remind him Mara already warned both of us to avoid Norris.
The waitress returns with water and leaves us alone again. I unwrap my silverware and line the fork against the napkin without thinking, then stop when I realize Dash is watching my hands.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He reaches for his own napkin and unfolds it. “You always straighten things before food comes.”
I look down at the fork. “Do I?”
“Yes.”
I slide it deliberately crooked.
Dash’s eyes move to it, then back to me. He says nothing, though the faint amusement in his face makes my cheeks warm.
The food arrives before I can decide whether to fix the fork.
The soup is too hot, the sandwich is cut diagonally, and the fries are exactly salty enough to make me glad I ordered them.
Dash eats like he has spent the day forgetting to do it, which means Mara would approve of him at least on principle.
We talk more after the first few bites. The conversation moves from the seminar to first teaching jobs, then to terrible student excuses.
Dash tells me a student once claimed his paper disappeared because his roommate’s ferret ran across the keyboard and opened a chain of events too complicated to summarize.
I tell him about the student who cited a movie adaptation for a novel he clearly hadn’t read and then tried to argue that adaptations were texts too, which would’ve worked better if he hadn’t misspelled the main character’s name.
Dash listens with his shoulder angled toward me and his hand loose beside his plate. He doesn’t turn every story into one of his own. He lets mine breathe, asks questions in places that make it clear he’s following the shape of the day rather than waiting for his turn.
At some point, the waitress refills his coffee and tops off my water. The diner remains quiet around us, the few other customers scattered near the windows and the counter. A man in a work jacket eats pie alone two booths away, and a pair of nurses near the front speak softly over plates of eggs.
I steal one of Dash’s fries because his are closer.
He pushes the plate slightly toward me.
I take another because he noticed.
“My mother used to make oatmeal every morning for six months after she read some article about brain health,” I say, dipping the fry into the edge of my soup. “I told her I liked it because she looked pleased every time I finished the bowl.”
Dash’s brows lift. “Did you like it?”
“No. I hated it. I started hiding brown sugar in my sleeve before breakfast.”
His coffee pauses halfway to his mouth. “In your sleeve?”
“I was nine. My methods lacked sophistication.”
He takes the drink and sets the mug down. “Did she find out?”
“Eventually. The laundry made a compelling case against me.”
His laugh is quiet enough that it doesn’t carry past the booth, but it stays in his face afterward. I look at my soup because watching him laugh feels more intimate than it should.
“What about you?” I ask, tracing the edge of the bowl with my spoon. “Were you an oatmeal child?”
“I was a cereal child until I was eleven.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“I hated milk.” Dash lifts his coffee again. “My brother told me that meant I didn’t know how to eat breakfast correctly, so I spent an entire year eating dry cereal out of a bowl with a spoon to prove I had principles.”
I look at him over my water glass. “Did you?”
“I had stubbornness. At eleven, it felt similar.”
The mention of his brother sits between us more naturally than I expect. He has referred to family so rarely that even knowing the basics still feels like being handed something private.
“That explains the breakfast judgment.”