I didn’t miss her. Yet in answering a waitress’s innocuous question, I realized I missed the ‘two of us.’ Being part of a couple, holding a door for someone, requesting a table for two, joking, teasing, being someone's smartass... My tiny circle of loved ones didn’t include a girlfriend and wouldn’t ever again. I thought I’d made peace with it, but some part of me, buried down deep, said otherwise.
I sank into the booth and took up a menu to distract myself from thoughts I didn’t want. Mulligan’s had typical country diner fare—breakfast served all day, and a variety of burgers and sandwiches for lunch. Unfortunately, more than half the items were strictly forbidden to me.
Kacey flounced into the seat across from me, looking scrubbed and vibrant. I tried not to think about the fact she was wearing my T-shirt, like girlfriends sometimes did with their boyfriend’s clothes.
The waitress set two waters on the table. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Kacey said. “Desperately.”
“Decaf for me,” I said.
The waitress moved on and Kacey shot me a funny look. “Decaf?”
“I can’t have caffeine.”
“What a tragedy.” She leaned over the table. “You know what they say about decaf. There’s a time and a place: Never and in the trash.”
I laughed with her. “I’ll have to remember that one.”
Kacey studied the menu. “I’m so hungry, I might have one of everything. What about you? What are you going to get? Wait…” She let the menu drop to the table. “What can you get?”
“Not sure yet. My options are kind of limited.”
“Because of your dietary restrictions.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, shit, Jonah, why did you bring me here?” She flapped her hand at the menu. “This is all grease and fat.”
I laughed and held up my hands at her sudden outburst. “Whoa, it’s cool. I’ll find something.”
She bit her lip. “Yeah, but...”
“I brought you here for you. This is perfect hangover food,” I said. “I used to come here with friends when I was at UNLV.” I tapped the corner of her menu. “Get whatever you want. It’s fine, I swear.”
She still looked dubious as the waitress came back with our coffees, putting an orange decaf doily under my mug.
“You ready to order, hon?”
Kacey gnawed her lip.
“Order,” I told her. “Unless you’d rather we go back to my place and fire up some Lean Cuisines?”
“When you put it that way…” Kacey turned to the waitress and said in a deep voice, “Yes, very well, I'll have a Bloody Mary, and a steak sandwich, and a steak sandwich.”
The waitress gave her a look and I frowned at the Bloody Mary.
Kacey flashed her eyes, looking between us. “It’s from Fletch? The movie?” She jabbed a finger across the table. “You, Jonah Fletcher, can’t tell me you haven’t seen the greatest Chevy Chase movie of all time?”
“Sorry, I missed it,” I said.
“It’s a classic,” Kacey said. “I have a thing for eighties movies.”
The waitress cleared her throat. “So do I, honey, but I don’t have steak sandwiches or Bloody Marys.”
Kacey ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and I ordered a Cobb salad, hold the bacon, and a side of wheat toast, no butter.
When the waitress moved on, Kacey shook her head. “No bacon? The only good thing about a Cobb salad is you get to put bacon on it.”
I shrugged. “Not on the list.”
“That sucks. What else can’t you eat?”
“No red meat, no chocolate, no salt on anything…”
Kacey nearly choked on her coffee. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. No chocolate?”
“I miss salt more,” I said. “And butter. Nothing fatty, nothing delicious.” I laughed dryly. “In summation, I’m not allowed to eat anything delicious.”
Kacey shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Not like I have a choice. And there are worse things.”
“I’m trying to imagine something worse than not being able to eat chocolate.” She froze, then set her coffee mug down, her smile vanishing. “Oh my God, that’s a terrible thing to say to someone with a heart condition. I’m sorry. I do that a lot—just blurt out whatever pops into my head.”
“Hey, it’s cool. I can’t do cocaine anymore either, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise for all the money I’m saving.”
Her embarrassment fell away with a smile. “Yeah, you look like the cocaine type to me.”
“Total cokehead. Reformed.”
Kacey relaxed and sat back in her seat. “So, you went to UNLV? That’s where you studied industrial arts?”
“Yes, my brother and I both studied art there.”
“And then Carnegie Mellon?”
I sipped my coffee. “You sure ask a lot of questions.”
“You have a lot of photos and diplomas on your wall. Before I decided to cool off my boobs in your freezer, I had some time to kill.”
I set my cup down before I spilled it. “That’s not something you hear every day.”
“It is in my world,” Kacey said with a rueful smile, as if it was an old joke she’d gotten tired of hearing. But she waved it off.
“Carnegie Mellon is…where?” she asked.
“Pennsylvania. Talk about a weather shock. The first winter I was there I wanted to hibernate.”