Once she moves on to the table behind me, I pull up the tour schedule on my phone, making every attempt not to get sticky syrup on it but failing.
After wiping it with a damp napkin, I click a few times and see that only four shows are left. Noting the dates, I realize it’s only three weeks until it ends.
Nothing major is going to happen in three weeks. I’m not going to blow up like I swallowed a basketball or give birth, so we’re good. Once the tour is over, I’ll invite Dallas over for dinner and tell him in a warm and friendly environment that I’m pregnant and that he can be as involved or as uninvolved as he likes.
“We’ve got this,” I say patting my full belly confidently.
But then a waitress about my age with hair in a falling-down ponytail and looking tear-stained and world-weary runs into the diner, apologizing profusely to the blue-haired woman who’s now glaring at her from behind the counter.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I’m late. The babysitter didn’t show so I had to call my mom for help and she gave me this huge lecture about responsibility and then my car wouldn’t start and I got stuck behind a garbage truck. I’m so, so sorry.”
“You can be sorry all you want. Your pay is being docked. And you have two tables over there that probably won’t tip you for shit.”
I wince at her harsh words.
Is this my future? Have I been put here in this very place at this exact time to see what my life is going to be like?
“I need this job, Irene. You know I do. Randy still hasn’t paid any child support and I’m doing the best I can. I have to get a new fuel pump on my car but I won’t be late again, I swear.”
“That’s what you said last week,” Irene of the blue hair says before disappearing into the kitchen.
The distraught waitress makes her way to me and offers me coffee, which I turn down but do so while smiling.
“You okay, hon?”
She gives me a weak smile. “This wasn’t supposed to be my life,” she says quietly. Her name tag has Lexi printed on it. “I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up. But what can you do, right? We don’t get to choose the hand we’re dealt, I guess.”
Her eyes are watery and I suddenly feel every bite of pancake I’ve taken like a lead weight.
She’s gone, having stepped over to the next table and moved on with her life, before I can say anything. Not that anything I could’ve said would’ve made her life any better. She wasn’t confiding in me in hopes of garnering advice, I don’t think. It was more like she had to say that out loud to someone and I happened to be here.
Knowing I should probably start being more frugal since I’m about to have another mouth to feed, but unable to just do nothing, I grab my wallet and a pen from my purse.
“It’s never too late,” I scrawl on a napkin. I pull out all the cash I have on me and lay it down. It’s nearly three hundred dollars. I have no idea what a fuel pump costs, but I hope that it helps. Sometimes just a little kindness makes a big difference.
It’s never too late, I think to myself as I leave. I believe that. Truly.
Maybe I’m wrong about Dallas. Maybe he doesn’t just care about his music and his career. Maybe he cares about me, too.
But if he doesn’t, if he wants absolutely nothing to do with me or my little gummy bear, then so be it.
This wasn’t supposed to be my life, either; unwed mother at almost twenty-four isn’t exactly my childhood dream come true, but it is my life now. And I’m going to live it the best way that I possibly can. My child will know love and kindness and if Dallas doesn’t want him or her, I will want him or her enough for the both of us. And then some.
33 | Dallas
“BABE, I’M NOT TRYING TO HATE ON YOUR COOKING OR ANYTHING, but I legit have no fucking clue what these are.”