I laughed. “My house is fine. I’ve spent all these years saving up to buy my dream home, and now that I have it, I’m not ready to let it go. It just needs a few Band-Aids, that’s all.”
“Honey. Your house needs a bit more than Band-Aids.” She smirked, placing the plates of food down on table five before she headed back over to me with a hand on her hip and sass in her lips. “I’m just saying. If I had Dan offering me a bed, I’d move in with him and have him show me his floor plans on every inch of my body, in every inch of the house.”
“Lori!” I shushed her, my cheeks heating up.
“I’m just saying. You’re working three jobs to pay for a house that you need to fix up anyway, in order to prove that you can be an independent woman. You could fix up the house and live with Dan, you know.”
“The house isn’t that much of a fixer-upper,” I argued.
“Aly.” She moaned, slapping her hand against her face. “The last time I came over to share a bottle of wine, I used your bathroom and I didn’t close the door when I used it. You know why? Because there wasn’t a bathroom door.”
I laughed. “Okay. I get it. So it’s a fixer-upper. But, I like the challenge.”
“Hm. You must be a really good lay for Dan to stick around the way he does.”
“What? Dan and I haven’t slept together.”
“Seriously?” she exclaimed. “You mean he’s drooling over you, and you two have never done the deed?”
“Never.”
“But… That smile!”
I giggled. “I know. But he’s a good friend. I have a big rule for my relationships, and it includes never dating any of my friends. Ever.” I’d been down that road before, and was never planning to travel down it again. To this day I still thought about Logan and mourned the friendship I loved and lost.
We would’ve been better off never falling in love.
“You know, Charles and I were best friends before we decided to date. He was the love of my life, and no one has ever compared. He used to make me laugh so hard, before I even knew what love was. Some of the best things in life come from the strongest kinds of friendships,” Lori explained. Her head lowered, and she gripped the locket hanging from her necklace, which held their wedding photo inside of it. “Boy, oh boy, do I miss that man madly.” She hardly ever spoke about Charles, her late husband. But whenever she did, there was a twinkle in her eyes as if her mind was traveling back to the day she first fell in love with him.
Our boss told us to stop chatting so much and get back to work, which we did. We were always busy in the mornings, serving more people than seemed humanly possible, but the busier we were, the less time I had to think about things.
“Are you good on coffee?” I asked a woman sitting near the window. I held the coffee pot in my grip as I made my way around to all my tables for refills.
“Yeah, I’m good. Thank you.”
I smiled wide, and when I glanced up out of the window, my heart caught in my chest. My fingers landed against the glass, trying to reach out and touch the figure across the way. When I blinked once more, what I thought I saw was gone. A shiver ran down my spine, and I stood up straight.
Lori glanced up in my direction. “You okay, Alyssa? You look like you saw a—
“Ghost?” I said, finishing her sentence.
“Exactly.” She came over and looked out the window. “What is it?”
A ghost.
“Nothing. It was nothing,” I said, taking my coffee pot to the next table.
It was my imagination, that’s all.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Chapter Sixteen
Logan
My stare was trained on Alyssa as she walked around the diner, helping customers. I sat in a back corner, unable to be seen from her location. I shouldn’t be here. My mind knew all of the reasons I shouldn’t have walked into the diner that day, but my heart felt a tug in her direction.
She still smiled the same. That made me happy and sad all at once. How many smiles had I missed? Who did she smile for nowadays?
“Here’s your omelet,” my waitress said sitting the plate in front of me. Her face was somewhat pale, and sweat was dripping at her forehead. She rocked back and forth, trying to force a smile. “Anything else I can get you?” she questioned.
“Orange juice would be great,” I said.
She nodded in reply, walking away.
I picked up the salt shaker and started to add some to my omelet. A loud chuckle escaped the diner, and I took a deep breath. Alyssa’s laugh. It hadn’t changed. I shut my eyes, feeling my chest tighten. Memories flooded me like a hurricane, knocking me backwards as I envisioned all of the times I laid beside her, listening to her laugh ripple through my soul.
“If you wanted a plate of salt with an omelet on the side, you could’ve just asked,” a voice offered, snapping my mind from the past. My stare fell to the omelet that I’d been mindlessly shaking salt onto for the past five minutes.
“Sorry,” I muttered, placing the salt shaker onto the table.