Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
“What?” Rosie says.
“Your boy? He’s amazing.”
She narrows her eyes a little. “What do you know about my boy?”
“He hung out with me those couple days we were part of the Revival when we first got back. He made sure the dogs always had water in the security tent.”
Rosie smiles. Big. “He is a good boy, Amon. I don’t know how I got so lucky.”
“You didn’t get lucky, Rosie. You got exactly what you deserved.”
Iget flustered as all hell when Amon Parrish compliments me this way. My face and chest go all hot, like I’m blushing too.
Amon notices this and chuckles. “Come out with me. Just once. We won’t go bowling. We’ll do something better.”
“Better like what?” I’m still trying to get a hold of myself, so my answer isn’t very original, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
“Hmm. Well, I think maybe you should come up with a better plan before you ask a woman out, Mr. Parrish.”
Amon laughs too. “All right. That’s fair.” Then he’s about to say something else, but Geraldine Guffie—the head waitress, who’s well into her retirement years and has been working here since she was a teenager—calls my name from across the diner.
For a moment I think she’s mad that I’m doing too much chatting, but she’s holding an envelope up in the air, waving it at me. “You’ve got a letter here, Rosie.”
“What?” I call back. “What kind of letter?”
Geraldine shrugs. “The kind that comes in the mail?”
I huff, then look at Amon. “You two decide what you want and I’ll be right back.”
Geraldine put the letter on the counter and went back to her business, so I just pick it up and look it over. It’s familiar. As it should be, because I got one just like it at McBooms. Sure enough, when I open it up, there’s a worksheet inside. This time it’s not an extreme dot-to-dot but a maze. A very complicated maze that isn’t the kind where you simply find the path to the center, but has little equations to solve along the way. There’s a key at the bottom with numbers—presumably the answers to the equations—and a direction to turn. When I look closely at the center, there appear to be six different ways to arrive there. But when I look for the entrance to the maze, I only find one.
“Huh.”
“What is it?” Taylor Hill asks. She works here in the Revenant diner weekday mornings when the Bishop Inn is slow.
I fold the paper back up and tuck into the envelope. “Oh, it’s just some junk mail.”
Taylor throws me a confused look. “Junk mail? Here? That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Geez, Taylor. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s like… a sample, or something. For a kid’s workbook. Tryin’ to sell me stuff, that’s all.”
She shrugs, then bounces off to deliver some scrambled eggs and hash browns.
But it is kinda weird. What I said makes sense, if there were marketing material inside, but there isn’t. But it’s really not worth worrying about. I look over at Amon’s table and find him smiling at me from across the diner. So I just stuff the envelope into my apron to think about later.
“OK. I’ve got an idea for a date.” Amon says this as I approach his table, getting my server pad out and clicking my pen.
“I’m all ears, Amon.”
“Is that real interest? Or are you just humoring me?”
“Well.” I let out a breath. “I guess I’m not sure. Are you truly interested? Or just bored?”
He looks a little sad for a moment, but this look disappears so quickly, I almost think I imagined it. “I’m interested. For real. But how about we leave the date as a surprise?”
He didn’t answer my question. “A surprise, huh? Well… how about I check my schedule and get back to you?”
He’s about to say something. Probably something about my schedule not being so full that I can’t give him an answer. But in that same moment I think he gets it. This schedule-checking thing isn’t some kind of lie and he knows this because he’s seen me working all over Trinity County in the last week. So he rethinks his objection. “OK. I’m sure we’ll bump into each other again soon. So you check your schedule and then I’ll plan a date.”
I smile. It’s a customer smile, not a flirty one. Because I think he is bored. I think he’s been all over the world, and seen some really cool things, and being back in West Virginia is all kinds of normal. And so are the women here. I’m probably the most eccentric one around, actually, which isn’t saying much. “Now, what can I get you two boys for breakfast?”
I didn’t see Amon and his dog leave because I was in back mopping up a mess one of the new cooks made with some bad egg-flipping, but he left me a nice tip. Twenty-five dollars. Which I give to the bus boys to split because I don’t actually work this job for the money and I like tipping bus boys. He also left a note that said, I’ll be in touch. And this makes my heart flutter a little bit because it’s promising something. That he will get in touch, obviously. But something more than that. It’s hinting at… change. And I’ve got quite a bit of that going on in my life at the moment, so I’m just not sure I need more.