Where We Left Off

“Grilled cheese, slathered in mayo and toasted on one side only. Pickle and barbecue chips. Strawberry lemonade. No ice.”

I shot a glance over to Dom as I dumped the black plastic tub onto the Formica counter. The bucket was loaded with dirty dishes encrusted and caked with uneaten food, and my forearms killed from hauling it around the diner for the past hour. I flexed my hands and then balled them into fists to relieve some of the pressure, and it helped, only a little, though. It probably meant I should get back in the gym. I was turning into a serious weakling.

“How do you even know her order?”

Dom flicked his greasy hair back with a swift jerk of his head. He’d been asked by Sal to wear a hairnet, but there was no way Dom would be caught dead in one. Apparently, he preferred to risk his job over following health codes. “Because she’s weird as hell. Orders the same thing every single Tuesday. Hard to forget crazy like that.”

He was right, she was a little different, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call her weird. Quirky, maybe. Quirky was harmless.

I looked at her as discretely as possible, but even if I were full-on gawking, I didn’t think she’d notice. She was engrossed in the laminated menu in front of her and had ear buds tucked deep into her ears, her red hair curled around them. Why she would need a menu was beyond me since Dom said she was a regular with a “usual,” but she appeared so lost in thought I didn’t think anyone could break through it. A gargantuan jacket swallowed her whole, and she hadn’t taken off the rainbow-striped mittens from her hands. She looked like she was prepared for the blizzard of the century, and but the diner was a comfortably warm eighty degrees. Maybe it was from working my ass off for the past four hours, but I definitely had sweat collecting on my brow.

“She’s kinda cute,” I offered with a noncommittal shrug and emptied my dishes into the sink to make room so I could go back to bussing. When I looked back to her, her mouth outlined whatever words echoed from her headphones, and she swayed a bit in a seated dance on her barstool, her eyelids slipping shut, totally lost and content. It was adorable and I felt the smile sneak onto my lips.

“You need your eyes checked, Bro.”

“Whatever,” was all the comeback I had.

Dom was right about her order, and the way she ate it wasn’t any less bizarre. It was one bite of grilled cheese, two tiny nibbles of pickle, one long swallow of lemonade followed by three chips. I felt like a stalker that I was even aware of the science to it, but I couldn’t help but watch. She’d bit off her knit gloves with her teeth, one finger at a time, and arranged them on the counter so they were positioned one above the other, the fingers fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. Then she picked up her sandwich, careful to flip it over so she couldn’t see the grill-lined underbelly, which left only the mayonnaise-coated side. Which was totally gross, but something about it didn’t seem gross because I was enamored by the detailed thought and meticulous purpose behind everything she did.

At some point in the evening, things picked up and I actually had to do my job. That meant I wasn’t free to study this strange girl’s even stranger eating habits any longer. I supposed that was probably a good thing because I’d developed an unhealthy interest in the way she prepared and consumed her dinner. Dom said she was a regular customer. That would mean all my Tuesdays would be shot to hell from here on out if I remained this transfixed on her. My schedule had recently changed and now I only worked Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I needed to focus during more than two-thirds of my shifts. My paycheck depended on it.

The Blue Duck Diner shut down at ten every night—eleven on weekends—but Sal, my boss, always instructed me to leave early. I had school in the morning and apparently there were child labor laws, all which worked to my benefit since I had one more year until adulthood. It meant I didn’t have to stay and close up. I left that dirty work to guys like Dom who were already eighteen and didn’t have school or curfew or laws protecting them from working a little too hard for a few too many hours.

The diner had one of those vintage Mickey Mouse clocks where his arms and hands would spin around his body like a contortionist, and when he twisted impossibly to the ten o’clock position, I clocked out, giving a wave and a holler to my coworkers as I shouldered the door open, slipping my beanie onto my head. The diner’s bell chimed and I was greeted with a blast of icy air that felt like a cheese grater against my skin. It had been snowing with a vengeance for the last three weeks. At first, everyone got excited by that initial snowflake. How quickly we forgot that those downy white flutters quickly turned into black sludge that collected against the curbs and wedged cars in driveways as ice barricades. Winter was angry this year, and I was ready for Mother Nature to stop with the PMS.

My family’s apartment was three blocks down from my work. Dad had offered me his car, but I figured waiting for it to warm up, along with scraping the sheet of ice from the windshield, would amount to work that didn’t outweigh the benefit of temporary shelter. Instead, I just pulled my wool scarf tighter to my neck and jammed my hands into my pockets. I kept my arms flush to my sides in an effort to trap the heat to my body, but what resulted was a waddle that made me look like a penguin.

Which would’ve been fine had I been alone, without any witnesses.

But I wasn’t alone. Grilled cheese girl was there.

Well, not really there, but up ahead peddling clumsily on her bike. She looked like she’d just gotten her training wheels removed. The only thing that seemed less uncertain than walking on an ice-coated sidewalk was biking on an ice-coated sidewalk. While the tread of my shoes slipped against the pavement, her tires wobbled in an uncoordinated way and it made me hold my breath tightly in my lungs. That hurt. Crazy bad. Everything hurt when you were freezing from the outside in. It was like I was watching a circus performer on a unicycle, waiting for one false move, one slip or fall.

It occurred to me that I’d been waiting for that false move all night. I had to admit, it was mildly refreshing to see her a little out of control like this. Her meal at the diner had been so controlled that it made me wonder about her. It made me question whether every aspect of her life was as methodically planned and executed. I couldn’t imagine living like that. It would feel like a trap, a sort of prison, I supposed, and that seemed awful.

Seeing her weave and slide back and forth on the walkway made me smile.

Maybe that made me sick, but I didn’t care. It was just my natural response to her.

And apparently my other natural response was to jog as briskly as I could to match her pace. I suddenly found myself gaining speed, my boots pounding the pavement, legs racing to catch up. And then, as the red DON’T WALK hand flashed on the light in the intersection, I was right at her side.

And she was on the ground.

I hadn’t meant to startle her, but I guess when I said, “Hi,”—or more accurately screamed it—something about the act pushed her completely off her bicycle and onto the icy ground. She’d turned into an upside down turtle wearing a ridiculously large parka.

Words came out louder when you breathed heavier. Like all that extra air added volume, too. So I’d screamed at her. I felt horrible. And awkward. Why had I felt the need to run up to her? And why did I shout out my hello? God, I was terrible at this whole life thing. And now she was on the ground, her bike a crumpled metal heap on top of her body. Hurriedly, I bent down to lift the bicycle from her. I set it to the side and then offered my hand, not sure how else to repair this.

She looked up. “Holy crap, you’re cute.”

Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting.

“Actually, I’m Heath,” I said. And I winked at her. I freaking winked, like the idiot I was. I slipped my hand further into the gap between us and I waited for her to take hold, but maybe she didn’t like to hold hands with idiots. That would be reasonable of her. For a split second, my insides spasmed as I wondered whether she’d take my hand or not. Why I was nervous, I had no clue, but I felt it buzz throughout my body. It was a sensation that I both loved and hated. Like being electrocuted. Maybe not quite like that, because that probably wasn’t enjoyable, but there was definitely a current sweeping and tingling through my body.

“I’m Mallory. Mallory Alcott.” Her eyes met mine. Each lash was tipped in white snow and it looked like glitter. “And Heath, has anyone ever told you that you’re super adorable?”

“My mom, but she’s obligated to think so because she shares half my DNA.”

Apparently that was funny. Mallory laughed, a belly deep one, and sort of tossed her head back. It exposed her long, pale neck, which normally I wouldn’t find to be a particularly hot body part, but considering it was the dead of winter and every other inch of her was covered, I found it completely hot. My stomach took a nosedive.

“Well, Heath, your mom is correct. Those dimples don’t even look real. They’re like manmade or something.”

“Manmade dimples?”

At this point, Mallory finally took my hand. I never really had a favorite season, but I knew it wasn’t winter. Winter had it out for me with its massive coats and gloves and scarves. It was hard to be intimate with so many layers between. Even still, it did feel strangely intimate as I drew her hand toward me. She rose her feet, then bent down to retrieve her pink and white bike from the sidewalk.

“Yes, manmade dimples. Hey, I figure if every other body part can be manufactured, dimples probably can, too. Yours should be the prototype.”

Man, this girl was something else. I didn’t know what to make of her, but I knew I wanted her to keep talking. It was freezing out—probably below—and we were the only ones on the streets. Everyone else sought shelter because that’s what you did when it was dark and snowing and a school night in November.

I wasn’t about to go anywhere.

“You have nice hair,” I stammered.

“Ah, Heath.” She slugged me on the shoulder and it was so startling that I had to plant my feet to avoid swiveling. “You don’t owe me anything. I give compliments freely. I learned long ago that you should always say what you’re thinking because you never know when the gift of words will be taken from you.”

Though she didn’t appear any older than me, I knew with that lone assertion that she’d lived much, much more life in those limited years.

And suddenly I found myself wanting to know exactly how she’d spent each and every one.