A Tuesday, a Wednesday, a Friday, and a Monday later, Lydia was no longer quite surprised to see todd behind the counter of the Red Rooster Coffee, Tea, and Sustenance. She no longer looked down a split moment after he looked up, nor did she blush each and every time he grinned at her. She didn’t stiffen or start when he casually pulled up a chair near her, though she still did take convincing to be pulled inside – Todd only managed that on Wednesday, and then only because it was raining again.
For a while, Lydia had thought that the cold would keep Todd inside, but he snagged a bomber jacket off the wall and sat uncomfortably on the cold metal, fingers shifting as though they wished they held a cigarette. Lydia’s eyes would watch the way they worked, thumb sliding between first and second fingers, between second and third, between ringer and pinky, around the top and into a fist and shoved into a pocket.
Lydia drank her coffee again, and on Tuesday was even thinking clearly enough to manage to slip two quarters into her mug when Todd wasn’t looking.
Not sure if he’d noticed, she figured he’d received it anyway.
That is, that’s what she figured until Wednesday afternoon, when she found two warm, clean quarters in the pocket of her coat.
On Friday, Lydia had put the quarters into the pocket of the black bomber that stood on a hook before Todd saw she had come in, and sat a little proudly in her chair for the entire forty-five minutes that they spent watching the clouds move by. They didn’t talk very much on Friday.
Her pride deflated slightly when, upon getting back to the diner, she found herself transferring keys, a wallet, and two shiny quarters into the pocket of her uniform.
On Monday, Lydia decided she’d have to get more creative. She used the bathroom for the first time that she’d ever been in the café, and found it to be a startlingly bright affair. The walls were painted psychedelic technicolor, a garish hodgepodge of stripes and dots and forms vaguely reminiscent of something-or-other; a large plant seemed to grow out of the back of the toilet, and a demon was devouring the toilet-paper roll.
Eyes wide, Lydia turned off the light in the small room and put her head down as she walked back out into the main café. Glancing around to see if anyone was watching, she slid up the café and grabbed a blue mug before anyone could question her. ‘Blue,’ she thought wryly, as she dropped two quarters inside with a tinkle and put the mug beside the register.
By another Wednesday, then, Lydia thought she had a good handle on things. She knew that when she went into the café, if it was the morning, Todd wouldn’t be there – and if it was the afternoon, he might be. She knew from Monday that if he were there and the café were busy then she would sit alone for a while, but that whenever there was a pause or another barista could be wheedled out from the kitchen, the office, the bathroom, a corner of the café or, for all Lydia knew, a storage closet where such stray employees were kept, that the brown-haired boy would swing by and slide out a chair, standing with a question in his eyes until Lydia at least acknowledged his presence.
She knew that at least once during the conversation she would set her coffee mug down, and almost completely forget about it – and she knew to remind herself to pick it back up and start drinking it while she still had time to, lest she be caught chugging it or leaving the entire beverage behind, like on that first time.
She figured Todd would have found the quarters by the next time she saw him, and that he would figure out a way to try to hand them back to her, and she knew that if it was Todd who gave her her coffee, it would have chocolate sprinkled on the top.
She even knew the colors of the bathroom, now.
Lydia thought she was prepared for things, that it was all under control and nothing was going unaccording to plan.
She continued to think so until the moment Todd walked through the diner door.
It was lunchtime, and Lydia was taking the orders of a table of kids – five children under the age of eight and one frazzled-looking woman. The woman had limp red hair, too bright to be natural, and bags under her eyes, but her straight nose, small chin, and large eyes, as well as cheekbones still visible under just-wrinkling and tobacco-aged skin, spoke of long-ago beauty. The kids were a hodgepodge of hair and skin color, and the woman, called ‘Missus McCallister’ by the blonde and the black kids, treated most of the children with the slightly cautious command that a parent gives to another person’s children. That a usually kind but currently exasperated parent gives to the children of somebody whose respect they desire.
Lydia stood and watched the kids tussle merrily, wincing slightly when they screeched just a bit too loud and a bit too close to her ear, smiling dutifully at the Mrs. McCAllister when she apologized for their behavior.
“No problem at all, ma’am – do you know your order yet, or shall I come back?”
Mrs. McCallister had just begun to speak, holding the sticky hands of two of the smaller kids away from the arms of their neighbors, scolding for pinching and looking at the menu and at Lydia and starting to talk, all at the same time, when Lydia suddenly stopped paying attention to her table.
“Table for one, please,” a voice said near the door, in a familiar, slightly insolent affected drawl. “One of hers, if you don’t mind?”
Lydia looked, wide-eyed, at the wall across from her, not noticing the confused glance of the woman she was supposed to be serving. There was a mirror on the wall, artfully and tackily divided into geometric shapes that were large enough and coherant enough that Lydia could not possibly have missed or misunderstood the bomber jacket, shaggy hair or bright blue eyes. Gulping, Lydia realized those eyes were looking at her – and suddenly, she realized that she no longer had her pad, either, having dropped it at some indeterminate point.
Blushing brightly, Lydia bent to pick it up and moved her eyes determinedly back to the disgruntled redhead. “Sorry,” she mumbled, starting to say an incoherant explanation. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, gave a small, apologetic smile and asked, “What was that you said again?”
When Lydia took the order up to the kitchen, she couldn’t for the life of her have told you what it said. Fortunately, her mind operated as well on autopilot as it did under manual control, for the order was written down in neat handwriting, ordered notes explaining which dish, with which very particular specifications (Kid’s handy-dandy hamburger, no onions, peppers, pickles, or tomatoes, but extra lettuce, and on two bottom parts of a hamburger bun, with the french fries not touching the hamburger and no cole slaw, but instead applesauce in a separate dish with lots of cinnamon, one of Lydia’s notes translated.) went to which kid. Her mind slipping easily into its work mode, Lydia pinned up the order and called over a cook to explain the difficulties of the order, quickly and to the point.
Marge sidled up to her. “Sooooo...” she said, her grin broad, although Sally tried to conceal hers. “Who is that out there waiting for you?”
Lydia blushed like a fire hydrant. “Nobody special,” she said, so quietly not even she could really here. She cleared her throat. “Not – not anybody important.”
Sally leaned as though trying to see through the glass window in the door to the dining hall. “Not my type,” she said, “but he ain’t bad looking, I suppose.”
Lydia looked at her just a little sharply.
“I mean,” Sally continued obliviously, “His nose is a little big, obviously, but then that’s a good sign – and I don’t much like his ears, and the acne could be helped, and I like guys with cleaner-cut hair,”
Marge quiet calmly reached out a large hand and slapped Sally in the back of her head.
“But really,” the taller blond waitress continued, as though it were what she had been meaning to say next all along, “He’s quite good-looking.”
Marge nodded with satisfaction. “Quite. So, are you dating? Have you screwed him yet? What’s his name?”
Jaw halfway to the floor, Lydia said, “I – we – I mean, it’s – not like – you don’t – gah – we haven’t, I mean we aren’t – NO!”
The last word came out a little loudly, and Lydia recoiled.
“I mean, um,” she said, apologetic although Marge and Sally appeared more amused than anything else, “We – we aren’t. Dating, that is. Or anything else. We just, I don’t know, talk sometimes. And his name’s Todd.”
“Todd,” Sally said musingly. “Nice name.”
“Just talking, eh?” Marge asked, painted lips curling up in the corners. “Of course. Just talking. Young thing like you, young thing like him, just sitting around sometimes together and... talking.”
“If you really aren’t planning on dating him,” Sally interrupted suddenly, “Will you introduce me?”
“I though you said he wasn’t your type!” Marge interjected with glee.
“Oh, he isn’t,” Sally said quite calmly, “bu you know me, dearie,” and here she turned all her attention away from Lydia and on to the older, bushy-haired waitress. “I’m not particularly picky at the moment. He’s male, polite, not deformed, has all his limbs – or so I presume,” she said wickedly, causing Marge to snicker and Lydia to look somewhat scandalized, “and if Mouse here likes him then I presume he’s nice, and probably not too disruptive.”
“Ah, you never know,” Marge said knowingly, looking teasingly at Lydia. “The ones that seem all quiet and nice, they’re often whirlwinds inside – with a taste for the same. Isn’t that right, eh, dearie?”
“Mouse?” Lydia asked. It seemed to remind her of something, and she looked vaguely confused.
“Oh,” Sally said, blushing and looking with a slightly worried expression towards Marge. The brunette glared back at her as she turned towards Lydia, who was looking somewhere off into the distance. “Well, you know,” the blonde said, tripping over her words, “small, and – and quiet, like, and you don’t talk to us much. And you always wear that one brown coat, and so us, well we waitresses, other than you, I mean, we decided that you needed a nickname and it, I don’t know, it seemed to fit,”
Marge jumped in to the rescue. “We all have nicknames, you see. I’m Mama Pots’n’pans, Sally here is Leggy, Becky’s the Plannette, on account of her being so into organization and that whole Men are from Mars, women are from Pluto thing or whatever it is – so we all gave you one, just like us.” She glanced at Lydia with trepedition and hope.
“Mouse,” Lydia said. She broke her eyes away from whatever it was they had been staring at in the middle distance. “Am I really like that?” she asked in amusement.
“Oh, no, not really, not at all,” Sally said eagerly.
Simultaneously, Marge answered “Yes, but it’s not a bad thing.”
The two waitresses glared at each other.
Lydia looked at them in amusement and drifted towards the door. “I’ll go take some more orders,” she murmured as she went, leaving the other two looking at each other in surprise.
“Think she’s mad?” Sally asked.
“Dunno. Didn’t seem so, did she?”
“No, but she did leave without saying goodbye or anything.”
“This just now was the most words she’s spoken to me all year. Combined. You expect her to go throwing around ‘hello’s and ‘goodbye’s like how you throw around kisses?”
“Hey now!”
“You had to go and tell her that we call her mouse, didn’t you? Never crossed your mind that it might be the least big insulting?” Mrs. Pots’n’pans’ broad face had bright spots of anger on the cheeks, and she glared at Sally.
Sally pouted just a bit as she turned away. “If she’s not angry, then I don’t see why you are.”
“Look,” Marge said with a sigh, “the poor girl will almost certainly find some way to screw up whatever she has with this guy.”
“Just talking,” Sally said with a smirk.
Grinning, her companion replied, “Yeah, right. Anyway, we better go take over her tables.”
“What?!”
“Come on, like she hasn’t done it for you often enough! That way, she’ll have no excuse not to go and sit with him.”
“I don’t like this, I don’t like this one bit...”
“Whiner.”

Lydia loaded a tray full of food and took it to another of her tables, one where two older women were sitting quietly, not looking at each other. One of them looked up with a quietly sad expression on her face. “Thanks, dear,” she said quietly, smiling up at Lydia. The other women continued looking out the window.
Any other day, Lydia would have wondered what their story was – why they were eating lunch together, why they didn’t talk, what made the one so sad and the other so oblivious. Today, however, she was distracted by trying to avoid coming into contact with Todd.