Table to table and order to order: burger with lettuce, hold the mayo unless it was light. This one wanted onion rings. This one wanted water with lemon. Jenna spun from one end of the diner to the other, her smile plastered to her face as she chatted everyone up with more than her usual amount of “hon,” “cher,” and “sugar”s. She was sweating by the time her break rolled around and the heat of the restaurant became too much. She pulled off her apron and left it in the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water as she slipped out the back and took in a gulp of fresh air, letting her smile falter for the first time that night.
She opened the water and chugged over three-fourths of it in one gulp before she noticed some motion to her side. For a moment, panic flared, replaced by an instinctual grasp to the pocket knife she kept in her back pocket and she backed closer to the building. “Whatever you want, I don’t have it and there are people all around if I yell.”