Would you like to order?
Can I get you something?
Is your friend still coming?
Each time the waiter returned, he grew more and more impatient. He tried to hide it, at first, but Valerie was suspecting that he no longer cared if he was being polite or not. It had been over an hour and there had been no sign of Lex.
She couldn’t blame the waiter, really. She’d been in his position before (only she liked to think that she had handled it better). But she knew what it was like to live off tips and she knew firsthand the frustration when a customer didn’t order; when a customer didn’t leave … and here she was: doing both.
To be honest, she’d been afraid to order anything, at all. None of the menus had prices (that’s when you knew when it was expensive: when the patrons were beyond caring how much something cost). She wondered if Lex never showed, if she’d even have enough money to pay for it. She didn’t like the idea of letting him pay for her, but she liked the idea of having to explain to them that she didn’t have enough money even less.
She wondered how she could have been so stupid. Why did she think that Lex could have anything to say to her, that he couldn’t have said to her right there, at the bar? Why did she think that he had anything left to say, that she would even care to hear? Why did she think that he would even bother to show up, at all?
He had only ever been there for her, if there hadn’t been something (or someone) else better to do.
She was so tired of all of this.
She wasn’t going to wait anymore. She was going to order the least expensive sounding thing on the menu and then she was going to leave. She’d been reexamining the it when she heard the waiter say, “Here you are, sir.”
She looked up, expecting to see Lex … but it wasn’t him at all. It was Will.
“What are you doing here?” She blurted, as soon as the waiter had gone. But she knew. She knew as soon as she had said it that this wasn’t by chance: he was there for her.
Will looked even more out of place than she felt, as he took the seat across from her. She could have hugged him. She almost did.
“He didn’t show,” She explained, even though she supposed that was obvious. She tore piece of a roll off, just to have something to do with her hands, “I’m such an idiot.” She tried to laugh at herself; she tried to make it a joke, but she couldn’t fool herself and she couldn’t fool him.