things hadn’t been easy for kim liu since the passing of her parents. certainly, that was an obvious sentiment, but life had gone from a charmed childhood on the family ranch–a future where she could’ve been the apple of boot hill’s eye or, if nothing else, a softer version of herself. she could’ve been the kind of girl that boys dated because they liked her. she’d have gone to college–on scholarship, of course, there was no way her parents could pay tuition for all five of the lius. maybe junior would’ve gotten married. he’d always liked loretta burroughs and she thought they would’ve made a smart looking couple. that was the painful bit of remembering them–imagining who they might have become. who they all might have become.
instead, kim lived in a trailer park with no hammocks or tire swings. no cows, chickens, or goats. no riding horses or chasing bigwig through the half dried up creek in the spring ( that only had water in it after a freak rain ). she was still a good student–not that it’d done her any good–but she was too busy working at may’s after school for extracurriculars ( ha ! like kimimela liu would be caught dead doing a herkie anyway ). here it was seven years later and she was still there behind the counter every afternoon. she felt like a doll who didn’t know she was a doll; the suffocating heartache of being trapped in the twilight zone. that feeling was always the worst when sonny macclean deigned to show is boyish face in her restaurant. she was trapped–even if the dispatcher job felt like the tiniest bit of progress. she was trapped in may’s family restaurant like it was purgatory and sentenced to serve sonny macclean pancakes for all of eternity all because bev couldn’t be bothered to mind her own business.
sonny takes a seat like he belongs in her restaurant and she thinks that maybe she could get away with pouring his coffee in his laugh if only beverly mcintosh wouldn’t rat her out for that too. instead she meets his response with a sour look, lips puckered as if she could taste his pungent disdain. the feeling was mutual. if anyone else had shot the shit with her like this, she would’ve laughed. truth be told, it was sonny’s sense of humor that she had loved the most and, sometimes, when she was forced to be in his presence she would still fight back a chuckle or two out of spite.
keeping her wide eyes trained on his and her lips set, she poured the coffee into his cup without looking just til it was almost enough that it overflowed. if it had been someone she liked? amaro, jennifer, or maybe that girl from the bowling alley. if it had been one of them–or, hell, even just a regular–she would’ve brewed a fresh pot of coffee. for sonny macclean? he gets whatever’s already made. he gets the foiled butter packets for the to go orders when he orders pancakes instead of the creamy whipped butter. she even takes one slice of bacon off his plate–the crispiest one–and eats it in the back under the heat lamp. there’s not much she can do about the past, but boot hill’s memory is a mile long and she cares for her grudges better than she does her spider plant ( and he even has a name ! ).
“do you want to hear our specials?” kim kept her tone even, but it sounded more like the drawl of an cowboy in a spaghetti western–low, steady, but just the smallest bit hostile. narrowing her eyes, she threw a curt glance bev’s way as the girl leaned up against the counter, texting away on her cell phone. “yeah, well, i guess you shouldn’t believe every rumor you hear.” it’s the truth, she just didn’t like that faint smugness aimed at her. this was why she’d never gone to the bucking horse–to see him suck his teeth as she walked through those saloon doors. funny how dead things could be forgotten about until you were staring them in the face. “i just figured you’d be a good tipper; industry courtesy and all.” and maybe a guilty conscience. she might have to serve him thanks to beverly, but she wasn’t gonna admit it to his face.
if alison macclean is a glutton for punishment and kitty briar is his most loyal supplier, she’d only be matched by kim liu. any time he needs his fix of self-hatred and guilt, all he needs to do is make a quick trip to may’s. the disdain in the way she looks at him, it had wounded him as a younger man. now, he’s grown used to curl of her lip and lethal stare. over time, he’s grown to have as much disdain playing over his own features, but it’s for more undefined reasons; mirroring kim so he won’t look so pitiful. right now, he looks smug instead of pitiful. no one inspires pettiness in him more than kim, blinking contently as she pours the coffee, their eye contact unbroken. he can already tell the coffee is lukewarm from the small splatters that land on his hands and forearms on the counter; kim never serves him hot coffee if she can help it, but sonny doesn’t care how the caffeine gets into his bloodstream as long as it does.
really, if he wanted hot coffee, or nicer service, he could just take the extra five minutes to the turquoise star diner. the star is actually closer to his house, but may’s is closer to his job, and truthfully (and he better never let turquoise star fanatic/waitress margie dominguez hear) the all-turquoise interior and exterior can be a bit garish when you’ve just awoken. both restaurants are equally as busy, but may’s less so in the afternoon; the only ones to want breakfast at two thirty in the afternoon are bar staff. besides, where else can he get his daily self-punishment when kitty’s not around? joey ryan, the other half of the turquoise star fanatic/waitress duo, was much more cordial. in fact, his mother, in her rare moments of clarity, had liked joey ryan very much for him. in those rare moments of clarity, her clear mind would imagine the ryan family and the macclean clan merging, two families doused with the pain of a missing family member joining together to wash themselves of that pain, or something. his mother could be quite poetic when she wanted to be, and he liked joey, she had curly blonde hair that reminded him of ramen—in a good way, sonny likes ramen!
his head tilts at the suggestion of the specials, she knows sonny gets nearly the same thing every time he’s in: pancakes, bacon, poached egg with toast if he’s feeling fancy. he guesses kim will never let the opportunity to fill the silence with barbs get away from her; most people that hate him do their best to ignore him, kim acts like she hates him but jumps at the chance to insult him. the topic of rumors always seemed to be one that kim could not resist bringing up every time she was around him, and just like now, it leaves him confused. he doesn’t know rumors she’s talking about, or perhaps he just doesn’t get the joke. she has a habit of referencing things he has no knowledge of. like always, he just scrunches his red brows to almost meet in the middle and ignores it; sonny may be a high school dropout, but he hates to admit when he doesn’t know something. kim has always been smarter than him.
sitting in front her now, even with all the loathing etched upon her face, he still sees what he saw back then, as a teenager. then, he had loved the way her brown eyes shone when direct sunlight hit them, like crystallized caramel. he loved the mole on the side of her right eye, distracting him in class from across the room, a little beacon that captured and captivated his sight. he loved her shiny black hair, long down her back and smooth, but there was something special about it when she wore it up. (mama macclean’s not the only one to occasionally get poetic.) he also loved her wit, the cutting way she spoke to people, until it had been turned on him. sometimes, in his own private moments where the world is quiet and affords him introspection, he wonders what kim had loved about him, or if she ever loved him at all. did she see him poetically, or did she only see white trash with red hair and a pasty face dotted with freckles on nearly every square inch?
“have you ever known me not to tip?” sonny retorts, but boot hill exists in a weird half-world where gratuity is either always expected or entirely forgotten. the bucking horse is a place where people either forget to tip, or they’re offended by sonny’s dour behavior. he’s not so dour in may’s right now, some might even think he’s downright cheerful. kim inspires his pettiness, a jovial sense to tease when he knows kim means every bit of hatred she spews at him. he just wishes he knew why. “you know bev’s just going to steal it anyways.” he says conspiratorially, a quick glance to the other waitress that’s, he’s pretty sure, pretending not to listen to the conversation.
