A Little Less than Famous (7 page)

I turned away from my computer and looked to the
doorway. "Holy bunch of roses, B
atman," I exclaimed.

"These just arrived for you," Luke said, bringing over a vase of red roses and setting them next to me on the desk.
This was no normal dozen roses that you could pick up at a grocery store for less than twenty dollars. There were at least three or four dozen perfect yellow roses. Someone had obviously splurged.

"For me?" I asked, surprised.

"It says McKinley Evans on the envelope," Luke said, taking it off and handing it to me. I stared at it for a moment, not recognizing the handwriting, which made me think of a girl. I ripped it open and pulled out the cord. I continued to stare for a moment.

McKinley, I had a great time
talking to you the other night. Let
’
s do it again sometime. Jake.

"Well, who is it from?" Amanda said, impatiently. "Come on, come on, come on."

"They're from
Gabriel," I said, easily. "Who
else would they be from?"

"Well," she said, smiling, "do you really want to break up with him now? What does it say?" She leaned over and tried to reach for the card.

I held it out of her reach. "Come on, Amanda, that's private."

She kept at it, trying to grab it.

"Amanda. Seriously."

"All right," Amanda said, dropping her hand and fluffing her hair. "Have it your way. Let's just get out of here. I'm tired of being in this room."

"Best idea you have had yet," I said, spinning in my chair towards her. I glanced behind me, at the email I hadn't answered yet. I shut my laptop and turned back to Amanda. "Let's go."

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I was getting for work one day, when Luke came int
o my room to talk to me. Crystal
and I had switched shifts and she probably wouldn’t need me until about eleven, right before the lunch rush. I was pulling my hair back into a ponytail when he came in and sat on my bed. I glanced at him through the mirror, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, I continued to get ready. Luke always had a way of stretching out something he had to tell me that he didn’t want to. I remember the sex talk, the curfew talk, and the “you need to get a job or help out in the diner” talk. He would talk when he was ready. He was a good parent, if not an awkward one. I wasn’t his biological child and he had taken over my care when I was five. Most of my school pictures had involved me dressed in mismatched clothes and extremely uneven pigtails.

I was about halfway through applying mascara to my eyelashes when he finally spoke up. “So we need to talk,” he said, after he finished thumbing through my economics textbook that had been sitting on my bed.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Oh?”

He gave me a look, the dad look that had taken him a good fifteen years to perfect. He had let me get away with a lot when I was a kid because he didn’t really know any better. As I get older, he got smarter, especially when it came to me and my personality. “Look, McKinley, you’re twenty-four years old. You’re going to be twenty-five in a few months. And as much as I love having you here, you’re getting older and I’m just wondering what your plans are.”

“What do you mean, plans?” I asked, turning around to face him, leaning against my dresser drawers.

“Well, you work the diner as the assistant manager, you take classes here and there and you spend time with Amanda and Daniel.”

“It’s Gabriel,” I corrected him. “I’m not dating Daniel anymore.”

Luke rolled his eyes. I knew that he wasn’t always the happiest person in the world when it came to my dating life but I was an adult and there wasn’t much that he could do about at. He wasn’t the best example either. Even though he was a good looking guy and owned his own business, he had just never settled down, though I had plenty of women in my life that I thought would’ve come close. “My point is, I’m just wondering what you’re going to do with your life. Now I’d love for you to stay here at the diner, and take it over when I’m retired. But I can’t ask that of you, especially when there may be something else you want to do with your life.”

I paused for a moment, not exactly sure how to answer that. I felt like I had just had this conversation with Jake, just a few days earlier. “I’m honestly not sure.”

Luke nodded. “And that’s okay. I’m not expecting you to know exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life.”

“It’s not that I don’t know. I love being in this diner and I love working in this diner,” I admitted. “But sometimes I think, it’s all I’ve ever known so maybe this isn’t something I want to stick with.”

“Has anything else caught your eye, in your classes or anything?”

I laughed and shook my head. “No. I mean, I take classes, I enjoy some and hate others and I get through them. But none of them grab me. Nothing says, this is something you could do for the rest of your life.”

“But the diner?”

I pursed my lips and thought about it. “Yeah, I can see myself doing this for the rest of my life. I love the diner and I love the job. And I love my family here. But my family isn’t always going to be here.”

Luke just looked at me, waiting for me to continue speaking. If there was one person who could get me to talk, it was Luke. Amanda was my best friend, and knew me well, but not like Luke. Luke wasn’t always my dad but he was my absolute best friend and he knew it didn’t take much to get me to start talking.

“I just don’t want to be in this place, not living, not experiencing anything while Diane or Robert or Oliver or Cassandra come and go. I love this place but is this the only place that I am ever going to know?”

“You know, you’re always more than welcome to take time off, McKinley. I ran this diner for awhile before you started working here,” he said, running a hand through his hair.

I waved off the offer. “Its fine. I love every minute that I spend here, even with kids throwing French fries at the ceiling and that old Russian lady who needs h
er soup microwaved to scalding hot.”

“So?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “I go to school because I feel like it’s the right thing to do. Maybe I should get a degree in restaurant management, though I really don’t need it.
I guess i
t keeps me busy.”

Luke nodded. “I just want to make sure you’re doing what you want to do. Living your life the way you want it, not the way you think I want you to.”

“That was kind of a confusing statement,” I said, lightly, ignoring the affection that was squeezing my chest hard.

“I know you got it,” Luke said, smiling.

“Sometimes I just wish something exciting would happen here,” I admitted, refusing to even mention Jake Kennedy. That was not what I meant by exciting. That was categorized under annoying and ridiculous.

Luke looked up at me as if he had heard my thoughts. “Someone came by the diner the other day looking for you and I sent him down to Ricky’s party. That seems exciting.”

I laughed, pushing myself off my dresser and heading toward the door. “I am so not going there,” I tossed over my shoulder. “And neither are you.”

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"So, spill the beans," Cassandra said, putting her book down when I came to refill her coffee.

"What beans?" I asked her, raising her eyebrows.

"Iris said a really cute guy came in during lunch, flirted with you and then followed you out when you left," Cassandra said, slyly. "Who was he?"

"Oh, no body," I said, waving it off.

"Oh, McKinley, always a new boy in your life," Cassandra said, shaking her head. "As long as you don't keep Gabriel. I just do not like the feel of him. He has a saltine cracker personality." I stared at her, ignoring the frantic waving coming from the James Dean table. "You know, he is bland. He has literally no personality."

"Right?" I said, loudly.
Someone who finally got it.
"God, I thought I was the only one who noticed!" I looked over at the man waving his arms at me. How could someone have so much energy at six
-thirty
in the morning? "Hold on." I went over to the man, took his order and then returned to Cassandra. "Gabriel is so boring!"

"Yes, he is. You could do so much better," she said, scrawling a few lines in her poetry notebook. She looked up and her brown eyes widened. "Oh my god, is that Jake Kennedy?"

I closed my eyes and counted to ten before opening them and turning around and shrieking loudly. Jake was standing right in front of me. "Jesus, Jake, must you stand so close? Its kind of creepy."

"Sorry, I was excited to see you," he said, putting his hands in his pockets, that stupid confident smirk all over his face. He obviously had no qualms with stalking a girl at her work. What girl wouldn’t want Jake Kennedy randomly showing up like this?

I heard Cassandra clear her throat behind me. I turned to her and saw her, staring at me pointedly, a small smile on her face.

"Right," I said. "Jake, this is Cassandra Wu. Cass, this is Jake Kennedy."

Cassandra scratched out the last few words she had written, her smile growing bigger. "I see that."

"Nice to meet you," Jake said, reaching out to shake her hand. Cassandra stared at it for a moment before shaking it quickly.

"You know, Jake, this is getting a little out of hand, don't you think?" I said, pushing past him and walking to the counter.

"What do you mean?" he asked, right at my heels.

I sighed. "Following me around? I mean, don't you have a job? Don't you have episodes to film?"

I grabbed the hot plate with the waving-man's vegetable omelet and some silverware. I used my hip to open the swinging door between the dining room and back counter. I paused, right in front of his table. "Here you go, sir, one veggie omelet," I said, smiling, and setting it down in front of him. "Be careful, the plate is super hot. Anything else that I can do for you?"

"More coffee?" he asked, barely glancing up from his newspaper. He reached out for his plate to pull it closer and quickly pulled back his fingers, blowing on them. I rolled my eyes and walked back to the counter, saying "Sure."

"You know that's kind of why I'm here," Jake said, continuing the conversation as if it had never been interrupted. "My job, I mean. I wanted to show you something."

"Really, Jake?" I asked, exasperated. "I can't just leave. This is my job. I'm the only wait staff here."

"Go."

I turned and saw Luke standing at the foot of the stairs, looking very bed ruffled.

"What?"

"Go ahead, go. I've got the rest of the morning,"

"But Luke..." I protested. "Its morning rush and the delivery is this afternoon."

"And I told you, I've got this handled. I've been working here since before you were born," Luke said, an amused look on his face. "Go."

I looked between Luke's barely hidden amusement and Jake's barely concealed hope. I sighed again. "The man at James Dean needs more coffee." Luke's smile grew even wider. I made a face and took off my apron and tossed it aside. I looked at Jake. "I have to go upstairs and change." I started up the stairs and then paused. "And get me some coffee to go," I added, looking pointedly at Luke.