Nova

Copyright
© 2012 by Delia Delaney

The characters and events portrayed in this work are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Chapter One

Clover’s Café was definitely the underdog of the restaurant world,
surrounded by larger chain restaurants that resided in the area to accommodate the tourists of California. Clover’s was situated just south of Valencia in Newhall, but across the freeway was evidence of a nearby
major
attraction: hotels, motels, and chain
restaurants. But e
ven though the Burger King next door saw more customers in a day than Clover’s did in a week, it couldn’t compete with the charm of a small time café
—at least in my opinion.

My aunt
owned Clover’s. She and her husband opened
the small establishment in 1994
, mainly as a bakery and coffee shop.
At the time
it was named Meryl’s Bakery, after my aunt.
Three
years ago it gradually converted to a café, and when my mother died, Meryl changed the name to Clover’s Café in memory of my mom. It hadn’t been in my plans to be twenty-two and waitress at a
restaurant
, but I learned long ago that I didn’t
have much control over the things
that happened in my life.

“Nova, honey, fetch me a
fresh
pot please,”
Robin
said, setting the empty one on the counter.

I reached back and grabbed a fresh pot of coffee almost at the same time, and she was headed for table four.

No, we didn’t have large quantities of people come in and out of our café, but what we did have we worked hard to please.

An elderly man and woman inched up to the counter and set their bill in front of me with what appeared to be exact
change.

“Was everything okay?” I asked them as I entered the numbers into the register.

“
Huh?
Oh, yes, yes,” the man nodded.
“It’s a beautiful March day.”
He peered
at my nametag
, eyes squinting
. “Thank you, Nora.”

“Oh, it’s, uh
,
Nova
.”

“Huh?”

“Nova? With a ‘V’ in the middle.”

He looked pretty confused as he blinked at me. “Nova?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “I know; it’s pretty unusual for a person’s name.”

“Nora is such a pretty name,” the woman smiled, not at all catching on to the clarification. “That was my mother’s name.”

“Oh, yes that’s a very nice name,” I told her. “Thank you for coming in today. I hope you visit again.”

“What?”
the woman asked loudly.

“Thank you; come again,” I said just as loud. A few other diners looked our way, but what was I supposed to do?

The elderly couple shuffled away from the counter, but since there wasn’t anything else requiring my attention at that moment, I went to the door to hold it open for them.

They both smiled big and thanked me for being such a dear. “Bye Nora,” the woman waved.

“Bye,” I replied. I watched for a moment as they headed for a car, and I tried picturing either one of them driving. It was kind of a scary thought.

I was just about to re-enter the café, but a group of four guys were walking along the sidewalk from the neighboring parking lot. They slowed as they came closer to me, I guess because I was just standing there with the door held open, but I could tell they hadn’t planned on stopping in
at
Clover’s. They were most likely headed for pizza two doors down.

“Can I interest you guys in some free sodas?” I decided to ask.

They all stopped right in front of me and kind of glanced at each other. One of them even looked ahead at the pizza parlor, and then took a look at our sign.

“What do you guys
have
?” he asked.

“Great food,” I smiled. “Why don’t you come in and look at a menu? I’ll get you some drinks while you decide whether or not you want to stay.”

They glanced at each other again, but thankfully shrugged their agreement. I led them inside and sat them at my favorite booth in the corner.

“What would you guys like to drink?” I asked, handing them each a menu. “I can take care of that for you, and then I’ll send Robin over to take your order.”

“Why Robin?” one of them asked.

“Excuse me?”

He smiled and looked at my nametag. “Nova? Is that seriously your name?”

“Maybe,” I smiled mischievously. “Soda? What would you like?”

There was a few seconds of silence, and then they finally gave me their drink orders.

Robin came to the counter just as I set the last Pepsi on the tray, and she gracefully
but
swiftly made her way to table ten. I almost forgot all about
that
table of guys as I rang up another customer, until Robin stopped in front of the counter with her “What’s the deal?” face.

“What?” I asked.

She nodded to table ten. “They said to tell you they would stay, but only if
you’re
their waitress.”

I glanced at the table of guys and they were all staring at me with smiles on their faces. I was instantly embarrassed, but tried to shrug it off.

“I suppose I have to,” I replied. “I kind of
lured
them in here.”

She raised her eyebrows at me with a curious smile. “
Lured
?”

I quietly laughed and said, “I’ll tell you later. You wanna switch for a bit?”

“Fine with me,” she shrugged.

When I approached table ten they were still smiling at me.

“So what would you like to try?” I asked, ready to take their orders.

“Can we get, like, a buy one get one free deal or something?” the one guy asked. He was the same big mouth that seemed to do all the talking
once they’d entered the café
.

“I’m kind enough to offer you free drinks and you still want to squeeze me for more? Are you really that cheap?”

The other guys laughed, making exclamations that their buddy just got burned.

“No, I’m not cheap,” the guy said with a play-it-cool smile. “I just thought you were a little sweeter than that.”

Two of the guys chuckled and waited for my reply.

“I’m not, so what would you like to eat?”

I patiently waited for a response—I was expecting another request, or maybe an insult—but the quietest guy in the far corner said, “I’ll have the avocado burger, please.”

“Sure,” I replied, jotting it down.

“Uh, bacon burger with extra bacon,” another guy said.

“Beef and cheese melt.”

I looked at the last guy,
“
Big M
outh
,”
and he glanced
at the menu and pointed. “T
he
jalapeño burger. And I want your hottest sauce on it.”

I wrote the order down as I said, “Our fire sauce is pretty hot. You want it on the side?”

“No, I want it on the burger,” he smirked arrogantly. “Double.”

“Sure thing,” I smiled. I was smiling to be polite of course, but I was also picturing this guy’s face once he bit into Clover’s double-sauced jalapeño burger.

When I set his order in front of him fifteen minutes later, I also set two
extra
glasses of water next to his plate. “If you find that two isn’t enough, just wave me down and I’ll bring you another.”

He scoffed. “Seriously? For a jalapeño burger?”

“No, for the extra hot sauce.”

“It can’t be that hot,” he replied.

“It’s really hot.” I set the other plates on the table and asked, “Can I get you guys anything else? More Pepsi?”

Two of them agreed, so I took their glasses for a refill. That’s where Robin murmured, “How’s college corner going for you?”

“Well, the guy on the end in the blue shirt is probably going to be suing me any moment now.”

She laughed. “Nova, you getting
feisty
with the customers?”

“A little, but he wanted double the fire sauce.”

“Double?” she gaped. “Roger put it on the side, right?”

“No, the little twit insisted it go on the burger—”

“
Ah
h
-a
h
h
…” we both heard from table ten.

Robin and I followed the sound of panic, and we watched a hand reach for the glass of water. The other guys were laughing their butts off,
which
was okay because they were all friends, but Robin and I had to turn away to stifle our snickering. But I straig
h
tened my face as I grabbed
a glass of milk
.

I set the soda refills in front of two of them
as I was trying not to get involved in what was going on at the table.
They were watching their buddy with intrigue, and glancing at me at the same time. Mr. Nothing-
Is-Too-Hot-For-M
e was trying to toughen up to save face, but he ultimately had to reach for the water again.

“This’ll work better,” I said, setting the glass of milk in front of him.

He immediately took it, and half a glass later let out a loud breath of air. “Yeah
,
that works much better.”

The rest of the table was still snickering, but I was truthfully worried that the guy was going to throw a fit about the incident.

“Holy shit, that was hot!” he exclaimed. “What the hell do you put in that stuff?”

“Ah, that’s top secret,” I replied. “But
would you like another burger? —Without the hot sauce?
”

“What for?”

“In case you’d rather taste it without the fire in your mouth.”

“Oh
no, that was awesome,” he laughed. “I think I’ve finally found a fire sauce that’s actually
fire
.”

I was surprised by his reply, and thankful at the same time.
“Well I’ve never tried it, but I hear
it gets
easier to handle
after each bite
.”

“How come you’ve never tried it?”

“I’m not that dumb,” I joked.

The group laughed, and the
same
guy said, “You should try it,” and held the burger up.

“Nah, that’s okay. I’m not really the hot
sauce-loving kind of person. I like to taste my food.”

“
Brock
puts hot sauce on everything,” one of them said. “Eggs, sandwiches, spag
h
etti…”

I
grimaced
because just the thought of it sounded really gross. We did have customers that liked to
put Tabasco sauce on their food,
just not Clover’s fire sauce.

“Well if you’re a big boy and eat all of your food, maybe I’ll bring you a souvenir,” I told Brock, and then I left them alone.

Had I realized they were going to stay for
two hours
, I might not have coerced them into the café. No, that’s not actually true, but my shift was over at two o’clock, and that’s when they wanted to order dessert. It was great—we liked customers to stay and eat—but normally I would be able to leave once my
shift
was up.
When Phoebe arrived I had to explain
why I couldn’t leave just yet, and she thought it was pretty funny.