Page 15 of My Unscripted Life

Oh, but if I could…

Milo holds the door open to the Deluxe Town Diner, home of the best burgers in Wilder and my favorite place to eat.

“Wait, have you been here?”

“Uh, yeah, on my first day in town,” he replies, not meeting my eyes. There’s something zooming around in his head, but I can’t seem to grab on to it, so I make my way through the door.

Despite being the absolute best restaurant in town, it doesn’t look like much, that’s for sure. Big windows, and booths running across the front that are covered in sparkly red vinyl, which I know from many trips is cracked and peeling. There are already a few early birds, all of them regulars, parked on the stools that sit beneath the counter. A craggy, middle-aged man in a trucker hat and jeans that do not quite meet the bottom of his Jimmy Buffett tour T-shirt is perched on a stool nursing a cup of coffee.

“Hiya, Roy,” I say as we make our way past him toward my favorite booth. Roy owns the music shop on the far end of the square and lives in the apartment above it. Whenever he’s not at the shop, he’s here. And when he’s not here, he’s at the shop tuning pianos or polishing brass. He’s as much a fixture at one place as the other.

“Hey there, Dee,” he replies, never taking his eyes off his biscuits and gravy. In fact, no one pays a bit of attention to me or one of the most famous dudes in America walking through the Diner. That is, not until a blond head pokes out from the door to the kitchen, a big smile spreading across her lips. I can tell from the way her eyes get wide just for a second that she recognizes him, but she quickly adjusts her face so as not to betray anything.

“Well, if it isn’t my best customer,” the woman calls, her voice sounding a little like nickels in a garbage disposal. She wipes her pink-polished fingers on a well-worn apron around her waist. “You park your buns at the booth in the back, and I’ll be right with ya!” And then she disappears back through the swinging door to the kitchen.

The booth is big and round and easily the most abused, with peeling duct tape covering the larger cracks in the vinyl. It’s where Naz and I usually park when we eat here, because the table is big enough that we can spread out homework or sketch pads or the multiple plates of food we usually order. But because it’s past the window line, tucked in the corner, it’s a little dark, so usually no one else wants it. Which means we don’t have to feel bad about commandeering it, even during a lunch rush.

I plop down on the seat and scoot around, Milo following behind me. Then I pluck two menus out from where they stand between the chrome napkin dispenser and a bottle of ketchup and hand one to him. He flips it open and starts scanning, while I lay mine on the table in front of me. I don’t need a menu. If Milo weren’t here, I wouldn’t even need to order. Kristin knows my usual by heart: cheeseburger, no onions, add avocado, with a side of extra crispy fries and a bottomless Coke.

Milo notices my neglected menu and raises an eyebrow over the top of his.

“If you’ve eaten here, you probably know the burgers are the best you’ll ever have,” I say. I lean over and flip his menu, pointing at the center column. “But if you’re looking for something with a little more local flavor, Kristin apparently makes the best pimiento cheese sandwich on the planet.”

“Apparently?”

“She wouldn’t know, because she’s never tried it,” Kristin says as she slides up to our table. She pulls the pen out of her bun, licks the tip, and holds it poised over her pad. She’s grinning at me, her lips closed tightly like she’s swallowed a secret and it’s bursting to get out. Kristin inherited the Diner from her grandmother, who inherited it fromherfather, who opened the place back in 1920, though back then it was more of a soda shop. Kristin has updated the menu, adding Fluffernutters and smoothies and the best damn lentil soup on the planet for her vegetarian customers, but some things remain the same. And the pimiento cheese is legendary.

I grimace. “Pimiento cheese looks like something that’s already been eaten,” I reply. I turn to Kristin and offer her a smile. “I believe everyone when they say yours is excellent, but no thanks.”

Kristin rolls her eyes. “I know whatyou’llbe having,” she says to me before letting her gaze roam over to Milo. There’s a sparkle in her eyes, and I can’t ignore the hint of a hair flip when she turns to him. I don’t blame her. “But what’ll it be for your fella here?”

I can feel my cheeks give away my embarrassment, but there’s no use fighting it. Kristin is Kristin, as I’ve come to know in my years eating at the Diner. She’s never met an emotion she could hide, an opinion she could contain, or a person she wouldn’t feed. She’s got the biggest mouth and the kindest heart in Wilder. She’s not quite old enough to be my mom, so she’s always felt like the cool big sister I never had.

“I will have the pimiento cheese sandwich,” Milo says, his eyes on me like a challenge, and Kristin laughs as she scribbles. He adds a water and a side of fries, a crooked smile playing at the corners of his mouth. I like this Milo, the one who can tease without taunting, the one who might even smile abit.

“Girl, you got a live one!” she says, swatting at me with her order pad. She takes our menus and shoves them back into their slot by the napkin dispenser, then spins on her heel and beats feet for the kitchen.

With Kristin gone, Milo and I are left alone to stare at each other, and once again an awkward silence falls over us. But before I can open my mouth and say something 90 percent ridiculous, Milo’s phone beeps.

And beeps.

And beeps again.

Someone is apparently texting him a novel one line at a time.

Milo reaches for the phone, and something stormy passes across his face. Immediately my brain goes to the DailyGoss and the endless links and photos about Lydia. I wonder if this has to do with that. I wonder if it’s actuallyLydiatexting, but one look at his face tells me I don’t dare ask. He clamps down on the volume button, lowering the ringer until it’s silenced; then he shoves the phone into his pocket. And as if he can see the line of inquiry on my face, he dives into a conversation feetfirst.

“So, you seem like quite the regular,” he says. It takes a moment for the sour expression to fizzle away, but it does, and soon it’s replaced by the happier Milo I recognize from TV. I don’t think Angry Milo is normal, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this Milo, Man of Sparkling Personality, isn’t real either. We might as well be sitting across from each other doing a late-night interview or something.

“I am, but how didyoufind this place? It’s amazing, but it doesn’t really scream,Hey, Hollywood, dine here.”

Milo shifts in his booth. The vinyl squeaks, an audible indication of his discomfort. “Someone, uh…someone told me about it.”

It takes me about point two seconds before the realization hits me like a glass of ice water to the face. The shiny black sports car. Rob and Milo don’t have the same car. Rob was drivingMilo’scar. And the shadowy figure in the front seat, the one Rob kept glancing back at, was Milo.

Which means he heard…My mouth gapes as I try to fill the awkward silence, but no words come.

“I think the phrase you’re thinking of is ‘sucks out loud,’ ” he says. I can practically hear Naz’s voice, haughty and sure as it always is.

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