Page 23 of Filthy Rich Daddies
Fifteen minutes later, the Corolla deposits us in a parking lot cracked with weeds. The diner squats at the corner, a neon open sign buzzing even though two letters have died. I’m not sure if we’re going to get jumped when we go inside, which means the food has to be good.
The interior is straight out of the sixties. Mint-green vinyl booths, Formica counters, and a smell that knocks me directly into age fifteen—the holy trinity of butter, hot griddle, and cheap dish soap.
A waitress with a pink bouffant raises an eyebrow at our entrance. Not recognition eyebrow—moreyou ordering or loitering?eyebrow. We choose a booth near the jukebox (paper coated in clear plastic, no QR code), and Bouffant slides water glasses across chipped laminate. “Coffee?”
“Two, please,” Thalassa answers. The mug arrives seconds later, strong enough to ruin a normal amount of creamer. I inhale steam, and every micro stress fissure in my skull begins sealing. I needed this more than I knew.
She opens a menu, but her eyes peek over. “How’s the crisis meter?”
“Dropped from DEFCON doom to maybe an amber warning.” I stir sugar into the brew. “I, ah, tend to carry code anxiety like a weighted blanket.”
“Same. Only mine’s extinction-level event anxiety.”
We exchange a grin of mutual nerd solace. When Bouffant returns for orders, I choose the full stack—six pancakes, side of bacon, sunny-side up eggs, and hash browns. Thalassa orders the same, plus hash browns “scattered and smothered.”
When Bouffant leaves, I lean in close. “You like your hash browns like you like you, huh?”
She laughs so hard that her eyes water. “Yeah, maybe.”
Food hits the table in under four minutes. The pancakes’ diameter is the width of my laptop, edges crisp, middles fluffy enough to qualify as foam insulation. I drown them in syrup, carve a bite, fork it in—and halt, fork midair on the way back down. Memory fireworks hit like lightning. Midnight hackathons, friends hunched over code, me bragging that a perfect pancake is pure algorithm—equal parts heat, rest, and patience.
Flavor bursts like brown-butter sunshine. I make an indecent noise, and I don’t even care. Fuck. Thalassa’s eyes sparkle. She waits until I swallow, then says, “Worth leaving downtown?”
Instead of words, I lean across the table and kiss her. Sticky syrup transfers. She makes a startled squeak that turns into a giggle against my mouth. When I sit back, Bouffant is tapping her order pad on the counter and smirking. But she doesn’t interfere.
We dig in. Thalassa demolishes her stack with gleeful pragmatism, drizzling ketchup on hash browns, collecting syrup runoff with bacon. At one point a dollop of ketchup lands on her cheek. I reach forward with a napkin, but she beats me to it—smears the same ketchup onto the tip of my nose.
“Saboteur,” I accuse, wiping it off.
“That means I’m dangerous, right?” she teases through a mouthful of potato.
I throw a rogue blueberry at her plate, and she counters with a syrup-soaked crumb. Bouffant sashays over, hands on hips. “Children, rein it in long enough to inhale the rest before it goes cold, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Thalassa and I chorus, trying not to laugh. Bouffant tops our coffees, mumbling “young love” under her breath.
Young. Love.The words land unexpected, fizzing like baking soda in vinegar. My chest tightens—not unpleasant, but acute. I’m thirty-seven. My last long-term relationship ended when I realized she didn’t know Goku from Aang. Since then, it’s been a sugar-baby parade, emotionless and clean.
Dating is setting yourself up for disappointment.
Sugar babies are temporary fun, and that’s all I want these days. Sort of.
An alert pops up on my lock screen—Marcus.Need CapEx variance by noon.Because of course he does. I silence it, heart rate stumbling. Marcus’s ghost wedged itself beside me the moment we stepped into the hotel last night. Sixty-plus years at the company, still treats the budget as his sacrament.
I glance at Thalassa. She’s cutting pancakes into explicit hexagons, humming off-key. A weird ache mixes with the pleasant caffeine buzz. Guilt for ignoring Marcus? Or the opposite—for wishing he’d retire so I could fix what matters?
She notices my jaw tighten. “Work?”
“Dinosaurs.” The word slips out. Her eyebrow arches. So I explain, “Our CFO is sweet, stubborn, and allergic to upgrades. Last night’s outage was absolutely preventable.”
“He’s been CFO since the dinosaurs?”
“At least since before Reagan.” I stab bacon. “Replacing him would be mutiny.”
“Sometimes mutiny saves the ship.” She shrugs, matter-of-fact.
I chuckle. “You’ve clearly never seen the Marcus glare. He glares entire P&L statements into submission.”
She tilts her head. “I bet you can build a case strong enough to retire one treacherous budget line item.”
