Page 50 of Waitress at the Shadow Ridge Inn
Her end of the connection became muffled as if she’d covered the microphone, but I was able to make out muted office noises in the background.
“Okay,” she said a minute later. “I’m outside. What’s going on?”
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said simply.
“But the recent deliveries …”
“He’s never going to stop, Ang.”
I could hear her heels clacking over stone and pictured her walking into the courtyard behind the office building where I’d once worked. It was a nice space with benches and tables and ornamental trees and shrubs. We used to eat lunch together out there sometimes when the weather was nice.
“What brought this on all of a sudden?”
“I met someone.”
“Who? When?”
“His name is Steve, and we met a few weeks ago. Ang, I think he might be the one.”
A telling pause. “How could you possibly know that after a few weeks?”
“I can’t explain it, other than to say I’ve never felt like this before.”
She snorted. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Didn’t you used to lecture me when I said the same thing?”
Maybe I had. Okay, I definitely had. But that was because Angie tended tofind the right oneevery couple of months.
“Maybe you just need to get laid,” she added for good measure.
“Idid, and it only made things worse. Or better, I should say.”
“Holy shit! You slept with someone without dating them for six months? Itmustbe the real thing.”
Her sarcasm was anything but subtle, and it wasn’t the first time she’d wielded it against me. She and I had different opinions when it came to dating and other … activities. Suffice it to say, Angie was more outgoing than I was. I wasn’t a prude. I was selective.
What I said was, “You know me so well.”
“I don’t understand. If he’sthereand making you happy, why do you want to comehere?”
“Closure,” I said simply. “It’s time I moved on. I’m going to sell my parents’ house, claim my trust, and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Isheasking you to do this?”
“No,” I assured her. “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. Steve has no idea who my parents were. He knows only that they died in a car accident and that I went to college and got a job. Believe me, he doesn’t need my money.”
“Let me guess,” she said, her voice once again bordering on mocking. “He’s richandgorgeous.”
Yes, he was.
“And kind and compassionate and sexy and—”
“Okay, okay, stop rubbing it in. I get it. He’sperfect.”
From what I’d seen, hewasperfect—for me. Only time would tell. But I wasn’t going to rub it in, especially since she put so much effort into finding her Mr. Right, and fate or whatever had placed Steve right smack in my path. If the situations were reversed, I might be a little bitter about it too.
“You’re going to find your person, Ang.”
“Maybe I already have,” she said with a sniff.
