Page 38 of Making It Burn
“How do you do it?The whole...”I gestured vaguely at her general demeanor.“Cheerful thing.On a Sunday morning.Dealing with people like me, who can barely string a sentence together.”
She laughed again, setting the pot down and leaning against the booth across from me.“You want the secret?”
“Please.”
“I count my blessings.Every single day.”She said it simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.“I wake up, and before I even get out of bed, I think of three things I’m grateful for.Sometimes they’re big things—my kids, my health.Sometimes they’re small—a good cup of coffee, sunshine through my window.But I do it every day, and you know what?It changes everything.”
I stared at her, this woman I’d known for all of ten minutes, dropping wisdom on me like she was some kind of breakfast-serving Buddha.
“That actually works?”
“Try it and see.”She winked.“Your food’ll be up in a few minutes.”
She headed back to the kitchen, leaving me alone with my coffee and my thoughts.
Count my blessings.
I pulled out my phone again, but instead of checking for messages from Mason, I opened my notes app and started typing.
Things I’m grateful for:
My job.Even with all the stress and the long hours, I loved what I did.I was good at it.And working on the MediCorp case—despite the complication currently ignoring my texts—was an opportunity most lawyers would kill for.
My new condo.My own space away from my parents’ icy house.And it was only four blocks from here, from bars I liked, from a city I was starting to really love again.
My health.Hangovers aside, I was young, healthy, employed.I could walk to breakfast on a Sunday morning.That was something.
I kept typing, the list growing: my friends back in San Francisco who still texted me memes at random hours.Gracie.My crazy parents.The fact that I’d had the courage to leave a life that wasn’t working and build a new one here.
The fact that I’d kissed Mason Price last night, and for a few perfect moments, he’d kissed me back like I was the only person in the world.
I stopped typing at that one, my chest tight.
“Here you go, sweetheart.”Cheri appeared with a plate so loaded with food I wasn’t sure how she was carrying it one-handed.“One hangover special.”
“This is amazing.Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”She set down a bottle of hot sauce.“You need anything else?”
“Just this.And maybe your secret to happiness.”
“I already gave it to you.”She tapped the table.“Count those blessings, honey.Life’s too short to focus on what’s going wrong when there’s so much going right.”
She left me with that thought and a plate of perfectly greasy breakfast food.
I ate slowly, savoring each bite, and tried not to check my phone every thirty seconds.
Cheri stopped by twice more—once to refill my coffee and once to bring me extra toast “because you look like you need it.”Each time, she chatted easily, telling me about her daughter’s new job, about the regular customer who proposed to his boyfriend in this very booth last month, about how the diner had been her family’s business for forty years.
“We’ve seen a lot of heartbreak in these booths,” she said, gesturing around the nearly empty diner.“And a lot of healing.Food and coffee help, but mostly it’s just time and perspective.”
I thought about Mason, about the panic in his eyes right before he’d pulled away.About the way he’d said, we can’t do this, like it was killing him.
“What if the thing you want is the thing that’s worst for you?”I asked.
Cheri studied me for a moment, her expression softening.“Is it really worst for you?Or are you just scared it might be?”
I didn’t have an answer to that.
