I wake in the morning with that unsure feeling you get when you wake up in a new room. My room, which is small but cozy and surprisingly uncluttered, is bathed in yellow early morning sunlight which streams in from the gaps in the shutters.

Overnight, I've fallen in love with this place. After eating a dinner of microwave chicken pot pie (Moira, it turns out, is no cook despite her extensive cook book collection), I sat by the window and watched the sea until I grew tired. The moon pulled her tide and the promenade lights glittered against the black night in the most captivating way. I loved everything about Montauk; I fell in love with the way it looked, the way it sounded, the way it was.

It's barely seven but already the day is bright and shaping up to be hot. Any traces of yesterday's downpour are gone and the sun makes the sea shine. It's breathtaking.

I shower quickly, putting on a white sundress and sandals since I don't have a uniform and Liza didn't give me a dress code. Moira is either asleep or down in her studio when I get downstairs for breakfast. Since it's so nice outside, I grab some toast and decide to eat on my way.

Outside, the air is sticky and humid. If it's this hot now, I can't imagine what it will be like at midday. In New York City, the streets are cool under the shadows of the tall skyscrapers. But it feels heavenly to have the sun kiss my skin and a warm breeze ruffle my hair.

The walk into the town centre is short. The centre is small with boxy stores painted shades of pastel. They have hand-painted signs above their doors and striped awnings. The windows displayed handmade jewelry, souvenirs, local delicatessen and more. It was idyllic, a fairy tale land right here in New York state. The whole thing looked like something out my daydreams.

Cafe Elpida stands overlooking the promenade. It's small with white walls and a blue awning. It is not yet open but Liza had told me to go around to the back. I follow a narrow path around to the back of the cafe and the quiet peace of the front disappears. The back door to the kitchen is open and from inside comes the sounds of kitchen staff hollering to "move those plates" and "shift those tinned beans, for God's sake!" With it come the sound of loud, Mediterranean music and a warbling voice I recognize as Liza's from the phone sings along.

Nervously, I walk up the steps. I knock on the door out of politeness but it's clear no one can hear. From the commotion, it sounds like an entire circus is in here but really, there are only five people. The kitchen is spotless and the staff is busy at work already, greasing pans and cracking eggs.

"Um, hello?" I call out over the noise. Immediately, everyone stops and I can feel their gazes boring into me. I shift uncomfortably in the doorway. "I'm Sally Jackson."

"Doll!" A large, African-American woman exclaims. She stops beating the eggs and comes towards me. She's both tall and wide, with a wide grin, a heaving bosom and dark brown hair held back by a bandana. "I'm Liza," she says and pulls me into a hug.

She turns to the others in the room and declares, "Y'all, this is Sally. She's gonna be giving us a hand around here."

"Lord knows we need it," a rake-thin man with a handlebar mustache says from in front of the stove. "Mason," he adds. I assume he means that's his name.

"Mason here's the sous-chef," Liza explains, "We got Lucille who's kitchen staff," – a pretty blonde girl waves – "Jean who's the other waitress," – a girl my age in a white dress similar to mine (thank god) smiles at me – "and Don...Where'd he go?"

"Here," a boy's voice comes from a large metal door to an industrial refrigerator. The boy himself immerges, wiping his hands on his white apron. He's around eighteen or nineteen and so tall that he has to duck to come out of the doorway. His skin is tanned, like he spends a lot of time outside, and he has the brightest green eyes I have ever seen. He pushes his dark hair out of his eyes and smiles in a way that says 'I'm gorgeous and I know it'. "I'm Don."

"Don's our fish expert," Liza says but I barely hear her.

Don is, hands down, the most attractive boy I have ever laid my eyes on. True, he knows it, but I can't help but agree. His lopsided grin is infectious and I find myself smiling, forgetting my shyness even though this boy should have reduced me to a stuttering mess. I'm not sure I trust myself to speak without making a fool out of myself so I just smile at everybody.

"Well, enough lollygagging," Liza scolds, ushering everyone back to their work stations, "Breakfast rush starts in fifteen minutes, folks. Sally come with me so I explain how things work around here. You know how to make an omelet."

The way she says it makes it seem like she's not really asking a question but I answer anyway. "Yes," I reply.

"Good," she says, handing me some eggs, "Make yourself useful while I talk. Now, we are a Mediterranean restaurant. My grandfather was Greek and when he came over, he built this here restaurant and married himself an African lady. Talk about mingling, eh?" She chuckles at her own family history before continuing. "And here we are, two generations later, still going strong. For some reason, folks like to come here and eat foreign food – I don't know, maybe it makes the whole vacation seem more exotic. They come here for breakfast, lunch and dinner and you work for breakfast, lunch and dinner, got that?"

"Yes, ma'am," I say, beating the eggs as fast as I can.

"Good girl," Liza smiles. "Now, you waitress when we need you to. You chop vegetables when we need you to. You clean up after the six-year-old that ate too much ice cream because his momma ain't raising him right vomits on the floor if we need you to. You do all that and you get to make yourself something nice for lunch and you keep all your tips."

"Yes, ma'am," I repeat.

"Now, what I need you to do is go on out there, raise the shutters and flip the sign on the door to open. And you wait with your pen and your writing pad and take down the orders, ok? If they ask, today's special is omelet with salmon and asparagus like it is every morning but don't go telling them the last part. If they ask for a recommendation, you say the same thing. Go!"

I don't get to sit down until my break at one-thirty in the afternoon, in the post lunch-rush lull. The morning passes in a whirlwind of taking orders and carrying heavy trays from the kitchen to the restaurant and back again. I barley get a chance to speak to the other workers except for yelling orders at them. At the end of the morning, the orders turn seamlessly from omelets to moussaka and I've made twelve dollars in tips.

I fix myself a chicken salad like Liza said and take my lunch out to sit on the back steps with Lucille and Jean, the other girls.

"Hey, Sally," Lucille smiles warmly when I join them. She looks a few years older than me, maybe in her twenties, and she's pretty. "It's chaos, isn't it?" She rolls her eyes and flicks her hair flawlessly. NO way she doesn't practice that move in the mirror. "Jean here started yesterday."

Jean nods and mumbles "Yeah," through a mouthful of salad. After swallowing, she adds, "But it has its perks."

The girls giggle and I have no doubt they're talking about Don. I try to repress a smile; I don't even know him.

"Oh, come on!" Lucille laughs, tossing her hair again. "He's gorgeous! He's, like, Liza's Greek cousin's son or something. He's just here for the summer but, my, what a summer it's been!"

They laugh again and this time I join in though nothing is actually that funny. I haven't spent time with anyone my age in a long time. I think you're supposed to laugh anyway.

"What does he even do?" I ask.

"He gets the fish," Jean answers. She's got a thin face and a big nose. She has mousy brown hair and brown eyes with a dusting of freckles across her nose. She's not especially pretty but she seems friendly enough. "Like, you know from the sea? Fresh for the food. He always gets the best ones, too. Liza says they're going to go downhill when he leaves."

"And the fishy smell isn't even a turn-off," Lucille grins. Jean nods eagerly I notice she has a way of hanging on to Lucille's every word, as if hoping to absorb some of her natural prettiness by listening hard to them. "Let me tell you, if that boy asked me out, I wouldn't even think twice about it."

"But you have a boyfriend," Jean says.

"Uh, Brad would be history in seconds," Lucille laughs.

I don't give it too much thought. I barely have the time to – as soon as I finish my food, Liza's telling me to get a move on and get to the dirty dishes.

When I get up to leave, I see someone standing just around the corner of the building. Don. He heard everything.