Piper walked toward the door under the overhang as she shook rain off her umbrella. Not wanting to leave it outside, but also not wanting to make a mess inside she leaves it just inside next to the door. The diner was empty. Not a single customer was there. She had the whole place to herself and could choose whichever seat she wanted.
She takes a look at the counter and sees the seat on the third stool from the left was removed leaving the first two seats sort of isolated from the rest.
"Perfect." She was here to meet with Polly to go over the details of how things would go once Polly took her maternity leave.
She approached the two seats as the waitress greeted her.
"It's been raining all morning and probably will rain all damn day. G'morning, darlin'. Can I get you anything?" She removes a pencil from her hair and a order pad from her apron.
"I'll have tea please. Oh, um, where's the restroom? I feel like I look like a cat left out in the rain."
"All the way at the end of the counter there. Through the swinging door marked 'bathrooms'."
"Thank you. Um, can I leave my purse here? I'm meeting my friend and I just wanted to save us some seats."
The waitress looks around at the completely empty room and then back at Piper, "sure why not."
Piper grabs her small bag of essentials from inside her purse and heads to the bathroom.
After walking out of the stall she gives herself a long look in the mirror. She felt so rested and she looked it too. After the last six or seven months she finally felt like herself again. Or as much as she ever could anyway. She felt lighter and more relaxed. She left an unhappy relationship, nearly a year ago, that was slowly extinguishing her inner light. She was now free. Polly being pregnant was a very welcomed distraction as well as wonderful news. They had already designed the baby's room and she had planned Polly's shower. Now all that was left was to discuss the details of Polly's maternity leave.
She brushed her hair a couple of times hoping that would help it dry. "When I need a hand dryer there is never one around." She checked her teeth, put her things away and then left.
As she opened the door she pulled her phone out of her pocket and began checking her emails. Her head was the down the entire walk back to her seat so when she sensed a body in the seat next to hers she just figured it was Polly.
"Good, you're here." She bent over and picked up her purse which had fallen off the seat onto the floor, "I ordered myself a tea, but I didn't know what you'd want so I didn't get you anything. Maybe some orange juice. Or water. I don't think they're orange juice is fresh squeezed. The store bought kind has too much sugar."
Piper sat down and put her belongings away just as the waitress poured her a hot cup of water for her tea. "I'll take some honey if you have some. If not it's fine."
The waitress poured coffee in the mug in front of the person sitting next to Piper. "Polly! You can't have coffee while pregnant!"
"Thanks, but I'm not Polly. And I'm definitely not pregnant."
"You're not Polly."
"I know, I just told you."
"Sorry, I was- am, I'm expecting someone."
"It's fine."
"Um, you're actually in her seat."
"I'm what?"
"You're in her seat."
"There wasn't anyone in this seat when I sat down, so, no, I didn't take anyone's seat."
"I left my purse here to save these two seats."
"You left one purse to save two seats?"
"Yes, I did."
"Is this middle school? Are we in the cafeteria during lunch?"
"No, don't be ridiculous."
"Your purse was on the floor when I got here so if anything the only seat you saved is on the floor."
"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to move over a couple seats."
"You're asking me to move? Why? It's not your seat."
"Well, no, but it's my friend Polly's seat and she'll be here any minute now and she's pregnant. Are you ok with letting a pregnant lady stand?"
"I'm not the one who got her pregnant so it's not my fault. Also, there are a bunch of other seats here. In fact there's a table on the opposite side of the place that you two could occupy. The table furthest from me."
"That was rude."
The other woman shrugged.
"Oh my god, just get up and let me have the seat."
"No."
"It's my seat. I saved it. It's mine fair and square."
"One, not your seat. Two, your purse was on the floor, remember?"
"It is my seat." Piper turns to the waitress, "wasn't I here before her?"
The waitress nods yes.
The other woman asks the waitress, "yeah but isn't this seat mine?"
The waitress nods yes.
Piper huffs in frustrations. "If it's your seat why isn't your name written on it?"
"It is." The woman climbs off the stool and shows Piper the name 'Alex' written in black nail polish on the side of the seat.
In no mood to be cooperative Piper responds. "Fine then, Alex," Piper checks the side of her stool, "will… Diane be joining you?" She stares at her with her arms crossed and a look that says 'victory'.
Quietly Alex gets up and takes her coffee with her to the table furthest from Piper.
Piper couldn't really tell seeing as she didn't know this woman, but she swears the woman was on the verge of tears as she got up.
"Not a good move."
Piper looks at the waitress. "What? Why?"
The waitress looks at Alex's back then back at Piper. She leans in and motions for Piper to do the same. "Diane is… was her mother. She passed a short while ago."
Suddenly Piper felt like the biggest asshole on the planet. "Shit."
She won. She got her two seats. But she felt horrible at how she won.
After about 15 minutes Piper's phone dings. In the time that she gotten there and had been waiting for Polly, the rain had gotten worse and turned into a full blown storm.
Polly: It's raining too hard. I don't think I should be driving in this rain.
Piper: Of course not. Stay home, we'll just go through all of this tomorrow or later in the week.
Polly: Are you at the diner? I'm sorry :(
Piper: It's fine, really. I'm having tea and I might even get some reading done.
Polly: Ok, sorry again. Love you!
Piper smiled at her friend's text. Then her smile quickly faded as she realized that she was stuck in an empty diner for who knows how long and the only other person in there she managed to upset within 10 minutes. She sits back down and orders another tea.
After almost half an hour Piper finally works up the courage to walk over to Alex.
"Hi."
"What. Is this your booth now, too?"
"No. May I sit down?"
Alex absently waves her hand to the seat across from her. She was messing with the two empty sugar packets she'd used in her coffee. "What is it?"
"I'm sorry. About what I said. It was insensitive and thoughtless."
Alex looks up at her. "Yeah, it was."
"I didn't know…" Piper trails off not wanting to pick at a barely healed wound. "I'm sorry for your loss."
After a few minutes of silence and Alex staring out the window Piper scoots to the end of the bench with the intention of leaving the woman she'd upset in peace.
"I'm gonna order food soon. You can eat here too if you want. At my table."
Piper saw the slightest hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. "Yeah, sure, I'd like that. I'll go get my things."
As she gets back to the table the waitress is there ready to take lunch orders. "What'll it be, girls?"
Piper sits, picks up her menu and skims over it. "What's good here?"
"Two lunch specials please, Gladys." Alex hands her the menu.
"Two lunch specials comin' up." Gladys takes the menus and wanders off back into the kitchen.
"You ordered for me."
"Yeah, well, you looked completely fucking lost."
Piper smiles. "What's in the lunch special?"
"Soup and sandwich."
"Oh, do they have whole wheat or whole grain bread here?" Piper gets up with a mission.
"Thank you, Gladys, that was wonderful." Piper says with a smile as the waitress clears the table.
"You recognize that recipe?" Gladys asks Alex.
"How could I forget it." Alex gives her a sad smile.
"You girls want some coffee?"
Both nod and once again Gladys wanders off.
"Was the soup your mother's recipe?"
Alex doesn't answer immediately. "Yeah, she used to work here."
"She must've been an excellent cook because that was the best chicken soup I've ever had."
Alex smiles at her. "She would've loved to hear that. When she wasn't working she was normally too exhausted so she didn't cook too much, but whenever it got cold she always made soup."
"We don't have to talk about her if you don't want to, but if you do, I'll gladly listen. Tell me more about her gifted soup abilities."
With the diner empty due to the seemingly never ending thunderstorm the two sat there and talked. Just a constant flow of comfortable conversation as if they'd known each other for years.
"Where'd you go to school?"
"I went to Smith."
"No kidding. My friend went there. Well, she got kicked out of there."
"What did she do?"
"She got in trouble like every week, but what got her actually kicked out was… I can't remember actually. But it was definitely something noteworthy seeing as she doesn't half ass anything."
"Oh she seems like she'd be great at parties."
"You have no idea. What about your friend, um, Molly was it?"
Piper laughs softly. "Polly. She's great. She's about 100 months pregnant with, I think, an elephant because she's huge! I'm actually kind of worried about her. She's smaller than I am and insists on not taking an epidural so I'm excited to see if she changes her mind once she starts having contractions.
"I accidentally witnessed a birth once and I nearly decided to stop having sex forever."
Piper laughs loudly at the expression on Alex's face. "The human body is incredible and so scary all at the same time."
"I still can't believe they just removed my appendix and I can just live the rest of my life without it." Alex puts her hand on her abdomen.
"I had my tonsils removed when I was nine. I was over the moon because my doctor said I could have as much ice cream as I wanted, but my mom only allowed frozen yogurt. After dinner. One scoop." Piper scowled.
"One would almost think you're still disappointed about that."
"My mother doesn't condone indulgence. She's Catholic so anything enjoyable is automatically considered wrong."
"Never understood Christianity and their aversion to fun."
"You sound like you've had your own bad experiences with religion. Care to share?"
"Let's just say that they don't exactly agree with my "lifestyle", whatever the fuck that means."
Piper watched Alex for a minute. She didn't seem to be done talking. She twirled a straw wrapper around her index finger a couple times.
"When I was 16 I brought home my girlfriend. It was my first girlfriend. I'd just officially come out, with full support from my mom, and I finally felt… light. Free, not heavy. Being a teenager was already fucking horrible so to not have to be a closeted teenager was a slight relief."
Piper didn't blink. She didn't want to even breathe so as not to disturb the story. She wasn't even sure Alex knew she was saying everything out loud.
"We were on the couch, making out, when our landlord - we lived in her basement -walked in. She didn't know I was home and she was letting the plumber in. She didn't say a word. Later that night when my mom got home she kicked us out. We didn't have a rental contract because we couldn't afford the deposit and all the other payments. So she just refunded whatever was left of the month that was paid up and made us leave that night."
Alex hadn't noticed, but she'd started to cry.
"We slept in the car for at least a week, week and a half before we found some shit hole apartment across town. Turns out Mrs. Baker was a raging homophobe."
Piper reached across the table and held Alex's hand.
"I felt so guilty. Like it was my fault we got kicked out. I had to change schools. I was pretty smart back then. Would've probably gotten a full ride if I'd continued."
"You didn't finish high school?"
"I did eventually, but by then my life had changed in ways I would have never imagined."
"I'm so sorry, Alex."
"It's ok."
"No, it's not." Piper sighed in frustration. "I grew up around people like that, but worse. You know what's worse than screaming and making a scene about things? Not talking about them. Just suppressing everything. Burying it deep down inside 'til it grows and explodes and then you lose all control."
Both of them looked at each other a bit. Each feeling the other's pain. Each understanding that sometimes through immense anguish you can still find something worth continuing for.
Alex smiled a bit. "You're not so bad when you're not trying to claim other people's seats."
Piper smiled, "yeah well maybe next time if you respect the purse-"
"Next time? Are you planning on us meeting again?"
Piper looked at Alex's playful expression, "maybe. Maybe I am."
"Oh yeah? When?"
She stares out the window and realizes it's nighttime and the rain has stopped.
"Are you busy now?"
Alex smiles at her, "there's a bar just down the road. Are you any good at pool?"
"You'll just have to find out."