AN: Here we are, another chapter for this one.
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
Daryl tucked the little box under his arm, gathered the flowers up, and closed the door to his truck. With long, fast strides, he made it to the door of the café in a matter of minutes. There were people eating outside because it was a nice day, and the place seemed decently busy—though not entirely slammed. Daryl was coming at the tail end of the lunch rush, though, having chosen to take his lunch an hour late since he knew that Carol wouldn't be able to join him for a typical lunch. She'd covered for Jacqui to take off to an appointment, and he was surprising her.
She didn't know he was coming, but he didn't feel like he wanted to wait to see her until the end of a long day for both of them.
Inside the café, Daryl could see that Jacqui was back from her appointment. Carol was pouring coffee at a few tables, but the place wasn't slammed. There was one of the large tables that was occupied, a few smaller groups finishing up lunch, and a few of the smallest tables along the windows were being taken up by what appeared to be college students that were there for the long haul and had, more than likely, been there for a while. They sat individually, books and papers spread out, and worked, oblivious to what was taking place around them.
Carol did a lot of business with students—both of the college variety that camped there around their classes and of the high school variety that tended to walk there from the local high school to buy drinks and cookies when school let out for the day.
If she'd had some kind of "squatter's rule" that said there was a time limit that people could take up a chair, especially over just one cup of coffee, Daryl figured she might make a little more money by moving people through more quickly or ensuring that they paid a bit more than the small amount they paid for a regular coffee that they expected to be "topped-up" throughout the day for free.
Carol said it looked better to have people there than not, though, and she loved the idea of people furthering their education. She wanted to be a part of that however she could be.
Of course, one bonus to that was that the college did "advertise" for her café for free, and the local high school did sometimes have orders they picked up for faculty and staff, so Daryl assumed it all worked out in the end. If Carol was happy, he was happy.
Carol naturally looked up when Daryl walked in, taking inventory of her new customer and meaning to notice where he sat. When she saw it was him, a smile broke out on her face. He could feel the sincerity of it, and it made him smile. He waved to her, gestured toward the rear part of the café where Jacqui was replenishing the counter area where people walked up to make requests and selections, and kept going.
There were no Glory Gals in the café other than Jacqui and Carol. Daryl didn't readily recognize anyone, really. He chose a table near the one where the group was working, and put his things down. He walked to the counter and got Jacqui's attention.
She smiled at him.
"Well—look what the cat dragged in," she mused.
"Better'n what the cat coughed up, I guess," Daryl said with a snort.
"Are you eating with us?" Jacqui asked.
Daryl hummed.
"Carol eat yet?"
"No."
"I'ma eat with her, if you can hold the place down while we do," Daryl said.
Jacqui looked around, surveying the crowd that Daryl had already looked over.
"Mostly all that's left is bussing these tables when they leave, refilling coffee occasionally for those over there, and restocking. In ten minutes, the only needy table I'll have will be the MHC. What are you going to eat?"
"I don't know—might wait to see what she wants," Daryl said. "Prob'ly chicken salad, though. That shit's always good."
Jacqui handed him a cookie.
"Try this—it won't ruin your lunch. Carol came up with them this morning, and they've been selling like crazy. She's calling them 'Sprout Surprises' because she just started putting everything that looked good to her in a cookie. I told her we ought to call them 'Kitchen Sink Cookies,' but she's pregnant, so she won."
Daryl eyed the cookie. It did look like a kitchen sink type cookie, but it tasted delicious. He hummed his approval and nodded.
"Might oughta let Sprout do the cookin' more often," he said. "Except, at home? Sprout comes up with shit like boxed macaroni and cheese with a half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."
Jacqui laughed and tasted a cookie. Daryl was certain it wasn't her first of the day, but the cookies were a bonus of doing the job.
"I think these are going to become regular offers," Jacqui said. "This is the third batch we've had to make today. One person bought a whole dozen to take with her."
Daryl laughed.
"My little girl's already a successful entrepreneur."
"I don't think that's how it works," Jacqui said.
Daryl shrugged.
"Works for me," he said. He tracked Carol. She stepped outside, coffee carafe in hand, clearly going to make what would probably be the final rounds with the groups out there until Jacqui bussed their tables. "Who's this MHC that you're talkin' about?"
"Man Hater's Club," Jacqui said, casually making a coffee for herself. She gestured with her eyes and a tip of her head. "Over there. Group of women. Professors from the college. I don't know what they teach, exactly, but they're not really friends with Sadie, I do know that. At least, she knows of them, because sometimes they're in here and they half-ass speak if they see her, but she's not friends with them. They're always writing articles or discussing books or whatever."
"Ain't that what these college groups are supposed to do?" Daryl asked, leaning just a bit closer to Jacqui so that none of their conversation had any reason to be noticed by anyone else. He glanced at the table she'd somewhat gestured toward, where the largest crowd in the café was gathered, but he did his best not to be too obvious about it.
"I guess they're doing what they're supposed to do," Jacqui said. "But all their conversations are basically about how men are something straight from you know where, and women who give them the time of day don't have the sense that God gave mud."
"They sound delightful," Daryl said.
"Lovely," Jacqui agreed. "I serve them with a smile and leave as quickly as possible."
Daryl glanced back toward the women. He'd heard of the crowd before. They upset Carol from time to time by making comments to her that they pretended were innocent. Apparently, Carol's visible belly marked her as one of those idiotic women who hadn't yet realized that all men were evil. What the women didn't realize, though, was that Carol knew, probably better than most women, exactly how evil men could be—she was simply doing her best, every day, to believe that Ed wasn't representative of all men.
Daryl finished up his conversation with Jacqui as Carol returned with the coffee carafe and told Jacqui what she needed to know about the people who were left. Then, he accepted the sweet kiss that Carol offered him, and smiled at her genuine smile—one that wrinkled her nose—when he told her that he'd come to have lunch with her.
They put in their orders with Jacqui and sat at the table that Daryl had chosen. He pulled Carol's chair around beside him so that, while they ate, they could be close to each other and easily share the phone where he had saved some photos that he wanted to share with her.
"Flowers?" Carol asked, when he handed her the small bouquet.
"They were pretty," he said with a shrug. "I thought you might want some pretty flowers."
Her smile renewed, since it hadn't left her face since she'd met him at the counter. Her eyes glittered with tears that started to form just at her lower lids.
"This is so sweet," she said.
"They're just colorful daisies," Daryl said with a laugh. "Don't cry over 'em. Here." He handed her the little box.
"What's this?" she asked.
"Just somethin' I saw," he said. "I had to run by the store to pick up some stuff for Agnes. I saw it and I just—you know—had to get it. It ain't nothin', but…"
Daryl had grabbed the gift box near the cards, and he'd thrown the thing together in the truck. It wasn't much, but the look on Carol's face was worth any effort he'd gone through. She opened it up to see the baby onesie that he'd seen as he'd passed through the baby section—naturally taking a quick detour through there, as he often did when he was alone, just to imagine a life where he was sent out for diapers, wipes, and anything else a baby girl might need. The onesie had caught is attention, since it had a little flower on it and said "Lil' Sprout."
"Oh—Daryl! It's so cute! Where did you get this?"
Daryl laughed.
"Just the Walmart, Carol," he said. "It ain't special. I was…walkin' through there, pickin' up stuff for Agnes, and I saw it. Figured Sprout might wanna wear it or whatever."
Daryl didn't think he'd done anything wrong when the dam broke. Instead, he laughed to himself and pulled Carol toward him so that she could rest her head against his chest. She just needed a moment, and he recognized that. When he noticed the women at the nearby table eyeballing her in a way he didn't appreciate, Daryl raised the hand not looped around her body and used it to somewhat shield her face from their view until she was pulling away from him as a way of saying she had it under control. He pulled a handful of napkins free for her and handed them off to her.
"I swear it weren't my intention to make you cry," he said.
"Good tears," Carol offered, sniffing and wiping at everything that needed wiping. Daryl offered her a few more napkins. "It's just so sweet…what were you getting for Agnes in the baby section?"
Daryl felt his face burn warm.
"Nothin'," he said. "I just—cut through there, you know? Just—goin' to get her some juice and coffee…and she needed toilet paper."
"The baby section's out of the way, Daryl, for that," Carol offered.
The heat in Daryl's cheeks didn't die down. He shrugged.
"I just like to go through there sometimes," he said. "That's all. Figure—I'm learning where everything is, you know? That way—a couple months from now—when you're sendin' me out in a rush because Sprout's gotta have some more diapers or…or pacifiers…or whatever it is that she's gonna need post-fuckin'-haste, I'm already gonna know where it is."
Daryl laughed to himself and offered another handful of napkins to Carol when it became clear that she needed them. She thanked him and laughed, too, as she dried up the refreshed flow of tears.
"You have gone and sprung a leak," he teased.
"I can't stop!" She said with a laugh. "I'm so sorry!"
"Don't say sorry to me, hell…I'm the one that made you spring a leak! I don't even know if I ought to show you what else I got."
"Please do, Daryl!" Carol said, still amused and wiping at the occasional tear that ran from the corner of her eye.
Daryl opened his phone, but stopped to thank Jacqui for the food when she served them.
"What'd you do to Carol?" Jacqui asked, putting on a false show of being offended. Daryl laughed to himself.
"Assaulted her ass with flowers and a present for Sprout," Daryl said. "You oughta kick me oughta here."
"I just put crushed glass in your chicken salad," Jacqui said with a half shrug.
"I deserve that shit," Daryl said with a snort.
Jacqui squeezed Carol's shoulder and went back to work. The moment of exchange had given her a chance to get herself under control, and Daryl opened up the pictures on his phone.
"You don't have to pick any of these," he said, "but…I had a little time and I know we're getting down to the wire on picking some stuff if we're going to pull this off when we said we were. I thought these were cute, and I thought they were within, you know, Jacqui's parameters for what she said she felt capable of doin' on a cake for the shower."
As Carol flipped through the cakes that Daryl had searched for and saved, he passed his phone over to her so that she could see it more easily.
"There's like twenty possibilities," he offered, as Carol thumbed through the images.
Daryl turned his attention to his lunch. Crushed glass or not, the chicken salad was delicious, and Jacqui had given him a portion on his sandwich that he knew was bigger than she normally doled out. Every time she did that, he teasingly called her his girlfriend and said that her love language was feeding him more than anyone else. She always said she was fattening him up so that when they killed him and served him in the café, he'd go longer and save them from having to do it again so soon.
"I like the cake with that flower that's got all the different color petals," Daryl said. "Figure she could put us a rainbow on it up there with the sun."
"We don't have to have a rainbow," Carol offered.
"You damn right we don't have to have one, but we're gonna," Daryl offered. "You want this?" He showed Carol his pickle spear and she nodded.
"You don't want it?" She asked as he put it on her plate. It didn't stay there. She picked it up the moment that he let go of it.
"I'd rather watch you eat it," he said with a laugh. "If you don't like that cake, we can do one of the others—or if you found one…"
While Carol looked and debated, pausing every now and again to eat a little of her food, Daryl focused on his food. He also focused on what was taking place around them. Jacqui was almost done bussing tables, and she'd done a round of refills on basic coffee that didn't need to be ordered specially. The MHC kept eyeballing them, and Daryl had heard one or two smart-ass remarks that he was simply grateful Carol hadn't heard over her focus on choosing the cake she liked most for the baby shower that was coming up—a baby shower they were criticizing, according to the snatches of conversation that Daryl heard, as a tired, sexist institution.
Daryl didn't give a shit what kind of institution it was. Carol wanted her baby shower celebrating Sprout's anticipated arrival into the world, and he wanted her to have it—every last cliché-ass detail that she wanted—even if he had to buy all the gifts himself and pay actors to come and pretend that they were as excited as shit about the little girl they would be welcoming soon. He wouldn't have to do those things, of course, but he was willing to do it if he had to. And he really wasn't in the mood to let a bunch of assholes make her feel like she was some kind of failure as a woman for wanting that.
The more Daryl thought about it, the more irritated he got. He did his best to hide it from Carol, and he looked at the cakes she wanted to discuss and offered his two cents here and there—mostly agreeing with what she thought and offering ways to improve any of the options.
When he saw the group of women get up to pay for their food, Daryl excused himself, telling Carol he absolutely had to have a cigarette, and kissed her quickly before leaving her to keep debating over her three favorite cakes until he got back to be a tie breaker between the top two that she was expected to round it down to during his smoke break.
Outside, he lit a cigarette, and he simply waited.
