Pocket Full of Posies

Chapter Three

  “Lookin’ hot today, Marl!”

  I glanced down at my black wardrobe. With the unflattering short sleeved button down, black slacks, and black apron…..well, let’s just say Shoney’s wasn’t popular because of the mandatory dress style. In fact, the only reason it was still around was because the lack of other places to eat. Sad, really. Most of the waitresses had to wear their hair up, but since my hair just brushed past my ears, they settled for making me wear a headband. All my life, all my caramel hair had seen was a half inch trim, always staying waist length. Isaac had loved it. So, naturally, when he left my hair went, too. Chopped it all off. It was weird at first, and I still wasn’t sure I liked it very much, but it needed to happen. I pulled it off decently, anyway.

  Looking back up at my co-worker, Lulu, I said sarcastically, “Oh, how you flatter me!”

  Lulu just grinned, shifting her tray to her other hand. There wasn’t much on it, but for a woman in her, ahem, condition it must feel like hell. “I mean it!” she insisted. “Maybe it’s not the clothes, but you’ve got this….’tude.” Although Lulu had moved here a few years back, every now and then I’d heard a little bit of a southern accent to her words. Even if she didn’t like it, or realize it, the country was catching up with her.

  “If you say I’m glowing, I will kill you.”

  “Girl, please!” Lulu responded with a roll of her pretty blue eyes. “I’m the only one glowing around here.”

  I laughed under my breath, knowing better than to comment on her recent pregnancy. Not a lot of people knew, including our boss, and I planned to keep my mouth shut; being as though I’d found out completely by accident. Lulu was older than me by a few years, but if anything she acted like a seventeen year old. I guess age never quite caught up to her, even with a son and another baby on the way. With blonde hair pale enough to look bleached and her signature violet bangs, Lulu didn’t exactly fit the persona of “mother”. Would you believe she was the greatest mom I’d seen in a long time? She was absolutely thrilled to be pregnant again—er, scratch that; to be having another baby. I didn’t think any woman was thrilled by the pregnancy. Judging by the many times I heard my co-worker tossing her cookies, I assumed Lulu wasn’t enjoying the “perks” of having a baby.

  Truthfully, I owed Lulu a lot. She was the one that got me this job in the first place. Personally, I blamed it on Piper being her best friend. And maybe she’d felt sorry for me, too. You know, with the whole wedding fiasco.

  Lulu was sympathetic in the woes that came with being in love. Her high school sweetheart, who she’d married, had an affair with one of Lulu’s friends. It’d ended in a pretty nasty divorce. However, even when her ex, Cameron, was engaged to the other woman, Lulu….well, let’s just say Lulu got some pay back. Cam eventually ended things with the other woman and he and Lulu were back together; soon to be married yet again.

  I was happy for them and happy things had worked out. But I just wasn’t sure it was wise. They seemed to really be in love and Cameron seemed to really want things to work out. I didn’t think I could be that forgiving. True, it had only happened three months ago so the pain was still fresh, but I could say with strong conviction that I would never get back with Isaac; even if he came back crawling on his hands and knees.

  But I wasn’t thinking about Isaac anymore.

  “Don’t you have a table to wait?” I teased, looking over her shoulder.

  “Don’t you?” she threw back.

  I grinned triumphantly, pointing my pen over my shoulder at the cook, Jimmy. “I’m waiting on their food. If this slow-poke would just hurry it up….”