Merryweather

Three

She was sitting at a nearly empty diner waiting out the rain, when she saw him.

Sipping tea, Penelope stared out the window with a glazed expression on her face, the rain coming down in torrents, when quite suddenly a waitress slipped almost falling in her lap, and overturning the plate of funnel cakes, and coffee she carried with her.

Penelope gasped and shot up from her seat, as the hot liquid scalded her arm. The other customers, an elderly couple and a middle aged man looked over curious.

"I'm so sorry, I'm sorry its my first day, I'm so clumsy," the waitress apologized profusely, she had a squeaky sort of voice and her freckle flecked face looked mortified by her mistake.

"Its okay," Penelope replied, "really its fine."

A waiter walked up to them holding a bunch of paper towels, he handed them to Penelope with a smile.

"My apologies, is there anything we can do?" He spoke with an accent that made her guess he was a foreigner.

The waiter looked to be around Penelope's age nineteen maybe older, he had a pale thin face but was handsome still, ebony haired, with high prominent cheek bones and intense ecru coloured eyes.

"No its fine," she repeated a little distracted, Penelope thought he looked really familiar she felt like she'd seen him before but couldn't quite recall where, and it wasn't at the diner either, she'd know.

He bent over to help the waitress and it suddenly came to her.

"I know you." she gasped.

The boy raised his head and fixed her with a confused look. "What?"

"You're him, the perp, you have my bike".

Shock crossed his face and something else, Penelope thought it was dread but it was gone as quickly as it came to be replaced by a look of utter bewilderment.

"I beg your pardon? What is this about a bike?"

"My bike was stolen a day ago, and there's no point lying about it I never forget a face."

The customers and the freckled waitress were blatantly listening now intrigued.

"Alright girly that's enough, obviously, you have me mistaken for someone else. I don't like being accused of things," he deadpanned.

Penelope faltered, she didn't seem so sure anymore, she could be mistaken, after all she'd only gotten a brief glimpse of the thief, but she had a gut feeling, she could easily tell when she was being lied to and thought the boy seemed a bit tense.

Before she could make up her mind about pressing the issue further, the waiter spun on his heels and sauntered out of the diner.

Penelope made a choice, then followed him into the sheeting rain.

"Hey wait," she called out, but her voice was lost in the roar of the wind, Penelope could just make out his silhouette through the thick curtain of rain, she could barely see three feet in front of her, deciding it had been a bad idea to walk into the downpour she sped back to the shelter of the diner shivering and dripping wet, to wait.

The rain ceased abruptly a few minutes later but the waiter didn't come back, Penelope decided it didn't matter she knew where he worked now, she could drop by tomorrow.