His eyebrows lifted. "Only Chucky?"
"Maybe." I gave him a smile. "Or maybe not."
"Okay." He grinned. "Stop begging. I'll come with you. Just show a little dignity, will ya?"
I laughed. "Sorry. I just couldn't help myself."
"About time you admitted it." He glanced at Chucky, and his smile faded. "Don't tell anyone, but I've missed this little guy the last few days."
"Yeah?" I said. "Only Chucky?"
"Maybe," he said, a new smile curving his lips. "Or maybe not."
Well, I certainly had that coming.
"Why don’t you let go of the leash," he suggested. "I'll grab it from this side."
So I did, and a few minutes later, we were strolling along the usual route. Lawton had Chucky, and I had Lawton. Sort of. For some strange reason, everything felt right with the world. I had Lawton by my side, Chucky bounding in front of us, and fall leaves skittering at our feet.
If I were the type of girl to live in the moment, that particular moment would've been a good one, because for that brief snapshot in time, I felt safe and content. I refused to care that Lawton wasn't really mine, and that Chucky wasn't either. So I just enjoyed it for what it was. And it felt pretty heavenly.
By unspoken agreement, Lawton and I kept the conversation light. I never asked him where he'd been those few days, and he never asked me anything more about who I lived with, or what I did with my nights. It was probably a good thing, because I'm pretty sure at that point, I'd have told him almost anything he wanted to know.
When Lawton joined us the next day, and the day after that, the pattern was set. We continued to stick with general subjects, safe subjects, like movies, music, that kind of stuff. Once, we spent the entire time arguing the merits of paper versus plastic. It should've been boring, except it wasn't.
Sometimes, as we wandered the sidewalks, we got strange looks from other people we came across – dog-walkers, afternoon strollers. I could tell by the way people looked at Lawton – or rather, didn't look at him – that he made them at least a little uncomfortable.
But somehow, the presence of me and Chucky seemed to relax people a bit. Chucky was a little dog, obviously a purebred. I was a clean-cut girl in designer clothes. No one knew they were second-hand, or that Chucky wasn't mine.
It was funny in a way. Chucky and I looked like we belonged here. Lawton didn't. Little did any of these people know that Lawton was the one who truly belonged here, not the other way around.
Chapter 17
Thursday nights at the diner were unpredictable. Sometimes, we had a line out the door, and sometimes, we had empty tables. It was nearly impossible to predict, so we were either terribly overstaffed, or terribly understaffed. There didn't seem to be much middle ground.
On this particular Thursday, we had a line out the door as soon as night fell. I was running from table to table, trying hard to cover the massive amount of real estate made necessary by the night manager's stupid table-rotation idea. It had been so much easier even just a few weeks earlier when we each had assigned sections.
Under that system, all my tables had been nice and close together, giving me the chance to drop off extra napkins to one table while delivering drinks to another. But now, every single thing required a special trip. It was a big place, and all of us servers were run ragged as a result.
That's probably why I didn't notice the group when they first came in. No doubt, I'd been on the other side of the restaurant when they'd been seated and assigned to me. But when I glanced toward their booth, I had only one real thought.
Please don't recognize me.
It was the two blondes I'd met at Lawton's that very first time, along with two guys I guessed were their dates. The guys were two big player types with too much hair gel and enough bling to stock one of those low-rent jewelry stands in the mall.
But who was I to judge? With my ultra-big hair and bimbo-blue eye shadow, I looked a thousand times tackier than any of them. But maybe that was a good thing. I was a far cry from the soaked, makeup-free girl who'd been out searching for a wayward terrier. If I was lucky, they'd never put two and two together.
Still, I definitely didn't want to wait on them. It wasn't worth the risk. They didn't like me. I didn't like them. If they realized who I was, it would be awkward for everyone, particularly me if they chose to give me a hard time.
Suck it up, Chloe, I told myself. No one really looks at their waitresses. I glanced at a nearby table, where Josie was bending across a long booth to deliver a basket of onion rings to an athletic-looking guy sitting closest to the wall. His eyes were focused firmly on her cleavage, while a guy at a neighboring table took a good long look at her legs.
Okay, so maybe wewerelooked at. But from what I'd seen, the customers didn't spend a whole lot of time looking at our faces. Even with the female customers, they seemed more concerned with being seen as opposed to noticing what their waitresses looked like.
When Josie returned to the waitress station, I sidled next to her. "Want to trade tables?" I asked.
"Sorry," she said, "I'm at the end of my shift. No more tables for me tonight."
"Oh crap," I said. "You think Carmen will trade?"
