She smiles broadly at that while I pay what I owe her.
“We’d love to have you back sweety.”
“You keep the coffee and the food coming and I’ll keep coming in. I’ll be your Wednesday morning rush.”
“Thank god, something to do besides listen to my brother on Wednesdays,” she says as she squeezes my hand.
“You love listening to me!” Dean yells from the kitchen and Shelby snorts. I can see by the look on her face that she actually does though, so I leave them to their bickering and head for the door to go home.
When I’m biking through Elm Street, I get jumped by a red haired Tasmanian Devil. Meggy comes rushing to me, running from the sidewalk up to the street. Now, in Berkeley, where I attended college, that could possibly have been fatal. Here in Charlington though? No problem whatsoever. Rush hour here consists of the pick-up line at the local schools and that’s it.
“Morgan!” she yelps and she manages to create a smile on my face with her enthusiasm.
I stop my bike and step off, starting to walk us to the sidewalk.
“You’re a menace, you know that right Megs?”
She nods earnestly. “I try my hardest.”
We reach the sidewalk without getting hit by a car. Honestly? In this whole encounter not a single car has driven by.
“What are you up to?” she asks me as she pulls out a lip-gloss and starts applying it.
“I’ve just worked for a couple of hours, and I’m going home now, possibly eat something and work some more.”
“Right, you write books, don’t you?”
Ah, it’s the Charlington-thing again. When my first book came out, my mother told everyone and force-fed it to practically the whole town. It’s my own fault this even surprises me, because I should’ve realised everyone knows I write books.
“Yeah,” I say, staring at my shoes, because somehow it still makes me a little uncomfortable when people that I know find out I’m an author.
“I’m so proud of you for following your dreams,” Meggy says as she lays a gentle hand on my arm. Her eyes are kind and I swear I can see actual pride as she looks me straight in the eye. It fills me with warmth to see her react so genuinely to me.
“Thanks,” is all I can muster in response. I’ve always learned that getting a compliment is like getting a gift. You accept it and you say thank you but I still find it hard to do.
“You were always scribbling down some story when we were in high school. There’s like three book plots you’ve told me about, which I’m still curious to find out how they’ll end up.”
That makes me laugh, because that was totally who I was as a teenager. I was always coming up with stories and was telling everyone about them, convinced I would write it and it would turn out to be the next great American novel. I never did of course, I just went straight on to the next story.
“I’m sorry I left you on those cliffhangers for so long. We should absolutely get together sometimes. You’ll tell me which ones are bothering you, and I’ll try to remember what I had in store for them.”
“Fuck yes. That’ll be such a relief. It’s like when your favorite show gets cancelled mid- season and they haven't gotten a chance to write an ending.”
Oh, that’s horrible. I’m a little ashamed I did this unknowingly.
“I’ll make it up to you if you let me.”
She nods. As she stands there, she’s still the same girl I used to be friends with all those years ago, yet completely different. It makes me curious about how her life has been.
“What have you been up to?” I ask her.
“Nothing much,” she shrugs. “I’ve worked at All-Out Food forever. I have this little apartment on Nettle Lane which I absolutely love. And I’ve bounced around between boyfriends a lot. It's not much, but I’m happy, so who gives a crap if it’s not much?”
“I’m so glad to hear you’re happy,” I say as I squeeze her arm a little. Suddenly she jumps up a little.
“Crap! I have to go. I have a date in half an hour and I want to look all pretty and not like I just got out of work.”
We give each other a quick hug.