Once Bitten (An Anya Maynard Novel)

Chapter Five

Maybe this wasn’t the wisest choice, especially after what I witnessed a few mornings ago, but I didn’t have any other option at the moment. Nobody was too keen on the idea of me walking to work tonight, but anyone I knew who could or would give me a ride was occupied. Jessie and Brad were both downtown, and Steve couldn’t leave the store without giving someone they keys. His current options there at the diner right now were the evening waitress Mel, who was a high school junior, or Ted, the evening cook who was about five rungs down the responsibility ladder from Pete.

It’s no big deal, I kept telling myself. I was used to walking through parts of the city that would have the toughest man in this town running scared. But it wasn’t the streets that were bothering me. No it was the mud covered Dodge Ram I watched pull into the diner parking lot that had me worried. It was so tall I couldn’t see the driver when it passed me, but even so I knew it was Connor in that truck.

You can’t let him get to you, I told myself. He was just another guy, just another of the macho men in this world who let their reputations for being a trouble maker do the talking for him. Someone who used his tough guy image to intimidate people, to keep them away from him, and you know what, that was fine with me. I may not be tough by any means, but I understood the need to keep people at a distance.

I wondered if that meant he had something to hide too.

I shook that thought off, it wasn’t my business, and I really didn’t need to know anything else about Connor Brown. Except…part of me wanted to know, was curious to know.

God this town is changing me. Jess was great but I guess all her gossiping was rubbing off on me because I had spent years and years containing my curiosity, training myself to not want to know about anyone or anything. All that ever used to matter was what was in front of me. Digging any deeper only gets a person in trouble. Connor seemed like nothing but trouble on the surface, no, I definitely didn’t need to go digging any deeper in that mess no matter what story might be there.

“Oh Good,” a flustered Steve said in way of a greeting when I walked in, “Can you do me a favor and grab the drink order on table five. And let seven know I’ll be right over to take their order and then…and then I guess just help whoever else needs it.”

I nodded and hung my jacket up on the coat rack before starting the rounds on the unusually crowded dining room. It wasn’t packed, but about half the tables and all the booths were crammed with guys in blue and grey letterman jackets with a handful of overly made-up girls in matching colors on their laps. The only table with anyone through puberty was a booth in the back corner. Coaches I’d say by the whistles around two of their necks.

Table five happened to be one of the girl free tables. “Hi my name is Anya and I’ll be your server tonight,” I rattled off to the boys, “can I start you off with something to drink?”

Three sets of eyes ran over me in your typical overly hormonal evaluation, and the one sitting alone to the left gave me a nod, whether in greeting or approval I really couldn’t care.

“Well good evening Anya,” the blonde said smoothly, “I haven’t seen you around here before, you new?”

“Been here a few weeks,” I stated flatly and pulled out my order book, “Now what can I get you guys to drink?”

They blatantly ignored me.

“She’s definitely an improvement from the last one,” the other, darker, blonde across from him commented, “that one was a dog.”

The word dog prompted the boys at the table to having a barking contest. I sighed and waited for them to stop.

“I completely forgot, Ridge High East, our town’s rivals, had their homecoming tonight versus us,” Steve said quickly as he passed around orders to the table behind me, “we won and they’re all here to celebrate. The bus is parked around back. I don’t think Mel was gone five minutes before they pulled up.”