Not a Valentine

Chapter 19

Elijah chose a nice location for us to eat dinner. It was a place in the center of our town, but it wasn't too crowded when we got there. Elijah had opened the door for me, and I thanked him as I walked inside. Once we were inside, Elijah had told us we should sit in the back, which I didn't mind as the front was sort of full of people. I'd like to eat somewhere more private-like rather than dead in the center.

Once we are seated, I pull the menu from the middle of the table and instantly smile when I find my favorite dish on there. I didn't know this place would still stay the same as it was for the entirety of my life.

Elijah catches my smile and asks, "You come here often?"

I didn't know how to answer that question. I could easily just say, 'Yes, I do, but that wouldn't be too true. We had come here the first time my dad had gotten an actual job.

While my mom was pregnant, she dropped out of high school in order to make more time to work jobs, but my dad had finished schooling. I mean, he went to a prestigious private school in the city where the tuition was already paid. He had to make good of the only parents his parents were putting into him and finish high school.

Once he finished school, he got a job that paid more with his degree, but that didn't last too long. He had enrolled in the military before it, but when he landed the job, my dad took me and my mother to a diner. We would eat a meal out for the first time in a while. We had spent our day making ends meet and finding enough food to keep us full, but we had never gone to a restaurant.

I mean, my parents didn't want to waste money on food, and with the three of us not having much, we never went. But my dad had wanted for us to go to a diner to celebrate. My mom had been wary, but my dad was excited to be able to celebrate. He said that he celebrated his first job, but the fact that I was born as well.

We didn't go often to this restaurant, but whenever we did, it was memorable. It was the first time we had spent an evening without having a single worry in mind. My parents told me of it often, and so I remembered; they told me so many times that I was able to see the scene in my head.

How was I supposed to tell the guy I was on a date with that coming to a diner where we spent a maximum of twenty-five dollars was the happiest moment of my life—that that was the most money we could afford to use? That, while people were eating here at the diner as casually as one does, this was a luxury to us?

It was a luxury because we didn't have the money. Not then, but we did now. But the things we did and the amount of happiness we got from just being able to afford food weren't things that many people would understand. Not from this part of town anyway.

"From time to time," I answer Elijah at last as I continue to look through the menu. I knew what I was going to get, but I wanted to see if there was something new on here. No, it was the same. The diner wasn't too casual; it had a little more fancier concepts to it, but it felt homey. I liked coming here once every month because it looked comfortable.

It seemed that the vibe was still going for this rastraunt, and that made me smile.

Once the waiter comes, I put my menu down and say, "I'll have the cheese fries with chicken strips on them."

"Together?" the teenage boy asks me as he heats up to write it down on his notepad. I nod and then feel bad because it wasn't on the menu—just something I had asked for since the age of four. "Um, unless it's too much trouble."

"Not too much trouble, but rather new," he says as he writes down the order. Then he turns around to Elijah, who orders the most popular thing on the menu. Once our orders are written, we pass our menu over, and the waiter slides it under his arm. Then he clasps his hands together and says, "One order of an odd combination coming right for you, Cupid."