The Waitress

Prologue

October 2016

SHE needed to write.

It was like a sickness, an ache. She hadn't written – really written – for three weeks and it was gnawing at her soul. Eating her away from the inside.

But the floodgates were opening now.

She felt it.

It was three am in the morning, well before the dawn, before the heat of a late spring morning and finally something had shifted, shifted in her mind and soul.

She knew what had done it, knew exactly what it was.

Or in this case who.

He was still there, still sleeping beside her. He looked at peace now, like a rather overgrown child, long soft lashes hiding those Aegean blue eyes, the smattering of freckles illuminated by the subtle light in the after-midnight ambiance of her coastal bedroom. His hair tousled by their recent activities. He looked a little tired and older than his years, his hair wearing out a little in places. But still somehow angelic and impossibly young. A contradiction. The ultimate in contradictions.

He looked switched off from the world but she knew something would still be going on in that great big brain of his. He had as much chance of switching it off as she did. Even last night, even when they had been drinking and then fucking. Both had minds that were still whirring. Only orgasm and now sleep brought release, relief but only for a short time. She knew that was the case and more than suspected it was the same for her.

But the pleasures of the flesh had helped.

In her case, it had unlocked her writer's block and maybe it had helped him somehow. She hoped it had. He needed something, relief, connection, something.

Yes, she hoped it had helped.

This pity fuck.

She laughed at that.

At the absurdity of this situation.

One of the best- known actors in the world and a waitress at the café near where he was staying, where he had been staying on and off all year.

And she had given her body over to him to make him feel better, feel something.

He looked so amazing, so confident on screen.

But that was onscreen.

At the moment, he was a lost little boy.

Putting on a brave face for the world.

The ultimate, consummate performer in a role he didn't always look comfortable in.

Even after what they'd done to each other, for each other, she wasn't really sure if anything had changed for him. She looked over at him then, in the light of the laptop and the moon still peering through the white shutters of her bedroom. A tall man, he was curled in on himself. Not stretched out confidently as she'd have expected a man of his talent, but pushed inward by life.

He'd needed a friend last night and she'd been that for him.

Truth be known she'd been that most of the year.

Two stints living on the Gold Coast and he'd become a regular at the café where she worked. Worked to help put her through her university course at Bond! Bond – Australia's only private university. Prestigious.

She had earned a scholarship to study law – had topped her class, aced the course – but it wasn't her. It was never going to be her.

Melody Taylor had an artist's soul. A soul crushed by the relentlessness, the sameness of the law and so she'd returned to the university – English literature. She should be earning thousands of dollars but instead, she was waitressing to make ends meet, well not really, but to feel useful, part of something. But she was happy, happier now. She needed a simpler life, she needed words, craved them – reading them, ingesting, bringing them into her mind and then regurgitating and repurposing them. The writing course was probably not even the best idea, she worried it was holding her back, pigeon-holing her somewhere she didn't fit – she had a natural talent though she felt it ebbing with every passing day at Uni. But waitressing – waitressing had been the real education. People watching with the added bonus that people paid her – in money, leftovers and attention, love, affection. So many ideas for stories crossed the threshold of that trendy restaurant in the new sector of Broadbeach. Tourists, holidaymakers escaping, real lives, real problems. Relaxing and chatting. So many stories, so much better than a stuffy lecture about other long-dead writers. The restaurant was alive with stories. She just needed to write them. To step off the edge and believe in herself. In that great big brain of hers.

She smiled to herself at that.

She'd said the same to him only a few hours ago.

He was broken.

Broken by something the world thought was a sham, by something that other people thought was still going. That he himself had probably thought was a summer fling. A nothing in a long line of nothing. That he ended before it began before it became more than he could handle. It had been too late though, he had been more invested than he realized. He'd called it off, let it reach its limit – his limit and yet now he was lost. Only work to keep him sane, to keep him grounded.

Work and friends.

Friends like her.

The waitress.