The Waitress

Plans in motion

Melody was nervous.

She shouldn't be.

This was Tom. Her friend, the arse. The arse she'd forgiven. Who couldn't forgive that arse? She could forgive his arse – and the rest of him– anything.

But it still felt weird.

She'd had classes this morning and she was tired. That bone sapping tiredness that came from using the grey matter more than muscles. From sitting still for long periods of time and yet being so active intellectually.

Her classes were challenging and yet not. She was starting to wonder what she was really getting out of this course. She wanted to write. Have her voice heard and yet she felt like this was homogenizing her ideas and that some of the classes were so irrelevant to what she wanted that it was taking her away from herself? Sure, the course was great, perfect, helpful, stimulating and brilliant and she was doing well.

But she was doubting that it was really what she wanted and needed.

What she needed most of all was to write, to create, to put her fingers in the asdf jkl; positions and let them go.

But that wasn't happening.

For a while, she couldn't pinpoint when it happened, why. But she knew that that wasn't really the case, she had been lying to herself. Melody Taylor knew exactly when her ideas dried up and her novel, indeed any of her writing, dried up like the Todd River in Winter.

The dust and tumbleweeds drifted across the dusty desert pages of her computer, of her mind and it came down to one thing, one phenomenon – Cyclone Tom.

Tom Hiddleston had ridden into her life at a time of change and he'd helped move her forward. He'd been friend and muse, lover and catalyst and she'd never realised it. Never really really thought about it until he'd come back a few weeks ago with someone else. Comeback and ignored her.

She hadn't written since then.

Not a word.

Well, nothing intelligent or indeed intelligible.

Nothing salient or pithy or even just creative.

No, she needed to see Tom.

Not because she had fallen for him or because she missed him. One of those two points may be true, but it didn't matter in this case. He was her muse. Plain and simple and he had taken the words with him when he left.

It sucked.

So, she needed to see him.

That was the only reason why.

She needed to see him, so the words would come back.

And then there he was.

Walking down the Broadbeach Street on an August/September afternoon.

She tried to look busy, wiping over the same table four times as he approached. Phillipe and James both there for moral support and to see their friend. Johnny sat on his stool in the corner, camera resting on the bench, untouched waiting, watching, watchful.

But it wasn't her Tom. The one she remembered – it was his shell – but he looked hollowed out.

He wondered what had happened, but she wouldn't ask, she would never ask, it wasn't her place. She was his friend.

And yet he looked broken.

Hell, not on the outside, no on the outside he looked great, happy, smiling, joking with Liam and a man closer to his own age. She saw the new man surreptitiously look around like he was doing a reconnaissance and it was then that Melody noticed the other change in Tom's life. The increase of people asking for his autograph or talking to him as he approached the café, the two – yes – two photographers with long lenses trolling him from a distance.