The Waitress

Keeping Mum

Tom was flustered. He'd been ready to tell her about her mother. Had made up his mind to do it this morning but here she was getting in first.

"You know?" he said incredulously blustering about wanting to tell her, going to tell her.

Her eyes widened. It was one thing to guess, it was another to have it confirmed. And it was confirmed now.

"Wow!" was all she said.

"It'll sound hollow now he repeated but I really wanted to tell, was going to try this morning," he said again looking to the now still woman in his arms. He wondered if this was the sort of discussion you had naked in bed with your lover because she was that, he didn't know how else he could describe her.

"Are you okay darling?" he asked gently.

She nodded and shook her head.

She didn't know.

Her brain whirring and whirling. Tom pushed forward trying to............he didn't know what he was trying to do.

"Mum said they may have found her when I first got back and then well, then I got lost in my own dramas, and I'm sorry, it wasn't until you said Johnny was coming that I thought, maybe," he sighed. He didn't know how to handle this. How did you tell the woman you are too scared to tell you love the way scarier news that the person who abandoned her, is alive and well and living somewhere in the UK. He didn't know where he hadn't asked.

"When I heard about Johnny I asked mum and she said they'd decided that he would go see her and if she didn't want anything to do with you then they would leave it there and not tell you. I argued against that – I, I don't, I can't have any secrets from you Mels."

It was earnest and from the heart but Mels was hardly listening, blood thundered in her ears.

They knew where her mother was.

Who she was now.

Johnny had probably talked to her.

Being with Tom had been surreal but this....................this took the goddamn biscuit.

"Maybe we should ring them, ring Morag or Johnny or Mum," he said floundering. Everything had been so perfect but it had been and was a lie. Another part of his depression, burying his head in the sand.

"I should have told you on the first day," he said earnestly. He wondered if he should have said a lot of things on the first day. She'd leave him now. Not want anything more to do with him. And the royal fuck-up had fucked up royally again. His head was full of everything, full of his own dramas and he was making it worse. So full. He almost didn't hear it.

"What if she doesn't want me again?" she asked quietly, almost child-like, like the child she had been last time.

Tom's breathing steadied and his mind whirred to a stop and instinctively he said it.

"You have Morag, Johnny, Mum, the Blue Wave boys and you have me," he said gently hugging her naked body into his own.

"You always have me, Melody Taylor, no matter which side of the world you are. I wasn't going to say this – I didn't think it was fair given your life is so far away, but I love you, have been in love or falling in love since almost the first time I saw you. If this woman is stupid enough not to know what she has, what she could have then she's not worth having in your life Melody."

She cried then, and he cried too.

She moved so they were face to face, body to body and he could kiss her tears away and she had never felt so loved or scared. More lost or found.