UNEXPECTED | UNEDITED

02 | Black Coffee

Business at the diner was slow, slower than normal. Carly stood behind the bar with nothing really to do. The business was usually slow on Sunday nights so there was usually only one waitress on duty and the cook in the back. The cook, Ron, had never been one for conversation, and Carly was pretty sure he drank more than just coffee to get through his shifts at the diner. She had already folded all the clean silverware into their napkins and wiped down all of the tables. Plus she had organized the menu area and made sure there were crayons grouped for the kids' menus. Red, green, blue, and orange. The color choice was odd and you really couldn't color a nice picture with it but for some reason, that's what every restaurant had.

The bell above the door rang, Carly looked up towards the entrance. She moved from behind the counter and towards the newcomer to seat them in the otherwise empty diner.

"Officer Milver," Carly greeted him, grabbing an adult menu from the shelf where they kept them. "Is a booth okay?" She asked, motioning to the rows of empty booths. He nodded, a small smile evident on his face. Carly headed towards a booth to seat him and he followed.

He sat down, taking the menu from Carly who pulled out her note pad as the routine began.

"Can I get you something to drink?"

"What do you think of the coffee here?" Milver asked her, looking down at the menu.

"It depends on how desperate you are for a caffeine fix," It wasn't very good, especially at this time of night. The coffee had been brewed that morning in a large batch and had been slowly burning on the heating plate since.

"Then two cups of coffee then," Milver ordered, looking over the plastic-covered menu on the table.

"Two?"

The blonde-haired cop looked up at her, leaning back against the padded booth seating before he answered her, "I could use some company, I'd appreciate it if you would sit with me."

Carly was surprised, he wanted her to sit with him? He didn't want to take his coffee to go like the other cops that worked night shifts? She gave him a nod before she turned around and headed back towards the counter. She filled two coffee cups and headed back towards the booth hidden from the kitchen window.

"I didn't know you worked here." Mr. Blue Eyes said when Carly returned to the booth, She sat down the two cups on the ugly table before she slid in across from him. It made sense that he didn't know that she worked here for multiple reasons. They had only had one conversation and that had been mostly about her drunken mother's antics.

The young waitress stirred in a packet of sugar into her coffee as she started talking. "Yeah, I usually work nights or morning shifts while Adam and Sarah are at school or asleep. With everything going on at the mine I'm trying to do my best to help out my dad." Carly usually wasn't very open about her family's financial situation but it wasn't very hard to spot that they weren't doing very well off. Sure, they were not completely poor. They still had food to eat and a hot meal every night, thanks to Carly and her fathers' occasional help, and clothes on their back. they had everything they needed but everything that fell outside of that category was sparse.

Milver nodded, taking a sip of his black coffee.

Ew, Carly thought to herself, only a true psychopath enjoyed black coffee. Ted Bundy probably drank black coffee.

She added some creamer to her coffee from the little plastic containers on the table and stirred it with a spoon before taking a sip herself. Coffee had never been Carly's go-to drink, she had always been more of a cup of tea girl but caffeine was caffeine nonetheless.

"So how long have you been a cop in Stonelin?" Carly asked Milver who was uncomfortably silent in the seat across from her. "I haven't seen you before... a lot of the cops come in here but I've never seen you before."

"I just moved back here, so not long but I was working as a cop in another city."

"You moved back? Why on earth would you move back to Stonelin?" Everyone in Stonelin wanted to get out of Stonelin and envied those who made it out.

"It just felt like the right thing to do after my divorce." He adjusted in his seat, closing himself off from the rest of that topic.

"Oh... Sorry. I didn't mean to intrude." She tried to laugh it off but it only came out awkwardly and left the two in an awkward silence before Milver broke the silence. She pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear trying to hide her embarrassment.

"It's alright, I like it here better anyway." He spoke, looking into Carly's eyes, "Things are more interesting here." A light blush covered Carly's cheeks, as she looked down at her coffee.

The two continued talking in low voices well into the night. A laugh was heard occasionally over the buzzing of the ancient lights and the sound of teenagers racing down the backroads but the cop paid them no mind. He had already found his person of interest, even if she didn't know it yet.

EDITED 

6/7/2020