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Three fifteen in the morning was my favorite time of day. That might sound odd coming from a waiter at a truck stop, but it's the truth. The bar rush was over, the place was mostly cleaned up, and the restaurant was generally quiet as a tomb. It also marked the 7th hour of my shift, and that made it all the better.
None of that was what made 3:15 any better than any other time, however. What made 3:15 so damn good was Cindy Lewiston.
Cindy always came in at 3:15, give or take a minute. She was always wearing her scrubs, fresh from her shift at Mercy Hospital. She was always tired, but she still smiled and we talked a little; she was almost always my only customer at that time of the night. Her long, wavy raven hair was either down or falling out of the bun she kept it in for work, giving her the sexiest disheveled look I have ever seen a woman wear. The mane of dark hair she sported framed her face perfectly; she didn't tan in the winter, but was out as much as time would let her be in the summer. Her tan didn't fade until almost February, and in our part of the world, her skin muted from its bronze beauty to a delicious creamy white for only a few months before her sunbathing began in the spring again.
The things I remember most about Cindy are her emerald eyes, and her pouting lips. She never wore eyeliner, and never used lipstick. Her natural beauty would have simply been concealed by them.
After months of her coming in and making small talk, she came in one morning, looking about like she was going to collapse. I brought her a cup of coffee a little faster than normal and sat down with her. She cradled her head in her hand, her hair falling around her face in a thick curtain.
"Here you go," I said sliding the coffee across the table. Her usual compliment of two creams and a sugar joined the cup in front of her before she even looked up.
"Thanks," she mumbled, the utterance followed by a heavy snuff of her nose. She sat up a little, pushing those glorious black strands up. She was crying. It looked like she had been crying for a while. The cream and sugar was forgone for the power of straight coffee. My face turned to a mask of concern as she drained half the cup.
"You ever have one of those days, Brandon?" she asked, her eyes rolling up to mine for the first time since she sat down. They lingered there for a second, those emeralds, and they burned a hole right into my soul. The whole thing almost made me want to shiver, both out of concern and out of excitement.
"I think everyone's got those days, Cindy," I said reassuringly. Cindy half smiled and drank some more of her coffee. The smile faded as the cup hit the table. She fished something out of her scrubs, a folded piece of paper, and flopped it down on the table before me. She meekly pushed it toward me and I gingerly picked it up. I unfolded it and written in a man's hasty handwriting was the following: "Cindy, I think somewhere inside, I still love you. If I do, I can no longer get to that place. By the time you read this at the end of your shift, I will have moved on." I let out a low moan of disapproval and anger and slid the note across the table to her.
"Does everyone have days like these?" Cindy asked, draining the last of her coffee. Her eyes welled up with tears and they fell freely this time, not just the one or two that had stained her cheeks before.
"It'll be okay," I said optimistically. "Things like this happen for a reason and life has a funny way of working out." I rubbed her shoulder and got the coffee pot from the burner. She leaned into my hand for a second and let out a sigh from the brief contact.
"So, no cream or sugar tonight?" I asked, watching as I filled the cup between her anxiously waiting hands. She shook her head and as soon as I was done pouring she pulled the cup up to her mouth with a hand on each side of it and took a deep drink. The cup returned to the table and she tucked a few loose strands of that fantastic hair behind her ears. She sat at the table, hunched over her coffee, her arms at her sides.
"Huh? Oh, the coffee? No, not tonight. I thought I might need something bitter like my mood," she said and half-smiled. The smile faded fast and she went back to staring straight at her cup.
"Need anything to eat, anything else to drink, anything at all?" I asked, trying to sound empathetic and helpful. I really did care for this beauty's predicament; I hate to see women in bad places, especially pretty ones that make my day better every day. I figured I should probably return the favor if I could.
"I could use more of that backrub," she said meekly, her eyes shifting to mine. A small smile peaked the corners of her mouth and in that instant she looked extremely sexy.
"I'm really not supposed to," I said. "Company policy and all...but I think I'll make an exception tonight." Her face lit up a little bit and she slid sideways in the booth, tucking her knees up to her chin and her arms wrapped around her legs. I sat sideways next to her and started gently rubbing her shoulders.
"That feels really good," she said quietly. "You must give a lot of these," she continued and rolled her shoulders under my hands. I kept working her muscles, starting at her neck and moving out, rolling them with my palms and fingers and thumbs.
"I used to," I said, leaning in, letting my breath tickle across her exposed ear. She took in a sharp breath but didn't pull away. My hands moved slowly lower, my fingers pressing and rubbing along her shoulder blades with my palms slowly rubbing on either side of her spine.
"Why'd you ever stop?" she asked, her voice in almost a dream-like state. My hands were almost moving on their own now, the motions coming back to them automatically.
"My girlfriend moved out, I haven't had once since...it's kinda hard to find girls willing to accept a guy that works nights," I said with a hint of sadness.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know," she said slowly, sighing again. My palms were to her bra strap and with a subconscious motion, the worked together, pushing and twisting at the same time and the catches on the back popped rapidly. I didn't even know I had done it until I felt her bra shift under my hands.
"Oh, um, hey, I'm sorry about that," I said sincerely.
"Oh don't worry about it," she said and squirmed side to side a little. "It feels better without it, anyway." She pulled an arm into her sleeve and pulled the strap off that side. Her arm popped back out and she reached up her other sleeve and pulled the bra out of it and it landed unceremoniously on the table.
My mind exploded with the kinds of fabric and patterns and colors that made up that bra. An eternity passed between her pulling her arm inside her scrubs and the bra hitting the table. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds, but I know I didn't breathe for any of them. My eyes were glued to where that hand was going as it came back out of her top and snaked up her sleeve. My heart was galloping like a race horse as it came out, inch by delicious inch, time slowing down for my eyes.
It was a simple, black cotton bra. It had full cups on it, no under wires—not that her tight little chest needed that much support—and no frills. It was a simple, black bra, built for as much comfort as possible without being expensive.
Somehow, even that was still damn sexy; and sexy or not, it was the first piece of randomly discarded lingerie I had seen in many months.