Laurie flipped her cell phone closed and picked two orders off the kitchen delivery shelf. Ned, the short-order cook, peered at her from the other side of the shelf, clicked his lips, and gave her a leer and a wink.
"Keep it in your pants," Laurie barked at him and turned toward the dining room. She knew she should have worn a bra today. It was hotter than a devil's asshole back here, and her flimsy cotton blouse and skirt were plastered to her body.
As she delivered the orders to a couple of plumbers at table 8, she caught the glow of a lit cigarette in her peripheral vision. She walked back past the counter between the service area and a nearly full room of electricians and construction workers, who were chowing down quickly so they could get back on the clock, and muttered at the smoker in passing, "You want'a put that smoke out, Sugar? Missed seeing the sign over there? No smoking in here anymore."
The smoker snorted and flicked the cigarette down onto his coffee cup saucer. Laurie had a sense of a white-teeth flashing smile and an aura of sensuality as she passed him. At the door to the kitchen, she turned and nearly dropped her tray. The guy had movie star good looks, a regular James Dean. He exuded "construction worker," though, which, when linked with eating in this dump, meant he was a young man going nowhere fast. Oh, well, she thought with a shrug and continued on back to the kitchen.
When she came back out, the guy was smoking the cigarette again, and she snapped at him. "I told ya you had to put that cigarette out, fellah. So do it."
He gave her a sullen look and very ceremoniously dropped the cigarette butt in his half-filled cup of coffee and rose to leave the diner.
"Ah, hell," Laurie thought, looking around to see if Tony, the owner, was seeing this. He frequently told her he wasn't in business to lose business. He also was quick to tell her he'd hired her more for her looks than for her waitress abilities and customer services. There was nothing else she could do in this situation except turn on what Tony had hired her to do.
"Hey, listen, I'm sorry," she said as she put her hand on the young man's arm and pointed her ample tits, in their clinging cotton blouse, at him. "I hate trying to enforce that new rule in here. I shouldn't have snapped at you. I just had a bad call on the phone, and it threw me into a funk."
The young man sat back down on the stool and feasted his eyes on her rack. And while he was doing that, she was checking him out too. Nice body, she thought. Again, what hard work in construction could get you. Tight faded low-rise blue jeans and a white T-shirt stretched tight over a great chest. And now that she was looking at him real well, there was something intriguing about his chest. There appeared to be a massive faded blue tattoo curling out at the arm holes and neck of his T, and the white cotton shirt was gauzy enough that she could see that the design covered his entire torso. A little thrill went through her body, and her hands were beginning to tremble, something that could lead to disaster in her profession. She had to stop this. She promised herself she wouldn't be giving herself to any more of the type of guys who ate in this diner.
"Listen, Sugar. Forgive me, do your smoking outside, and I'll get you another cup of coffee and add in a piece of that apple pie. Sound like a good deal?"
"Does the coffee have to come out of the same pot that made this one?" the young man shot back. And then he flashed that movie star smile, winked, and said, "Just kidding. Sure, that sounds like a good deal."
She was blushing when she returned with the coffee pot and the slice of pie.
He asked her, "You said you'd had a bad phone call. Sorry to hear that. Hope it's not trouble."
"Naw, it's just my life, Sugar," Laurie said, plopping her elbows on the counter and her chin in her hands in front of him and, totally unintentionally, giving him another good look at her knockers, this time squeezed together, which emphasized the deep cleavage. "I was just talking with my friend, Reba—she's a hairdresser over on Pierce. We were going to get together to compare our recent exotic adventures, and it just hit both of us that we didn't have any exotic adventures to talk about. In this dead-end hole in the earth, we don't even have a life."
"I can't hardly believe that," the young guy said. "Good looking girl like you has got to have a real interesting love life at least, even here."
"Apparently not," Laurie snorted. And then Tony was yelling at her from across the room that she had tables waiting to put in their orders. When she had that under control again, she turned back to the counter and the guy was gone.
"Oh, well, the story of my life," Laurie thought. "Run up against anything half-way interesting or exotic and it disappears on me with a poof." And then she didn't think about any of this again, because her shift finished up real busy.
When Laurie walked out of the diner, she looked up, and there he was, leaning back on her car hood. He was smoking a cigarette again, and when he saw her, he gave her a saucy "you can't tell me to put it out now" look. That's not what made her jaw drop, though. What caused that was that he'd taken off his T-shirt, and she saw now that the tattoo pattern covering his torso was a cascade of faded blue roses, all tumbling down to the front edge of his low-rise jeans. She couldn't help having her first thought, which was wondering where the roses went from that point. This was immediately followed by a wet feeling between her legs.
"Thought you might want to give me a ride," he said, and he flicked his cigarette out into the parking lot.
"A ride?" she stammered. "In my car?"
