“It’s actually pretty simple, once you get the hang of it,” my trainer said. Not that there was an official training program for this hole in the wall. But my dad’s friend, the owner of the place, stuck us together because we were similar in age and she was supposedly the most patient employee he had.

Her name was Gwen and she had moved here from California a couple years before. We had missed each other by a matter of years, but I could instantly tell I was going to like her. She took a few minutes to get to know me before we started our shift. She had lots to say about Disney, considering both of us had lived in states that had the amusement park. We playfully argued over whether or not the West coast or East coast park was better. Honestly, I never was a huge Disney geek, but it was fun to joke around.

Plus, Gwen had moved here recently enough that she was sympathetic to the insecurities I faced being new. I was grateful for that.

Even though I had grown up in this town, I was realizing I had left at a pretty crucial time. People had found themselves and fallen into their cliques while I was gone. Not only that, a good portion of the people my age were getting ready to move away for school.

Not Gwen though. She was going to be making the drive to Boise State during the week while living at home with her parents. Another thing I was grateful for. I hoped this meant we would end up being friends.

We walked around the diner, while she showed me all the things in the dining area. Or what they referred to as the front of the house in restaurants.

“So like I was saying, basically everything on the menu is the same thing with just a few modifications. Take a menu home to study.” She handed one to me. It was ratty and had a grease mark on the front, but that was part of the charm of this place.

“You’ll literally have it down by tomorrow,” Gwen assured me. “It’s basically burgers with fires or onion rings. Plus, the table numbers are a no brainer. Starting on this side they’re in order from one to twenty. When you take an order, just make sure you write the table number at the top. You bring it to the cooks over there,” she pointed to the kitchen, “and voila, the magic happens.”

She made it sound so simple, but there was so much more to it than bringing out food. There were secret codes for everything. For example, chicken wasn’t chicken, but instead chkn. You needed to make sure you went back to a table after they’d had a chance to take a couple bites to make sure everything was right. There was a ton of side work to be done at any given moment. My head was spinning from the info dump.

“Look,” she said nodding over to what I thought was table five. “He’s a friend of mine and his order should be simple enough. Let’s go over together and I’ll let you take his order.”

I took a deep breath and rubbed my sweaty palms over the apron tied at my waist. One person, it wasn’t a big deal. I could totally do it. I walked over to the table with the brightest smile I could muster.

“Hi, my name is Katie and I’ll be taking care of you today. Can I get you something to drink?” I recited the script Gwen had given me earlier.

The guy at the table looked up at me with a friendly smile. He had brown hair, cut short and styled in a way that made him look like he might have just rolled out of bed. He wore a simple tee and shorts combo, but the way he sat in the booth exuded confidence. I thought I recognized him, but couldn’t place a name. I pushed my lips together before asking, “Do I know you?”

His smile faded and his face took on a look of concentration so intense you would have thought he was diffusing a bomb. He must have recognized me too.

“Katie,” he said my name slowly, not taking his eyes off of me. But suddenly, his brows shot up, his eyes widened. The smile returned. “Katie Lynch?”

“Yes!” I said excitedly as his first name finally popped into my own mind. “And you’re Mitch, right? Mitch…” I trailed off trying to remember his last name.

“Barber,” he finished for me. His contagious smile was so broad it showed off deep dimples on either side of his mouth. This was a far cry from the boy I remembered from middle school. He had been short and stalky then, obviously not having hit his growth spurt. I remembered him wearing glasses.

“Where are your glasses?” The words came out before I had a chance to stop them and I felt silly that was what I said to him after so many years.

“Where are his glasses, she asks?” He said theatrically to Gwen, confirming it was indeed a weird thing to say. “The girl hasn't seen me in years and the first thing that comes from her mouth is about my glasses. Come on, Katie. They’re called contacts!” He still had the goofy grin on his face. I smiled back despite my embarrassment.

“You guys know each other?” Gwen finally jumped in.

“Yeah,” Mitch answered for me. “Katie used to live here before she realized she couldn’t handle the awesomeness coming off of me.”

“Something like that,” I said under my breath in response.

“Don’t be shy, everyone wants a piece of Mitch,” he continued.

I didn’t know how to respond to that, and Gwen just shook her head at him and mumbled something I didn’t quite catch. Our responses just made Mitch’s smile grow wider.

“Fine, maybe not everyone. But I’m so close to breaking through Gwen’s hard exterior,” he said holding his thumb and forefinger close together. Gwen reached over and spread them apart. He laughed it off. “Okay, but in all seriousness, where did you go?”

“My parents got divorced.” I explained with a shrug of my shoulder. “I moved to Florida with my mom.”

“Do you come back for college? Are you going to BSU like me and Gwen?”

For some reason, that harmless question hit me hard and I could feel my eyes begin to water. I knew he was just curious about what I was up to and making conversation, but I was here because of my mom’s death, not because of college.

I wasn’t going to college.

This was my first real attempt at being social since the funeral. I didn’t know how to respond and I wasn’t prepared to talk about my mom and her death at the very first table I waited on. It was all too much.

“Excuse me,” I mumbled as I rushed back to the bathroom, bumping into someone on the way. I didn’t care. Just like I didn’t care when I heard Gwen loudly whisper to Mitch as I walked away, “What did you do to her?”

I just focused on getting to the bathroom as quickly as I could before I made a bigger scene than I already had. I missed my mom so much and had no clue what I was doing with my life. Everyone back home was going off to school; everyone here was going off to school. Here I was, living with the dad I barely knew in a state that was frustratingly familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

I should be doing something with my life, and yet I struggled with getting through the day most of the time. Maybe my dad was right, maybe this was the push I needed. Unfortunately, I still felt lost in so many ways.

No one came in the bathroom as I cried, a small mercy for sure. So, I allowed myself to really cry. The tears fell and I let out a few frustrated sounds as I stood hiding in the bathroom stall. I even smacked my hand against the door a couple times.

The bathroom was like the rest of the restaurant. Charming and old fashioned, but in need of some serious TLC. The grout between the small tiles on the floor was black. There was a little graffiti on the door. But for all the disrepair, it was mostly clean. At least I didn’t need to worry about picking something up while I bawled my eyes out like an idiot.

After letting it all out, I took a minute to wipe my eyes and blow my nose before looking at my reflection in the mirror. My eyes were still puffy from crying. I hated that about myself. It didn’t matter if I cried for a minute or an hour, it would be obvious to anyone looking at me that I was upset. My skin would take on a reddish tint and skin around my eyes would swell. There was nothing I could do about it and it always took forever to get back to normal. So I swallowed my pride and gathered the courage to go back out.

“You okay?” Gwen asked as soon as I exited the bathroom. She had been waiting just outside the door. So much for being subtle.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just been a long summer and I’m still getting adjusted. Thanks, though.”

“No problem.” She replied before dropping her voice a little lower. “Trust me, I know all about hard adjustments. Maybe we can get coffee sometime and talk about it.”

“Yeah, that would be great.” I said automatically. The way you’d respond to someone you haven’t seen in a long time after they suggest getting together. You wouldn’t necessarily mean it.

Coffee would be great. I just wasn’t sure about opening up. I didn’t want to scare off my only potential friend with my excessive baggage.

“Awesome. Well, in the meantime, do you think you’re ready to learn some more?”

“Sure.” I responded quickly and knew my voice lacked conviction. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to work anymore that day after my outburst, but I had only been working for an hour. I wasn’t going to give up so easily.

“Okay, great. Then, I guess it’s time for us to go explore the kitchen.” She leaned over and stage whispered in my direction. “It’s called the back of the house.”

“Who comes up with this? Why not just call it the kitchen?”

She shrugged. “Who knows. But these guys are your best friends and you want to keep them happy.”

“Really?”

“Definitely. They are responsible for getting your food out fast. Or, horror of horrors, let’s say you forget to get an order in right away. Happy cooks are more likely to get food out on the fly, which means fast. And, that makes your tables happy. And,” she put her hands out dramatically, “happy tables mean better tips.” She finished her little rant with a smile. “Come on, let’s go meet them.”

She led the way to the kitchen. I followed her through a door that opened in both directions and stopped short at what I saw. I knew the cook. I would have recognized him anywhere, even without the warning from my dad.

Julian Alvarado.

He was the same, but not. His changes weren’t dramatic like Mitch’s.

Julian had always been long and lanky growing up, all knees and elbows, so his lean frame wasn’t surprising. I could see glimpses of the boy I knew in the man who stood in front of me. Even though I could only see pieces of it sticking out from beneath his baseball cap, I could tell his hair was the same shade of dark brown as the boy I remembered.

But it was his eyes, those eyes that were currently staring back at me, that were the biggest contradiction. They were the same as I remembered when it came to their color, the lightest shade of brown that almost looked fake in contrast against his dark skin.

But they were…different. I struggled to name what had changed.

I could hear Gwen’s voice as she introduced us. I gave Julian a tentative smile, even as his mouth remained straight and unmoving. He didn’t acknowledge knowing me, which was surprising because I was pretty sure he recognized me too. For some reason, I followed his lead, and also pretended this was our first introduction.

“You’ll probably see Julian a lot,” Gwen continued, oblivious to the uneasiness between us. “He’s one of two full time cooks here. We have a couple of part-timers. But with school starting, it’ll be more of us and less summer help.”

“Good to know,” I said, dragging my eyes away from Julian, unsure of what had just happened between us. After Mitch’s cheerful response to seeing me, I was disappointed my reunion with Julian went the way it did, confused by his and my own reactions.

Gwen spent the next few minutes showing me where different sauces were and the few things I would be responsible for in the kitchen. Julian worked on completing orders and didn’t offer up any additional conversation.

Gwen was thorough in her tour of the diner between tables. She might not have been an official trainer, but the girl knew her stuff. I mostly watched as she waited on the tables that shift. She let me practice on a few of the smaller ones.

As the evening went on, we continued to talk about non-work related things. She was easy to talk to and had one of those personalities that made you want to be her friend. The night went quickly working side by side and before I knew it, it was time to finish up. Gwen taught me how to calculate tip share for the cooks and explained it was a way of thanking them for their hard work.

She walked over and gave Julian a few bucks, leaving me at one of the booths with a soda. The two of them talked and smiled like they were good friends. I sat back and watched, feeling tension build. I couldn’t figure out why I was so uncomfortable.

It wasn’t until Gwen came back smiling, that I realized I was jealous. I wasn’t sure why, I didn’t have a claim on him. But the fact he wouldn’t even smile at me when he was friendly with Gwen hurt.

Were they dating? I hated that the question even popped into my mind. I pushed it down quickly as Gwen returned. I didn’t want these feelings to destroy my chances at making a new friend.

“Hey, thanks for sticking around.” Gwen slid into the booth across from me.

“Sure, no problem. Thanks for everything today.”

“I think you’re going to be great.” Gwen said encouragingly. “I know Julian comes off strong.” She glanced back toward the kitchen. “But he really is a great guy. Don’t be afraid of him.”

I just nodded my head in response. Julian was a great guy, I just wasn’t so sure about this grown up version of him.