“Order up for table twelve!” my mom yells from the kitchen window here in Milton’s Diner.

I can barely hear her voice over a Tim McGraw song on the jukebox and the clamor of Friday-night dinnertime voices. The aroma of fried animal parts hangs in the air just as surely as all the antlers and horns that serve as light fixtures and decorations around this fantastically redneck place.

When no one goes to the kitchen window to pick up the order, I exhale, blowing aside a long, blonde strand of hair that’s wiggled out of my barrette. I don’t even have the energy to peer around as I ring up another trucker at the register. “Table twelve!” I repeat loudly, hoping my twin sister Grace will hear me since she’s the only server on the floor tonight because we’re so shorthanded.

“Twelve!” Mom shouts, totally frazzled.

I give the trucker his change, plus a distracted attempt at a smiley thank you. Then, before he can say something exhausting to me like Looks like you’re having a rough night, Cupcake, I glance around the diner for Grace.

In one corner we’ve got more truckers near the jukebox, drinking beer and laughing it up in their baseball hats and flannel. At the counter we’ve got a string of kids from the high school on dates, shooting off their hormones at each other like heat-ray beams from The War of the Worlds or whatever the everlovin’ hell you please. In the other corner, a bunch of nerds from Full Circle Technologies is hazing a new batch of employees by urging them through the Sick Balls Mile menu; to the sound of raucous cheers, the victims are scarfing down squirrel, cattle testicles, and just about every other part of a critter you can imagine dipped in beer batter and fried until you’ve got a heart attack in the making.

I quickly ring up a couple of tourists who are still giddy from a day of wine tasting, then I look around for Grace again and …. Well, call off the dogs — there’s my sister in yet another corner by the windows that overlook the truck-choked parking lot. And, huge shocker, she’s yucking it up with a couple of guys. She’s even flipping back her hair and laughing as if it’s a lazy Sunday and Mom and I aren’t losing our minds trying to keep this place going.

After I politely thank the tourists for their business, I almost yell at Grace to get her bubble butt to work, but then I get a better look at the guys she’s with … or at least one of them. He’s been in here before, and I recognize the dark hair that carelessly curls up at the ends, the tattoos blading up his muscular arms and disappearing into the sleeves of his white tee, the broad shoulders and killer smile. I take a moment to sigh deep inside, because he is so my type. That is, if I had a type and had enough time for that crazy little thing called dating. Which I don’t — at least not regularly.

Nope, I don’t have the time because Milton’s is my life and it’s always been my most significant relationship. Hell, even though there’s been a slight outbreak in romance lately in Cherry Valley with my friends — Mandy Burnett is getting married and her sister Penny was hit right in the ass by Cupid’s arrow, too — that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen for me. Not with my family history.

Grace can have Mr. Tatts, and on her own time.

I hear my mom’s harried voice from the kitchen again. “Table twelve!”

Dammit, it sounds like she’s about to tear out her hair, and before she does, I take advantage of the lull at the register and hope that no one at the counter needs anything, then dart to the window and grab the two plates of what we like to call “Balls Out Barbecue,” AKA ostrich gonads slathered in a piquant sauce. Delicious.

I move to the table where Grace is holding court while doing my best not to look at the hottie with the muscles. Using my aproned hip, I nudge Grace aside and then slip the plates onto the table.

“Two balls out,” I say.

After a moment of shock, the other guy at the table — rosy tan skin, spiked black hair, big brown eyes — gives Tatts a scathing look. “What the fuck did you order for me while I was in the head?”

No use in lingering, so I turn away from them and take Grace by the arm, ushering her back to a mythical land where people actually get work done. I might or might not feel eyes on the back of me, and a little shiver runs down my spine. But if McMuscles is watching us go, his gaze is no doubt on Grace.

Like I care.

I get all the way past the swinging door and into the kitchen with my sister before letting go of her. Then I sarcastically take her hand in mine and give it a hearty shake.

“Hey, girl, great to meet you,” I say. “I’m one of the people who’s currently working her tail off on the busiest night of the week out there. Who are you?”

Grace puts on the sweet, innocent smile that has the power to charm the Levi’s off a cowboy. In back of her, Mom is shooting around the steamy kitchen, barking orders to our other cook, Irina. Mom looks like she’s a character who’s sweating out the last chapters in a Steinbeck novel, with bags under her reddened eyes and her bobbed, graying blonde hair stuffed willy-nilly under a baseball cap that’s seen much better days.

“Wipe that smile off your face and just look at her,” I say to Grace. “She’s busting her buns because Seamus is out sick. I’ve even been doing double shifts to take up the slack, and you’re out there as if you’re leisurely interviewing candidates for your next date.”

“I’m only making those contractors working at the Climax Vineyards site feel welcome in Cherry Valley. Then again, I do happen to be free next Monday night.” Grace lifts her eyebrows, trying to charm me, but I’m not having it. “Aw, Gwen, simmer down, okay? We’ve both been working way overtime. Tonight’s supposed to be our night off. You’re overworked right now, and you should get home and grab some sleep before you keel over or, even worse, tear off some poor unsuspecting person’s head.”

“You know whose head I would dearly love to tear off right now?”

Grace holds up a finger. “Ah-ah. I said unsuspecting. I can see very clearly that you’d love to rip me to shreds. You are so c-r-a-n-k-y, cranky.”

I close my eyes and count to five, and when I open them again, Grace hasn’t gotten the hint and gone back to work. She’s still there, staring at me with her big, baby blue eyes.

“Gracie,” I say. “Think about it. If I go home, who’s going to run the counter and register?”

She shrugs. “I’ll just recruit some of those cute guys out there to bus tables, run plates, and generally help out while I take over your duties.”

What pisses me off isn’t her breezy attitude — it’s that she definitely has the skills to pull a Tom Sawyer, and she could very well have a bunch of guys whitewashing picket fences for her in a heartbeat.

“Seriously, Gwen.” Grace is already on her way out of the kitchen. “Get some shuteye before you collapse.”

As she disappears back into the diner, I stew. She’s right. I look like a disaster, and I feel worse, but I’m not leaving Mom here to soldier on while I take a beauty rest.

Out of my peripheral vision, I see Mom slide a couple more plates onto the window’s counter. “Order up for table eight!”

All right, I have a choice here: I can mainline a cup of coffee to get my motor running on high, but caffeine and I are mortal enemies, and I’d be jittery all night. Or I can employ a weirder yet more practical approach to this problem.

Lifting my hands to my ears, I quickly massage the outer rims of them.

I stop when I feel Mom watching me. Then she nods, vaguely smiling because she’s the one who showed me this trick that wakes up all your body’s energy centers. She hustles back to the frying station where Irina is making a batch of fried Snickers for someone’s dessert, then nods her head and slides back into cooking action. In spite of how we’ve struggled to keep this diner open for years and years, before and after all the bullshit my dad laid on this family, we’re still here. I only wish Mom didn’t look like she’s about to collapse herself. But you know what? I’ve seen her in much worse shape, thanks to my rat bastard dead father.

I’ve seen a lot of worse things, thanks to him.

But I’m not one to dwell on the past, so with my ears tingly and warm, I shake off my blahs and head back out to the front of the house, queen of the counter once again.

Master of everything that’s ever tried to bring me and my family down.