"Tell her I'm Coming Through."
"I'll tell her you're Elena. If that's okay."
It was okay. It was more than okay. It made her throat tight in a way that felt like hope wearing a costume and daring anyone to call it costume.
While the glue dried, Elena told Jake about the diner's regulars: the man who ordered eggs and called them "the usual" even when he changed the order every week; the high school teachers who tipped in soft ones and gratitude; the trucker who left paperback mysteries on the counter like offerings. Jake told her about a Chevy that had come into the shop sounding like a haunted washing machine and turned out to have a loose belt and a owner who cried with relief, which Jake still did not know how to file emotionally. They discovered they both hated raw celery and both loved the particular quiet of a town after midnight snow. They discovered they were both pretending, a little, not to be lonely, and that admitting the pretense to each other made it less heavy.
The complication arrived in the form of a phone call, as complications often do when the universe has limited props.
Dot waved Jake over to the counter phone, cord stretched like a tired snake across a stack of napkin boxes. Claire's voice on the other end was thin with apology and hospital noise—the beep of something important, the far shout of a name, the rustle of a life that did not pause for holidays.
"Roads are icing," Claire said. "My shift got extended. Phil's still delayed until morning at the earliest. Can you keep Mikey overnight? I know it's Christmas Eve, Jake. I know. I'm sorry."
"Of course," Jake said, and meant it with his whole chest. "He's fine. He's becoming a snowflake. Don't apologize for working. The sick people didn't get the memo about carols."