Ordinary Girl

Chapter Two: George

George

All the guests were eating cake and enjoying the music, and I was happy for them.  Our people are good people, and they had gone through a lot of trouble to put together this birthday party for my sister and I.  It wasn’t their fault that we just couldn’t get into the party mood.  Gillian had put on a good face, but I could see she was getting tired of smiling and pretending to be happy.  I felt exactly the same way.  I set down my glass of champagne and moved over to where she had parked herself in the corner.  “Hey,” I shoved my hands in my pockets.  “You want to get out of here?”

Her eyes glanced around the party.  The guests had reached that level of inebriation and enjoyment where they no longer cared if the guests of honor were present or not.  She nodded and slipped her hand into mine, and we escaped toward the kitchen.  It didn’t matter where we went, we just needed to get away from the pack house and the swarms of happy, careless people.  We went into the garage, and Gillian grabbed the keys to her jeep.  I peeled off my coat and threw it in the back before I climbed into the passenger side.  We didn’t need to say anything as she backed out of the driveway and hit the road.  That’s the beautiful thing about having a twin.  We just knew each-other without wasting a lot of time talking.  She shifted the gears effortlessly and drove with expert precision.  She turned on the highway and headed toward the human city of Rutberg. 

She drove to our favorite diner.  It was a small family-owned place that had awesome food.  It was always crowded with locals, and tonight was no exception.  The hostess found us an empty booth near the back, and left us with a couple of battered, laminated menus.  Gillian took a seat across from me and picked up the menu, she was just scanning the familiar options when her head shot up, and she sniffed.  “Do you smell that?”

I put my menu down slowly.  Hell yeah, I did smell that.  There were a ton of smells wafting through the diner, from the guy at the next table who had apparently bathed himself in bad cologne, to the smell of frying meat and French fries.  But mingling in with all those scents was the sweet-tart smell of cherries and cherry blossoms.  It was faint, yet still it made my mouth go dry and my skin prickle with anticipation.  I twisted around to inspect the crowd, my heart beating rapidly against my ribs.  She was here.  Our mate was here.

It was weird though, because we came here on a regular basis.  We knew all the waitresses, and even a fair amount of the patrons.  We’d never encountered anything out of the ordinary before.  I realized that the scent was too faint, she wasn’t in the dining area.  The waitress came, snapping on a piece of gum and tapping her pencil against the order pad.  “Hey kids,” she greeted us.

“Hey Yvonne.”  I gave the middle-aged woman my best smile, and tried not to look at her eyebrows.  For whatever reason Yvonne plucked away her natural eyebrows, and then drew them back on with a brown pencil.  She always made them a little too arched and a little too high, which gave her this look of being perpetually surprised.  “What’s new?”

She rolled her eyes at me.  “Pecan pie’s good tonight.”

I don’t think either of us were very hungry.  We’d been grazing on food and sipping drinks all night.  But we needed to order something, so I asked for a cup of coffee and a slice of the pecan pie.  I looked across at Gillian.  “I’ll have the pie too, with a scoop of ice-cream on top please.” She said sweetly and handed back the menu.

Yvonne was about to leave, when I snaked out my hand and stopped her.  “Say Yvonne,” I said smoothly, “Do you have someone new working in the kitchen?”

“Nah,” Yvonne shrugged, “Still old Billy in the Kitchen.  Oh yeah, we do got that new girl washing dishes though.” She pulled a face that suggested she wasn’t too fond of the new girl.  “I’ll be right back with your pie.” She shook off my hand and headed back toward the galley door that lead into the kitchen area.  I itched to follow her.  I wanted to bust back into the kitchen and find this new girl who smelled like heaven.  I could see Gillian squirming against the same temptation across from me. 

But this was a very crowded diner in a human town, so we had to be careful.  I forced myself to turn my back on the kitchen.  Gillian bugged her eyes out at me.  “What do we do?  I want to go back there.  George we need to go back there.”

I heartily agreed with her.  But I forced myself to take a deep breath and spread my hands out on the table top.  “Don’t rush Gilly.” I advised her, but I was advising myself at the same time.  “Eat your pie.  Drink your coffee.  We’ll pay our bill… and then slip around back.”

“What? I can’t eat now!” my sister hissed.  I could feel the tension radiating off her body.  Her hands were balled up into fists.  She was right.  We were not going to be able to sit here calmly for the next half hour pretending to eat and drink with that scent tickling our nose every-time someone plowed out of the kitchen door.

Yvonne came with our pie, and I gave her my most apologetic smile.  “Hey, sorry, something has come up and we have to leave.  Could we take these to go?”  Yvonne’s face darkened but her high eyebrows sort of ruined the effect.  Besides that, she knew us, she knew we were good tippers.  She shrugged and went back to the counter to pour the coffee into paper cups and to put the pie into boxes.  I slipped her a $20 for a tip and gave her a wink  before Gillian grabbed the take-out bag and practically ran for the door. 

I followed her out, carrying the hot coffees.  We deposited the food in the jeep and then cased out the building.  Anyone watching us might have thought we were intent to rob the place.  But it was even easier than we thought.  The back door was propped open with a box fan, blowing cool air into the hot back room where the commercial dishwashing unit was set up.  The smell of industrial soap and cherry blossoms was wafting out the door and into the area next to the dumpsters.  I slipped around the dumpster to a spot where I could see into the back of the diner without being seen.

Mate.

No!  Not at all what I expected!

A fat girl had her back to the door.  Sweat had plastered her black t-shirt to her rolls.  Her hair was pulled up, and pieces of it had worked loose and were plastered against her sweaty neck and face.  I couldn’t really see her face from where I was.  She had ear-buds in and was swaying to some music as she worked, spraying off dirty plates and loading them onto the plastic crate that would slide inside the dishwasher.  She turned to grab another basin of dirty dishes, and when she did, I finally saw her face.  The face I had been waiting my whole life to see.