The Diner's Story

The soft hum of the neon ‘Open’ sign shut off with a sudden click. You looked up at the sound and found his face no longer highlighted by the gentle neon blue and red, replaced by the harsh white fluorescence from the diners overhead lights.

His eyes were still unmoved, betraying the unchanging emotion behind them. By now he must have read the menu enough times to know it better than the waitresses themselves. You studied the stressed creases that ran across his face. The lines sharp, with every minor flaw and shadow highlighted in the fluorescence. Gone now was the gentleness you’d studied to familiarity in the gentle light of the morning sun filtering through the curtains.

“We’re closing in ten minutes”, his feigned concentration was broken by the waitress’ hushed statement. She quietly resumed cleaning the booth behind you. This was the third time she'd wiped it down, but she had run out of other surfaces to clean nearby while she tried her best to seem uninterested in the argument that had been followed by a pair of thousand yard stares as you both looked for something else to say..

Ten minutes. That's all that was left of us.

The thought sickened you. It was an assignment postponed as long as it could have been, but it was finally the due date and you had no option but to submit. This day was coming and you had every opportunity to prepare, but doing so would only have prolonged the pain.

You slid the half-full coffee mug to the edge of the table for the waitress to see. The warmth had long left it and your hands no longer felt comfortable wrapped around its familiar shape. She took the hint, collected it and hurriedly scurried off as you took a deep breath and continued.

“So….. this is it”

“Yeah. I guess”, he briefly looked at you, a passing glance as his head turned to look out at the cars passing by. Watched as everyone else passed this rundown place by. The comfort of the well-worn seats had faded and he adjusted himself, unable to find a position that felt better, but also he was unwilling to stand up and signal the end of the long concluded conversation.

There was so much that was left unsaid. So much anguish. So much dread. So many years full of words that would now go unspoken. It all threatened to rush out at once, but the words died in your throat as you realized that they would be pointless. You breathed out the pain in a slow, wordless sigh.

Your eyes had their fill of him and began to drift around. They locked on to the brightly flashing claw machine and you felt a twinge in your heart. Clementine, your stuffed orange bear that had come from that very machine almost four years ago was waiting at home, soon to be relegated to a dusty box in the closet. It had taken him countless tries on your monthly dates to this diner to finally win it for you and now you weren’t sure how you would look into its cold eyes that held no emotion, but somehow always saw deep within you and comforted your soul when you cried into it.

The squeaky stool at the end of the counter caught your attention next. It was a seat that none of the regulars would ever take, not to avoid the squeak, but because the squeak was the voice that would announce the presence of a newcomer. Someone to meet and get to know. A new story to hear. Another person to join the community even if just for a single cup of coffee. The squeak had embarrassed him on your first date, his face flushing as red as the seat itself when its high pitched squeal tattled on him as he turned to look at you with the first flutters of love. He had sat there on the third date as well, the date that set this monthly tradition, before he graduated to regular status and left the newbie's stool.

The sign with the monthly special was carried through your view as the waitress gently set it against the wall. The faded chalk words needed renewing. "Two Pancakes and Hashbrowns", the same monthly special that had been on the board since before you became a regular. It was the first inside joke that a new regular was let in on. The owner's mom would always order the same generic meal with the request to ‘make it special’ and the rest was history.

The waitresses never updated the month on the board until the first confused customer asked what the new special was. A chuckle would radiate through the diner the moment a customer tried to be helpful by reminding someone to update the board. The longest you had seen was “May's Monthly Special” lasting until September, but legend has it that it made it a full year once, looping right back around to being correct.

You leaned back, taking in as much of the diner as you could. It likely wouldn't be a couple months before you came back. This booth couldn't be your regular anymore and the whole room wouldn't regain its comfort for a while. Maybe you'd retake your old stool at the counter. The one next to the missing ceiling tile. You first sat over there out of curiosity, stealing glances up beyond the ceiling trying to see what was in the roof. When he caught you, the owner laughed. The panel had fallen years prior, and his young nephew would always stare up into it that dark void imagining the magic that existed beyond the surface of an everyday place. It kept him quiet but after the panel got replaced, he got loud again, so the panel got removed permanently.

There was a story in every last detail of this old diner. You had been a part of a couple as well. A coffee stain on the wall, now partially covered by someone else's. The rip in the seat you now found unbearably uncomfortable after accidentally catching it with your keys. A scratch on the yellow pole in the parking lot and way too many tire marks on the curb. Even the man across from you had left a mark on the building when he got too excited after finally winning Clementine from the claw machine and jumped up and punched a ceiling tile much to everyone's, and his own, surprise. He got called Rocky for a couple months after that for the fist pump that broke the edge of the ceiling panel.

Everything that happened here was part of the story of the building and tonight was no different. Undoubtedly, the next time you showed up, you would get comforted by everyone from the waitresses that have been through it all to the old regulars that would regale the mistakes of their own youth. That would be the hardest part, having this breakup become part of the story of this place.

At one point the joke was that the two of you would have your wedding reception here, chowing down on a waffle in a wedding dress sounded like the ideal way to start the next chapter of your life. You never thought that this would be the way this chapter ended. It wasn't just the end of a chapter, it was the closing of a book. A new story entirely from now on.

It was finally time. You both looked at each other and stood up in sync. There was a brief pause as you both wanted to hug each other and let all the emotions out, but there was no catharsis. And thus, another page was added to the story of the diner.