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Alice despises working at The Big Griddle Diner.
It’s in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere and it’s really just boring as hell.
Particularly the graveyard shift—the exact shift she’s currently cursed with, having drawn the short end of the stick with her co-worker Martin because Martin’s a fucking dick. It’s just countless hours of nothing to do, the clock ticking at a snail’s pace. There are only so many times one person can possibly refill the salt shakers before they lose their mind.
Alice kind of just hates her job in general. There’s absolutely nothing appealing about wiping down sticky tables and having to deal with grown-ass men throwing their loose change at you. But it’s what you gotta do. The job market is abysmal.
Yet the one thing that her job allows Alice to do is people-watch. Really, it’s one of the only things she can do around here sometimes. That is, if there are even any patrons in the first place.
Alice leans against the counter, trying to calculate when she can time her next bathroom break without causing any suspicions with her manager that she’s just scrolling TikTok in there. She will be, but he doesn’t need to know that. The diner is as good as dead, which shouldn’t be that surprising considering the late hour. Even then, the diner is never really functioning at half-capacity.
There’s Gary in his regular corner, sipping a lukewarm coffee that Alice has the utmost privilege of refilling every ten minutes. There’s a typical family of four, clearly staying at the motel attached to the diner with their annoying iPad-kids.
And most interestingly, there are also a couple of men who have just sat down at the booth closest to the exit. Alice pauses for a moment and watches them. She isn’t so sure that they’re aware that everyone in here can see their legs interwining under the table, but she’ll keep that observation to herself.
“Isn’t it your job to go serve them?” Dorian, the only cook who is also stuck on the graveyard shift, says in his usual agitating tone behind her shoulder.
“Isn’t your job to mind your business?” Alice retorts.
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” he warns.
Alice snorts. “You don’t sign my paychecks.”
“That wasn’t a metaphor. I literally feed you.”
Alice turns around to shoot him a glare. “You mean the burnt pancakes?”
“I’ll poison them next time,” he threatens. It honestly may not be a joke with his questionable cooking. Dorian only got the job because his uncle runs the motel.
“Hey,” the manager, Max, shouts, rounding the corner of the office he basically locks himself in all shift unless he wants to yell at someone. “You two quit yappin’. Alice, they’ve been sitting for two minutes. Go greet them.”
Internally, Alice groans, but because she’s a kiss-ass who kind of really badly needs a job, she smiles—fakely yet politely at Max.
Dude’s a dick just like fucking Martin.
So, against her own will, Alice walks up to the table. She stands there, notepad and purple pen in hand—the pen she had to fight Max on letting her use because he really runs this lifeless diner like the Navy—and is… completely ignored. The men are clearly more engaged in each other than whatever Alice has to offer them, which, for the record, is food; the whole reason they’d be in a diner in the first place.
“Buck, I’m just saying—”
“Ahem,” Alice coughs out awkwardly to grab their attention, accidentally cutting off the man on the left with darker hair, who’s been anxiously tearing up a napkin since they sat down.
Both the men look up at her a little startled, and whoa. Alice may be a lesbian, but she can acknowledge when a man is deemed conventionally attractive. She doesn’t really get it, but if they scream ‘type of guy her older sister Maia would ruin her life over’ then she knows they gotta be at least semi-attractive. And these men certainly are. They really define the picture-perfect guy that Alice would’ve pretended to have a crush on in high school just so her annoying friends would get off her back.
But—and this might just be because Alice is bored as fuck and lets her imagination run wild to combat this, they seem to be more interested in each other than Alice would deem regular for any other group of men that have passed through the diner at night. Alice has become accustomed to a lot of truck drivers meeting up here. These two certainly aren’t that.
Alice’s gaydar senses are tingling. Like Spider-Man.
The vibes are giving incredibly gay.
But alas, she has a job to do, which is to take their orders and hand them off to Dorian—not speculate headcanons about what colors they fought over for their wedding. But just to be clear, dude with the birthmark totally fought for pink.
“Welcome to The Big Griddle Diner,” she fakes the enthusiasm that Max will scowl her for later if she doesn’t. “How are you guys doing tonight?”
“Uh—um, good. Just, a little tired,” Birthmark responds for them both.
“I can imagine. Where’d you two come from?” Alice asks because making small talk means tips, despite how awkward it is every time. It’s just another thing she hates about this job.
“LA,” he responds, before correcting, “well, coming from Nashville but originally from LA.”
“Wow, LA.” Alice grins, feigning interest. “Are you two actors?”
“No. Firefighters,” the anxious one answers.
“Oh, that’s way more cool,” she says. The biceps of steel really make more sense now. Her next bet was low-grade bodybuilders because what’s more gay than a room of men flexing their muscles?
“So, do we want any drinks? Or are we ready to order?” she asks, even though she can see the untouched menus at the end of the table.
Birthmark smiles at her sheepishly as he grabs the menu. “Um, water will be fine. We might need more time with the menu, though.”
“No problem. I’ll grab that for you guys now. Take your time.” She smiles at them before retreating back to the counter, but not without hearing their continued squabbling.
“Buck, don’t ignore what I was saying,” the anxious one says, not even opening a menu.
He’s ignored by his… ‘friend’. “Oh, look, they have waffles.”
“Seriously, man—” Alice hears the other one groan as she walks away to grab the waters.
“So,” Dorian begins when she rounds the counter, “what’s your guess on them?” he gestures to the two men.
It’s a little game they play on nights like these, making up shit about the diners. Alice may not particularly like Dorian, but he’s all the company she has on shift—besides Max’s bitchass. It’s really either this or be forced to listen to Gary recap every specific detail of the latest Baseball World Cup game and there is nothing more boring in the world than baseball.
“I can’t tell if they’re dating or not,” she answers. “They’re fighting, though, no argument there, but I can’t tell what about yet either.”
Dorian rolls his eyes. “You always assume everyone is dating.”
“Maybe because I’m so full of joy and whimsy.”
He scoffs. “That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.”
“Okay, but look at them.” Alice points as they whisper hushed words over the menus. Her pointing may have been a little too obvious, but clearly they’re both oblivious since neither looks her way. “Nothing about this screams heterosexual.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Yes, actually,” Alice says. Arguing or not, she knows she’s right about these two. There’s some gay-fishiness in the air. “If I win, you have to roll my silverware for a month.”
Dorian nods. “If I win, you gotta clean the grill.”
Alice scoffs, but she agrees nonetheless, even if it’s the shittest job in the diner. She has trust. If there’s one thing Alice knows, it’s homoerotic friendships. She wouldn’t wish the trials and tribulations of a lesbian situationship on her worst enemy.
“Deal.”
“No cheating,” Dorian grits.
“Won’t need to,” Alice bites back, grabbing the glasses of water and walking back over to the firefighters.
“Here are those waters,” she says too chipperly as she sets them down on the table. “Now, are we ready to order?”
The anxious one undoubtedly still hasn’t really bothered to look at the menu, judging the way his eyes widen at her question. Thankfully, Birthmark chimes in.
“I’ll have the… eggs and bacon with some hash browns,” he says, before looking across the table. “Blueberry waffles good for you, Eddie?”
Eddie blinks, and Alice doesn’t have to be delusional to see how his cheeks subtly heat-up. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, that’s perfect.”
Alice jots down their orders, but her eyes linger on the two of them over the top of the notepad. Eddie seems stuck in motion, staring unwaveringly at the other man in a kind of amazement—like remembering one’s preferred diner order is a marriage proposal and not literally the bare minimum, but Alice can’t judge too harshly. Her bet relies on this shit.
On the other hand, Birthmark appears to be avoiding his eyes. He stares down at the menu, studying the kids' section like it will save him from… whatever this is.
Clearly, there’s an elephant in the room along with these two. Alice is determined to acknowledge it. She loves elephants.
“Okay,” she sings, eyes darting between the two of them. “I’ll go put these in now. Anything else I can do for you guys?”
“I think we’re good,” Birthmark coughs out awkwardly before she walks away.
Alice would never admit that she’s eavesdropping on the two firefighters’ conversation, but that’s exactly what she’s doing. She had been watching them from the counter between topping off Gary’s coffee and having to clean a spill from one of the iPad-kids, but she still couldn’t hear them that well.
So after dropping off their food ten minutes ago, Alice parks herself at the booth beside theirs, wiping it down rapidly, even though nobody has even sat there all day. Though in her defence, it’s not so hard to eavesdrop with how quiet the diner is anyway. Their voices carry in the corner here.
“I’m just saying,” Eddie, whose face she can only see from this angle, says, “I thought you’d have a different reaction about this whole thing with your parents. That you’d wanna actually talk about it.”
Oh, tea?
“And I’m just saying, it doesn’t bother me,” the other replies, toeing the line of annoyance.
“But maybe it should.”
“Why, though?” Alice can still hear Birthmark’s snort from behind his back. “Doesn’t really change my life in the slightest.”
“I get that, Buck, but—like, doesn’t it make you think?”
“About?” Birthmark—Buck questions.
Odd name but what the hell.
Alice watches not so conspicuously as she thinks she is, while Eddie lets out a deep sigh. “I don’t know. The sanctity of marriage. I mean, you said they were together for 49 years, that’s a lot of time to throw away.”
“Of course you’d say that—”
“What?”
“The sanctity of marriage. Really?”
Alice is so invested in this.
Eddie narrows his eyes. Alice ducks further into the booth when his gaze almost crosses her way. “What are you implying?”
“I think you know what I’m implying.”
Well, Alice doesn’t know what you’re implying and she’d really like to!!
“Buck, it’s not the point—”
Buck cuts him off. “There is no point. They gave up. They were supposed to have each other’s backs, but they didn’t. That’s on them. It doesn’t… affect me. That’s not—” Alice sees the back of his shoulders shake as he takes in a deep breath. “That’s not the family that matters to me.”
“The family we chose,” Eddie finishes for him.
Alice fears she’s missing context here, or this shit goes deeper than she’ll ever know. Either way, the family implication is crazy.
“Exactly.” Buck nods. “I already spoke to Maddie about it. I’m good, man.”
“I just…” Eddie hesitates. “I worry, okay?” he says it like it physically pains him to get the words out. “That’s not a crime.”
“About me?” Buck asks. Alice might bang her head against the table.
These stupid fucking gays.
Eddie nods shyly.
“That’s—That’s sweet, but,” Buck says. “You don’t need to. I’m good, I mean it.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Alice doesn’t have to see Buck’s face to know he’s grinning. The smile can be heard through his words. “Now, eat your waffles.”
“They’re not as good as yours,” Eddie claims and he’s not wrong. A child could make better waffles than Dorian.
Buck laughs lightly, the tension from before minimizing in a second. “Well, I promise I’ll make them for you and Chris when we get back home. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Unfortunately, after that, the family of four demands all of Alice’s attention again by smashing and spilling an entire bottle of maple syrup. So she tries to watch Buck and Eddie while she’s on her hands and knees scrubbing sticky syrup off the ground, but she can’t hear a word they say over these rowdy demon children.
It’s not until later, when Buck’s already making his way out the door, that she gets the chance to speak to them again, with Eddie at the counter as he waits to pay.
“Here’s your last chance,” Dorian teases lowly.
“I got this in the bag,” she mutters back before turning around to Eddie. “So, how was everything?” she asks with too wide a smile.
“Uh, good. It was good,” he answers.
“Great! You paying for both?”
“Yep.”
“Need an itemized receipt? To split the cost or…”
Eddie shifts on his feet. “No, that’s not necessary.”
Alice decides to be bold. Really, she’s got nothing left to lose as she watches Eddie calculate the 20% for her tip. “Ah, paying for the boyfriend, I see. Lucky man.”
The words almost make her cringe at how unnatural the segue is. Never once has she said the words lucky man. Customer service really makes you say the most unhinged shit like alrighty and livin’ the dream.
In a single instance, Eddie’s cheeks heat up. “Oh, he’s not—”
Alice ignores him as she readies the payment terminal. “That’s so sweet. You really don’t see that often these days, especially through here.”
“Buck and I aren’t—”
“You guys staying in the honeymoon suite in the motel? It’s not much, but it’s the best you’re gonna get around here. It’ll serve you well, though, trust me.” Which is ironic because Alice has never even set foot into the honeymoon suite, and from the horror stories? Maybe she never wants to.
“Oh, I’m—” Eddie chokes. “I’m straight.”
Alice slams the brakes. She practically freezes on the spot. Out of everything she’s witnessed tonight between these two men, this might be the one thing actually to stump her.
What do you mean?
“Are you serious?” she asks him, cutting the customer service crap.
“Uh, yes?” Eddie answers, sounding more unsure every passing minute.
Oh. So he's just stupid.
But Alice can’t lose this bet. She really doesn’t want to clean the grill and Dorian is such an annoying winner.
Okay. She can work with this.
“Are you sure?” she asks slightly abruptly.
Eddie stumbles over his words. “I—I think I would know.”
“Not necessary. I didn’t realize I was a lesbian until I was, like, seventeen,” Alice responds. “And that was after having kissed a girl so…”
“That doesn’t mean I’m—” he flushes instead of finishing the sentence.
“... Gay?”
Eddie doesn’t nod or shake his head. He just stares at her with these bulging, big, brown eyes. Seriously, those things should be considered a hazard.
Alice decides to take a different approach, and really prays that Max is taking a smoke break and not overhearing this whole conversation from his office. She cannot afford a write-up right now.
“Oh, you’re lying.” She snorts. “Give it up. C’mon. It’s obvious.”
Eddie furrows his brows. “What?”
“That you like him.”
Those big-ass boba eyes widen even more. “Wha—Who said that?” he stammers. “Did Buck?”
Which is funny, considering Buck has been pasted by Eddie’s side all night and Alice has barely spoken more than two sentences to him.
“No one had to tell me. I have eyes,” she answers. Eddie stares at her blankly. She’s honestly shocked that nobody has ever pointed this out to him so blatantly before.
She continues. “First of all, I saw you checking out your… friend’s ass, and there isn’t even a whole lot there. You know, you really need to be more careful with your leering.”
Eddie blushes so hard that Alice can see it creeping down his neck. It’s sweet, if not also entirely agonizing. “No, no. That’s—That’s not—” he attempts to defend. “We’re just friends. Best friends. Nothing more.”
In Alice’s experience—one she’d very much not like to re-live, actually—being best friends doesn’t always mean there isn’t more under the surface. It was like that for her at least, maybe not her friend, but… she knows it is for these two as well.
If she’s trying to live vicariously through these random firefighters, then so be it!
“Please. Like that makes it any less gay,” she mutters before recuperating. “Look, man. I know you don’t know me, but I’ve been you, okay? Maybe not as pathetic but…”
Eddie stops her. “Okay, let’s say, hypothetically, you’re right. Not that we’re together but that I—” he trails off, losing the words.
“Hypothetically,” Alice mocks, which probably doesn’t help much.
Eddie ignores her with a sigh. “What do I do?”
“Uh, tell him?” Alice says like it’s obvious—which is ironic, given her history.
“I can’t do that,” Eddie stresses.
Wow, it really is like looking into a mirror.
She has to resist the urge to roll her eyes. “Why not? Is he straight? Because believe me, he is not.”
“No, no, Buck’s bi,” Eddie says.
“Oh, slay. Then do it.”
“I—I can’t,” Eddie emphasizes.
Alice gets it, she really does. She means it when she says she’s been there—the anxiety over coming out, the fear of rejection, of love unrequited. But if she can’t have that sappy happy ending, maybe at least these two can.
Call it her good deed for the year.
“You want my advice?” she asks. Eddie nods a little hesitantly, which is fair enough. No sane person ever takes her advice, but something about these two doesn’t scream sane.
“Ruin the friendship,” she says. “Trust me. It’s better that than regretting never saying anything forever. Trust me.”
Eddie shuffles on his feet. He really takes in her words. “There’s a story there, I bet,” he tries laughing off.
Alice is no longer loving this conversation.
Because he’s right. There is a story. There was a girl, not that Alice would admit the specifics to Eddie right now. Tina—her best friend.
But Alice was too scared, and then Tina left, and she never got to know what could’ve happened between them. She hates to say it, but she still thinks about it at least once a day. What could’ve been.
If one thing could have been different, would everything be different for Alice now?
But there’s no use in dwelling on it now. Her mistake is cemented, but Eddie’s doesn’t have to be.
“Maybe, but stop deflecting,” she brushes it off. “We’re discussing your love life, not mine.”
Eddie scoffs and finally inserts his credit card into the terminal. “What love life?”
“Serious?” she asks, shooting him a deadpanned look while ripping off the receipt despite the conversation being far from over. “Man, I know your friends back home must hate you guys.”
“There have been a few… implications.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
Eddie pauses for a moment. He bites the corner of his bottom lip. “You really think I should tell him?” he asks reluctantly, like he already knows what the answer is going to be.
Alice wants to scream.
“Yes,” she blurts louder than she should, catching the attention of Gary. “C’mon. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Eddie chuckles awkwardly. He turns around for a split second, eyes darting to the door as if Buck will somehow materialize there. “Uh—that he doesn’t feel the same and I’ve ruined everything we’ve built over the last eight years, and then we have to drive hours back home together in silence?” he says way too quickly that Alice almost misses half of it.
But she doesn’t, and eight years is crazy work. But she ignores that for now.
“Or! He says it back, and you already have a perfectly empty motel room. Honeymoon suite!” she cheers.
The blush from before quickly creeps back up Eddie’s cheeks. “That wouldn’t—”
She cuts him off. “Yes, it will. Just don’t break the bed. Or anything else, actually,” she jokes, but not really. “News travels fast around here. We get bored very easily and love to gossip about the motel guests.”
“I don’t like this conversation anymore.”
Alice chuckles and hands him the receipt. “Hey, you started it.”
“And now I’m ending it,” Eddie says as he finally steps away from the counter. “I really shouldn’t leave Buck waiting.”
Alice crosses her arms and smirks. “Mmhmm.”
“Not like that.”
“Mmhmm.”
Eddie rolls his eyes and begins to walk to the exit. Alice watches him, feeling accomplished.
“Hey,” she calls out before he gets too far. “I really do mean it. It wouldn’t be so crazy. Take the risk, don’t regret it.”
It's the one thing she wishes she could've told herself years ago. Maybe it’ll do Eddie some good instead.
Eddie nods. “I’ll consider it. Thank you—”
“Alice,” she answers him.
He smiles sincerely, whispering a soft, “Thank you, Alice,” before walking out the door.
Alice is almost half-asleep, resting the whole weight of her head in her palm, when the bell on the diner door rings. She hears Dorian groan loudly from the kitchen, dreading having to cook for whoever decided to come in at past three in the morning.
But when Alice’s blurry eyes focus again, she’s really not expecting to see Buck standing there.
Oh?
This is either amazing news or the worst outcome possible, and Alice fears she’s leaning more toward the latter.
“Welcome, again,” she greets him with a sad attempt at a smile. “What can I do for you?”
“Uh, coffee,” Buck mutters, distracted.
Alice nods and grabs a mug, but she stares at him in the corner of her eye. He seems… frazzled. His practically perfect curls from earlier in the night are a mess, like he’s been repeatedly running his fingers through them. His eyes are hollow and sulky.
He looks fucked, essentially.
Okay, so maybe Alice shouldn’t be allowed to give out advice anymore.
And if this is her fault, maybe she should at least try to fix it. Or make things worse. It's the only entertainment around here.
So Alice decides to indulge in the conversation, really just because she's bored and she feels kind of bad. Usually, when she’s bored, she’ll just sneakily read something on ao3 on her phone, but unfortunately, ao3 is down with no warning, which means she has zero fics downloaded. Her go-to currently is soccer yuri, but she guesses firefighter yaoi will have to suffice.
And she definitely owes the universe some good karma by this point.
“Everything good?” she asks as Buck slumps into one of the stools at the counter. Instead of answering, he downs the hot coffee. The pain doesn’t even faze him.
Yeah, okay, she fucked up.
“Have you ever had everything in your life change so abruptly—in a millisecond, that you just… can’t process it?” he asks.
Well, that hits close to home. Curse these fucking gay firefighters making her think about her failed attempt at a love life.
“Uh, sure.” Alice attempts to follow along. “Wanna be more specific?”
Buck either blatantly ignores her, or he’s so lost in thought that he doesn’t hear her.
“Like—I had this idea in my head. This… vision, and now everything’s changed. I was so certain. I mean, I told Maddie. I told Tommy. I believed it, and I was wrong,” he says, more to himself than to her.
Alice is so damn confused. Who the hell is Tommy?
“Like my whole belief system,” he emphasizes, gesturing wildly with the mug in hand, almost splashing coffee all over the counters. “It’s all wrong. I told myself I couldn’t because he was straight and now—”
“OH!” Alice shouts when it clicks. “Eddie!”
Buck pauses. He finally looks at her. More like deathly glares, but…
“You know Eddie?”
Alice stares back. The stupidity of men never fails her.
“You literally came in with him today.”
Buck startles. “Right,” he nods, remembering. “Right, yeah. But he told you?”
Alice bites back her snort, but fails. “More like I told him.”
Buck blinks. “I’m confused.”
Yeah, that makes two of us.
“We had a chat,” she says ominously before waving it off. “That’s not the point. The point is, why are you here and not with him?” she basically shouts. She hears Dorian whisper a soft damn behind her.
“I’m… processing.”
“Processing?” she repeats.
“Yes!” Buck annunciates. “This whole time I thought my best friend was straight and now, apparently, he’s not, which means I’m in love with him!”
Literally what is he talking about.
“Okay, your logic is extremely flawed, but whatever, you got to the right outcome,” she says.
“How is this the right outcome!” Buck shouts, sitting up straighter.
Alice almost scoffs. “How is it not? He’s gay, you’re bi. You’re in love with each other. Bish, bash, bosh, bob’s your uncle.”
Buck furrows his brows. “What does that even mean?”
“I don't know. It’s British, I think. My mum says it,” Alice brushes it off. “Again, that’s besides the point.”
Buck groans louder and slams his head against the counter.
Wow, and she thought Eddie was difficult. She really has her work cut out for her now.
“Please don’t cry on my counter, I just wiped that down,” she whines.
Buck ignores her. He mutters into the counter, words unclear, besides a rough, “I’m gonna die,” so it could be worse.
Not really.
“Man, and I thought Eddie was bad,” Alice mumbles to herself as she moves Buck’s mug out of spilling range.
At that, Buck sits up in an instant, eyes wide. “What did you say to Eddie?”
Alice sighs. “What I’m gonna say to you now,” she says. “Stop being an idiot and kiss him stupid.”
Buck looks at her in disbelief. “Did you really say that?”
“More or less.” She shrugs. “But I’m serious, dude. Be honest with him. Tell him how you feel.”
“I can’t do that,” Buck says, sounding heartbroken and just as utterly convinced as Eddie was hours ago.
“Why?”
“I can’t ruin—”
“Eight years of friendship?” Alice finishes off for him. “Yeah. He said that, too. And I’m gonna tell you what I told him. Do it. Don’t regret it. Don’t be like me.”
Her mind, involuntarily, wanders to Tina again. The what-ifs that haunt her. She doesn’t want that for these two. They seem like nice, genuine people, if not a bit hopeless.
“Like you?” Buck asks cautiously.
Alice is reluctant, but she answers. “I was just like you. I was… scared.” She sniffs, avoiding eye contact by staring out the window. “So I mean it when I say, tell him the truth.”
“Did you tell the truth?”
What sick thing did she do in her past life to deserve torture?
With a sigh, Alice looks back over at him. Buck’s really nailed that kicked puppy dog look. It tugs at her heart, the way his blue eyes appear sullen.
So against her better judgment, she says, “Would it help if I told you?”
Buck nods.
Really fuck her life.
“Okay, fine.” Alice takes a deep breath. “I had this friend—this best friend. I’m taking years, we met back in elementary school, and I just felt… different around her. Compared to everyone else,” she explains, memories of her and Tina haunting through her mind. “Eventually, I realized what that was. I wanted to be around her all the time. I always wanted to touch her, be close by. Whenever she complimented me, it always made me feel giddy. Obviously, I was in love with her.”
She almost chokes on the words.
“Did you tell her?” Buck asks quietly, genuinely invested.
“No. I didn’t,” Alice admits. “Then, she moved away for college. To Boston. And I’m… here, in New Mexico. No college. No real job. No best friend.”
Ideally, this isn’t what she wanted for herself, but Alice stopped having hope for her future years ago. She doesn’t want the same for these two.
“And I regret that.” She meets Buck’s eyes again. “Especially when I opened her Instagram story a few months ago and saw her kissing another girl.”
“Oh,” Buck stutters.
The whole situation threw Alice through a loop. She was in such deep denial that what she felt for years wasn’t a lie. But it was too late.
“I thought I was crazy the whole time. That only I felt the spark between us, but who knows. Maybe she did too, I don’t know, and I’ll never know,” she says. “So don’t be like me. Get your answer.”
Buck nervously pulls at the skin around his nails. “What if it’s the answer that I don’t want? That he doesn’t feel the same?” he asks.
Alice breaks the sad tension with a snort. “I’ve been watching you two since you came in here,” she says. “He looks at you the exact same way that you look at him. You can’t fake that. That’s devotion. It’s love.”
A sense of hope wells up in Buck’s eyes. It actually makes Alice’s heart rise.
“Really?”
She smiles. “Yes. C’mon, dude. He came out to you, and you stormed in here. Don’t keep him waiting,” she demands.
The realization hits Buck like a freight train. “Oh my God, I did,” he says with wide eyes.
“You did.”
“That’s fucked up,” he gasps.
Alice laughs. “I’m sure he’ll forgive you, once you tell him the truth.”
Buck’s nodding along now like he’s crazy, which Alice is convinced he could actually be.
“Yeah. You know what?” he stands up abruptly before shouting, “Hell yeah!”
Alice is deeply confused, but she gets in the spirit, matching his energy with a loud, if unsure, “Yeah!”
“I’m gonna tell him. Right now!” Buck exclaims.
“Oh, hell yeah!” she shouts back.
“I’m gonna tell him everything!”
“Yeah!”
“I’m gonna tell him that I’m in love with him!”
This is going better than she expected.
“Fuck yeah!”
Buck practically bounces around the room. Even Dorian is laughing along with him.
“I’m gonna kiss him on the mouth, with my mouth!” he declares.
“And he’ll probably kiss you back,” Alice calls back.
Buck pauses his excitement for a second to stare at her. “Probably?”
Fuck.
Alice reins in. “Most definitely! Like, a hundred percent sure.”
That seems to convince him as Buck begins nodding again. “Yeah. Yeah!”
“Yeah!”
“And then we’re gonna drive off into the sunset!”
“You do that.”
“Just you wait!” Buck yelps, pointing a finger at her as he makes his way to the door again.
“I’ll be waiting,” she answers.
But Buck pauses for a moment, just like Eddie did earlier. “Oh, and Alice,” he says calmer now, hand on the handle and a grin on his face. “You should text her.”
Alice shakes her head but laughs. He could be right.
“Maybe,” she says, then orders, “Go get your man!”
Somehow, Buck grins wider, then rushes out the door and shouts, “Getting my man!” Alice peeks through the window to see him run back over to the motel at an unbreakable speed.
She snorts one last time before turning around to Dorian.
“Pay up, bitch.”
Alice loves watching the sun rise in the morning. The birds chirping, the light shining through the diner window.
It means her shift from hell is finally over.
She cannot wait to sleep for seventeen hours straight.
Alice makes her way over to her car, her footsteps sluggish from the exhaustion in her body. She opens the back door, throws her bag in carelessly, and jumps when she hears her name shouted from across the parking lot.
She looks up and sees Buck and Eddie waving at her—Buck with an enthusiasm that should be illegal at six in the morning and Eddie in a calmer nature. Ying and yang.
She can’t help but wave back, noticing their hands tangled together in an embrace and the stupid, goofy expressions on their faces.
“I did it!” Eddie shouts to her.
“I was told!” she yells back, pointing at Buck.
Buck’s loud laughter carries across the space. “I also did it!” he says, too.
“I’m proud!”
“Text her!” Buck demands. “Don’t regret it!”
Alice rolls her eyes and shoos him off. She gets into her car and, for a moment, just sits there, thinking.
She pulls out her phone from her pocket.
It wouldn’t kill her to send one text, right? She can totally do that.
Hey. Alice types before staring at it. Her eyes drift out the window briefly to catch Buck holding the driver’s door open for Eddie, a matching gleam in their eyes.
She hits send.