But mostly, I was just glad to be leaving the world of awkward silence, stifling tension, and unspoken words.
The four of us slid into a booth and, after we ordered, I remembered the last time the four of us dined out on a trip together.
Things had been so different back then. Hard to believe it was only a little over seven months ago.
“Okay, let’s play a game.” Claudia grinned at Beck and Jake across the table. I noted the mischievous twinkle in her green eyes.
“Do we have to?” I asked.
“Yes, Grumpy Betsy, we do.”
I snorted. “Grumpy Betsy?”
Claudia waved off my teasing. “Never mind. Anyway, Beck and I play this game all the time.”
“Maybe IHOP isn’t an appropriate place for a game you and Beck play,” Jake offered slyly.
I laughed because he’d beaten me to it.
Our eyes met, his smiling into mine like he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“Get your minds out of the gutter,” Claudia scolded. “It’s not like that. The game is you choose a couple, or two friends or whatever, who are eating out together and you have a conversation for them. We’ll show you.” She glanced around the room and then surreptitiously pointed. “There.” She gestured to a young couple who sat with their elbows on the table, leaning a little across the distance so they could speak in lowered voices. “Beck.”
He looked at the couple and smiled. “Baby, you smell better than apple pie and taste better than maple syrup.”
I groaned but grinned.
Claudia gave an exaggerated sigh of happiness as the girl tilted her head to the side, causing her hair to fall away from her neck. “It’s my new perfume. It’s called Eau de IHOP.”
We laughed and Claudia nudged me. “Your turn. You and Jake.”
And that’s when I understood her plan with this stupid game. “I don’t know.”
“Ah, c’mon, it’ll pass the time,” Jake encouraged. He pointed across the restaurant to an elderly couple. Although it was cold outside, it wasn’t freezing, but both were wearing layer upon layer. The woman, wearing an ugly multicolored hat, was eating quietly, while her husband ate and tried to read the newspaper. His face was bent low over the paper as he chewed.
The woman looked at him over her spectacles and started to speak.
I smiled. “Could you get any closer to that paper? Are there naked women in it or something?” I filled in for her.
As the man replied, Jake said, “If there were, I wouldn’t know it. Last time I saw a naked woman, I’d just helped oust the Nazis from Holland.”
I could hear Claudia and Beck laughing but I managed to stay in the game as the woman apparently snapped something at her partner. “Don’t remind me. I had to get a cream for the itch you brought back.”
The older man peered up from his newspaper and Jake said in his stead, “I’d treasure that memory. It’s the most daring thing that ever happened to you.”
I choked on a chuckle and replied as the woman tapped a hand on the newspaper. “That’s it. You better start looking in the classifieds for your own place.”
The man didn’t say anything, but he took a bite of omelet as he looked at the woman. He started to speak and Jake answered with, “I think you’ll find it’s my name on the deed to the house.”
The woman leaned over the table to him and I said, “If I left, you wouldn’t know what hit you. Do you think just anybody would wash out your skid marks and deal with the glasses of false teeth you leave lying around?”
“Ugh,” Claudia giggled.
“Me? You think I’m hard to live with?” Jake replied. “What about all those ceramic owls you got lying around the whole house? I can’t move an inch without walking into a damn ceramic owl. And don’t get me started on the pot pourri.”
I shot a look at Jake and mouthed, “Pot pourri?”
He grinned.