..." He almost backed off. Almost. He had so little to give a mate. But if he ran away, he could give her nothing at all. "I'd really like to ask you out for coffee sometime. If you want to."
There was that shutters-going-down expression again. Paula looked down at the plates in her hands.
"It's not that easy," she said. "I mean, you seem nice. Really nice. And you helped me a lot just now—"
"I didn't help you out to get you to go on a date with me," he said, horrified.
"No, no, it's not that I thought you did." She looked up again, eyes wide and wary. "It's just that ... I have kids, I don't think I mentioned that. I'm a single mom. I can't rush into anything. You have to understand that."
"I do," he said quickly. "It was just a thought. Never mind, no worries."
He started to turn away.
"Wait!" she said, and he looked back, hope rising in his chest.
Paula took a quick breath. "Tonight there's a kind of a thing, I mean it's not really a thing, it's just that me and some of the other parents from my daughter's class are taking our kids to the indoor mini golf course up by the highway. Do you want to maybe meet us there? You can bring your kids, I mean the Rugers' kids, and I'll bring mine. The kids can shoot a few holes, and we can—talk. Because I'd like to talk more."
Dan's bear was paying attention with every fiber of its being.
"Just two adults taking the kids somewhere," Paula added.
"Definitely."
"Not a date."
"For sure," he agreed. "Not at all. Two adults."
"Yep." She smiled at him again. She smiled a lot, it seemed. It settled very naturally onto her face, as if not smiling was the unnatural state for her.
If he hadn't already been gone the moment he looked into her eyes, he was certainly gone now.
"Tonight," he said, and he found that he was grinning so hard it felt like his face would split in two.
Paula
Since she currently had no full-time staff and no part-timers she trusted to leave in charge, Paula had started closing the diner in early afternoon, after the lunch rush died down. Afternoons were always dead anyway, and they never had much of a dinner crowd. She didn't serve alcohol, and most people preferred to go to the bar and grill, or La Taquerita, the one Mexican restaurant in town.
This meant she could be home when the kids got off school.
It also gave her far too much time to dither over her not-a-date with Dan.
Were earrings too much? Half the time she didn't even bother putting studs in her nominally pierced ears. She couldn't even remember the last time she had bothered to wear one of the handful of nice dangly earrings she owned.
What about makeup? When she had time, she dabbed on a bit of lipstick and mascara for work (fair or not, it noticeably kicked up her tips) but she didn't always have time for it. Was the red too much, she wondered, or the understated coral ...
"Mom," Austin said in horrified disbelief, wandering past the open bathroom door, "are you really getting dressed up to go to The Big Putz?"
"Don't call it that or you'll get your sister started," Paula said, holding one of the danglies in front of her earlobe.
Austin had perfected the art of the exasperated teenage huff, and he did it now. "Mom, do I have to go? Can't I stay home? I'm fifteen; I don't need a babysitter. Please. It's so boring."
Normally, she would have let him. But there were extenuating circumstances.
"Mrs. Chang said you've been cutting American History all week."
Austin froze, and in the mirror, Paula glimpsed him looking abruptly guilty, as if she'd caught him doing something much worse than skipping class. She turned around to get a better look at his face, but he was already scowling, the vulnerable moment gone.
"So?" he said. "I'm getting good grades on the tests."
"You can't just decide not to go to class, Austin, it doesn't work that way. Where were you instead?"
"Just ... hanging out!"
"With who? Do I need to tell your friends' parents that their kids are cutting class too?"
"Everyone does it!" Austin said belligerently, tucking his hands under his arms.
"That may be, but you're going to stop immediately or I'm grounding you."
Austin looked suddenly hopeful. "If I'm grounded, does that start tonight?"
Paula felt outmaneuvered. It had been so much easier to deal with the kids