I missed her all the time during my shifts. When she was there, she managed to make difficult situations easier, and I could get through my shifts even when I was in a low mood. We always ended up chatting our way through our shifts, and more often than not, that got us to laughing and joking.
I couldn’t really blame her for leaving. She did what was best for her life. There was a time when she’d adored working at the diner and was always filled with light and happiness, whether she was waiting tables or filling ketchup bottles or cleaning up at the end of the day. That had faded recently. Her best friend Harleigh leaving more or less put the nail in the coffin of those days.
That left Lauren struggling in a lot of the same ways I was. She wanted more. There had to be something out there for her. She knew it, but she just had to find it. And she did. I was happy for her, but it was hard not having her around. Especially on days like this when I was juggling two sections in the diner because one of the other servers called out and the customers seemed to be in a particular mood.
The customers eyed the food I put in front of them, and I waited for one of them to have another complaint, but they didn’t say anything, and I walked away. Quickly swinging by the rest of my tables let me deliver four checks and get a dessert order in for the other two. I could see the light at the end of the lunch rush tunnel.
Even as that thought went through my mind, I reminded myself to be thankful to have the work at all. I knew firsthand how common it was for people to struggle to get by. It was the reason I had the job at the diner in the first place. I was one of those people who would much rather be busy during work than sit around doing nothing.
Slow shifts drove me crazy. It was much better to run around constantly and end the shift exhausted than it was to go home feeling like I’d wasted the entire day.
But there was one thing about slow days that I did enjoy. When the tables with the checks finished up and the desserts were delivered, I went back to my station to fill the saltshakers and let my mind start to wander.
I thought about a variety of things when I was doing side work or there weren’t a variety of tables for me to take care of all at once. One of the most common was the career I wished I had. The career that I would have one day. I had to correct myself when I let my mind go down the negative path. Harleigh had taught me that when she still worked at the diner with Lauren and me.
I couldn’t talk myself into failure before I even got started. I couldn’t tell myself something was never going to happen or that I’d already missed my chances If I did that, I might as well count myself out completely and just settle into a long life of doing nothing.
That resonated more with me because of how much Harleigh hated working at the diner by the end of it. There was something about her pushing on and letting Lauren convince her to act like she loved what she was doing while always keeping her eye on what was coming next that made it mean more when she told me she wasn’t going to give up on her dreams, so I shouldn’t give up on mine.
She wanted to write novels. My aspiration was set in the tattoo parlor my uncle owned. I’d spent a lot of time there when I was younger, and it had become my favorite place to be. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized I could make a career there the way my uncle did. Once it occurred to me that I could be a tattoo artist, that was all I wanted.
But that was a dream far easier conjured up in my mind than it was achieved. I couldn’t just stroll into the shop, grab a needle, and start doodling away on people. There was a lot to learn, and even though my uncle was more than happy to teach it to me, the little time I had available to devote to learning it would make the process take forever.
For now, I had to think about the realities of making enough money to finish paying off my parents’ final expenses and support myself while trying to squirrel away what I could so I wouldn’t have to feel nervous again. Growing up, I didn’t blame my parents for our hardships, but I also never wanted to feel that way again. I wanted to make sure I could always stand on my own two feet, and I was determined to have money in the bank and something to fall back on if the need arose.