Dead To You

42. foolish one

I found a booth near the window overlooking the crosswalk further down the street, listening to the vinyl as it creaked underneath my hands and I felt the curled corner of a strip of clear duct tape brushing against the inside of my knee, and stared past my reflection to where an older woman with a black wheeled shopping cart full of folded paper bags waited for the light to change. 

Behind her, there was an illuminated LED sign for the bank with a couple of darkened pixels, but I still managed to read that it was almost nine thirty and seventy-one degrees outside, and I titled my head a little to the left to see if there was anyone sitting at the bus stop before remembering it was too late for that now. 

The couple a few booths down from us started to stack their plates and gather their silverware, one sneaking a few sugar packets from the side of the napkin dispenser while the other carefully arranged their leftovers in a takeout container. 

I traced my fingers over the knicks on the table, wondering how old some of them must have been, and it was all so quiet that I heard the sizzling emanating from inside the kitchen, the dwindling traffic in town, and the scolding a somewhat exasperated older man gave his partner to stop hoarding Sweet'N Low packets. This resulted in another defiant handful. I smiled softly into my hand, with my elbow perched on the table's edge.

Noel cleared his throat, almost timidly. "We could...if you wanted, we could go somewhere else."

My eyebrows furrowed enquiringly at him for a moment, not exactly sure what to make of this suggestion that might have suggested he cared if the remarks he evidently overheard from Nate had bothered me that much, or the slightest softness I could've sworn I felt in his fleeting gaze before he reached for the pager and looked on the underside of it, for some reason. 

I shook my head as I watched him nervously set it down then glanced back at me, and, just this once, I let myself offer him a small smile. "No, it's fine. I, uh...I kind of love it here, actually."

"You do?" he asked, somewhat dubiously.

"I do," I murmured, my lips brushing against my knuckles before I dropped my hand back down to the table, resisting the urge to reach for the Sweet'N Lows myself when I noticed that Noel's eyes were still on me, not veering uncertainly away to the strawberry jam packets like a moment ago but intently watching me as if he were waiting for me to tell him more. 

I shifted around in my seat, with immediate regret as the still wet dress made an awkward suctioning noise against the vinyl, interrupted in the quiet restaurant only by a lengthy sigh from my nose. It wasn't like I could look any worse in front of him. Not that his opinion mattered that much to me, anyway. "It feels nostalgic, even if I wasn't around in the eighties or nineties, whenever they established this place. Sometimes, I wonder what it must have been like back then, if everything really was so much better like people are always saying, and coming to places like this...you can almost kind of pretend. It's like a time machine, I guess. I don't know. It's just nice that not everything needs to change. Some things stay the same." I cleared my throat, adjusting my skirt over my legs. "Plus, the aesthetics are really pretty. Somehow, even the worse pictures look great in the eighties."

"The aesthetic? You think the aesthetic of this place is pretty?" he questioned, and the inflection of his voice caught me so off guard for a second that I laughed, realizing that it wasn't his usual or anticipated judgement but more as if he were almost...teasing me. Maybe I should've asked Nate to rush our sandwiches after he had finished inquiring about my parents and their apparently merited separation, because now I was suddenly a little afraid that Noel Preston was alarmingly close to death.

"This is the real aesthetic of the eighties! Not everything was neon sunsets, that's just the contemporary romanticized version of the decade. Which is also very pretty, by the way, and what I was originally referring to but, yes, I do think the aesthetic of this place is pretty."