Small Town Diner

It’s one of those small town restaurants although restaurant is much too refined a word for it and café sounds too sophisticated and upper class. Diner. Now that’s a more appropriate word. It’s one of those small town diners. The one’s where you can smell the grease from the open kitchen and everyone in town goes there because there’s no other place to go. Some of the waitresses are young pretty things. Some of the waitresses were young pretty things. Not anymore. This is place that ages you, just by living there. The monotony, the drone, it all gets to a person eventually unless you’re lucky to escape. Unless.

Joey Potter sits in one of the booths, fiddling with the salt and pepper, ready to wrench her paper napkin into tiny parts. Her coffee is growing cold and she’s checking her watch every 20 seconds or so.

The tinkle of bells signals the arrival of a new patron.

The old and the young waitresses smile flirtatiously and practice their small town wiles.

“How can I help you sir?”

He ignores the questions and heads for her.

The salt spills across the table as Joey rises to meet him.

Pacey Witter.

Joey chews her lower lip nervously and Pacey’s hand reaches out to brushes the loose strands of hair away from her face.

She flinches.

She didn’t mean to flinch but it’s almost instinct that she retreats. There isn’t hurt on his face or sadness just an acknowledgment of Joey’s gesture as Pacey slides in the seat opposite Joey and lets the distance overwhelm them.

“Can I get you anything sir?” another waitress asks.

”Coffee. Black.” Pacey replies.

Joey stares at Pacey’s face. Stares so hard that she can see him, she can see him as a whole and yet she sees Pacey Witter as parts as well.

Two intense blue eyes.

Dark brown hair.

A tiny mole on the right side of his neck.

An almost invisible scar on the side of his left cheek.

Two lips drawn together to form a mouth.

She doesn’t know what to feel when she looks at his face.

Desire. Love. Friendship. Nostalgia. Regret. Sadness. Hate. Lust.

An endless line of emotions. His face is impassive, almost unreadable, except to her.

She can still read his face and she knows the words he’s going to say.

“Joey. I called you here today because we really need to talk. Lately…”

She can hear his voice.

It’s always been a beautiful voice.

Husky and mellow, low with a small rumble whenever he was filled with desire. It’s the type of voice you can make love to. Beautiful and melodic. She hears his voice now but the words are meaningless.

There are people walking up and down the street.

A young pregnant girl perhaps around seventeen.

Joey remembers what it was like to be seventeen. The whole world with its possibilities was opening up to her. There was the frightening and yet exhilarating prospect of college. There was the wonder of love and Joey’s burgeoning sexuality that she and Pacey were beginning to explore. There was the end of high school. Yes, Joey remembers what it was like to be seventeen.

Those doors are shut now. Just like their probably shut for that young, pregnant, seventeen-year old girl. She will probably spend the rest of her life in this small town and raise a family of five and probably die and be buried here. Never to escape.

Joey’s glad she’s escaped. She doesn’t belong in small town diners anymore. Her destiny isn’t to marry her childhood sweetheart, get pregnant far too young, raise a family and then die in the confines of a small town.

“…want different things and I think it would be better if…”

Joey Potter has a different destiny. She has plans and ambitions. She’s a girl who was going somewhere. She still is.

Pacey’s looking at Joey now. Intently. Expectantly. As if he’s waiting for an answer.

Joey never even heard him ask the question. Maybe because despite the years, despite everything or perhaps because of them she already knows the question.

A question that isn’t really a question.

She gets up from the tiny booth and looks at this small town diner.

A small town diner that’s probably seen the life and death, the loves and hate, the dramas of generations of small town people.

There’s the regulars sitting in the stool chatting up the young and old waitresses. The cook flips a burger and grease splatters in the air. There’s the hum of music from the radio and in the booths are some young teens making gooey eyes at one another.

Then there’s Pacey, sitting in a booth alone with two cups of cold coffee, watching her.

He watches as the bell tinkles and the door slams shut.

He watches her retreating figure as she becomes one of the people on the streets.

Pacey’s watching as Joey Potter leaves, as she checks out of the motel and gets into her rented car and leaves another small town, as Joey Potter heads back to the big city and bigger and better things.

Pacey Witter has his answer.

An answer to a question that really wasn’t a question.

It is what he wanted, what he expected but he can’t explain the tears that fall as he sobs in the booth.

There’s salt spilt on the table.

Two cold cups of coffee.

And shredded tiny pieces of a paper napkin.