Smart Mouth Waitress Read Online Free PDF

day.
    A familiar-looking guy reached for the door.
    “There's your future boyfriend,” Courtney said.
    I chortled. “Crossword Guy? No way.”
    She ran to greet him and quickly escorted him to one of my tables, by the window on my side.
    Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I whirled around, surprised to find Donny outside of his kitchen cave. “Practice your flirting on that guy.”
    “I take back what I said about your sideburns. They're too pointy.”
    “He wants coffee,” Courtney said, gliding by.
    I rolled my eyes so hard I worried I may have hurt myself. “My wish is his command,” I said in my robot voice. “I am the Waitress Two Thousand, I live to service.”
    Crossword Guy was, surprise-surprise, doing the crossword puzzle when I brought him his coffee and white ceramic mini-pitcher of cream. He wasn't doing just any crossword puzzle, but the New York Times crossword puzzle, as he'd mentioned to me on several occasions.
    I felt the buzz of knowing Courtney and Donny were observing me.
    Turn on the charm , said the troublemaker voice in my head. Charm practice wasn't a terrible idea. If I could flirt with Crossword Guy, I could flirt with anyone. I was about to get my Bachelor's Degree in Flirting.
    Instead of my usual opening, something along the lines of, “Well? What do you want?” I smiled wide, revealing many teeth. I couldn't think of anything remotely flirty, so I didn't say a word.
    After what felt like an eternity, he looked up from his just-started crossword puzzle, surprised. “You're stealthy,” he said.
    I smiled wider.
    “What's the special today?” he asked.
    Was he serious? The muscles around my eyes tensed, wanting to narrow to little straight lines of are-you-kidding-me while I pointed to the clearly visible specials chalkboard, but instead, I recited Donny's special for the day: eggs benny with fresh spinach and turkey bacon.
    Crossword Guy always had hard-poached eggs on dry toast, and I resented him dicking with me by asking about the special when he and I both knew he was going to order the same thing he had every Monday, but I was in Flirt Mode, and as I understood it, that meant I had to be nice, and not a smart mouth.
    “Spinach and turkey bacon sounds great,” he said. “I'll have that.”
    You could have tipped me over like a sleeping cow of urban legend—that's how surprised I was.
    “Terrific!” I said.
    “Thank you!” he said, and he did something I'd never witnessed Crossword Guy do before. I'd assumed he was missing the crucial muscles to do so, but he actually smiled.
    Just then, the sun came out from behind a cloud. The nearly-empty restaurant filled up with light and kindness. Crossword Guy had a nice smile. A handsome face. Sparkly brown eyes. Soft brown hair with not too much hair product. Tortoiseshell glasses that complemented his bone structure. And surrounding him was a light odor that wasn't horrible—not the Axe Body Spray the boys in my old high school masked their overactive sweat glands with, but something that smelled like an adult, and yet not quite Dad-territory.
    He picked up his blue pen and returned to the crossword puzzle. That was it? We were having a moment; didn't he know?
    In a daze, I meandered back to the pass-through window that opened to the kitchen.
    “Sock it to me,” Donny said.
    “I'm crushing on Crossword Guy.”
    “Are you high? Give me the order. He's having the hard-poached eggs, right?”
    “No, he's having the special.”
    Donny dropped his mouth open in mock horror, then said, “He's ordered the same thing every Monday for a year, and today he's having the special? Courtney, come quick!” Courtney looked up from the radishes she was carving on the prep counter. “Our little Perry is all grown-up,” Donny said.
    Courtney, who was messing around with the garnishes, held up a thumb-shaped radish. “Does this look phallic to you guys?”
    Toph came over to examine the long radish and Donny threw the pink slab of