Watch out, love bites Who: Christopher Knox & Leeanne When: December 10, 2020 Rating: Low Status: Complete
When you make love, do you look in your mirror?
Who do you think of?
Does he look like me
Terrible’s Roadhouse was a place that had a lot of courage. Google gave it a 4.0 star review - the name clearly had nothing to do with the food once you were able to get past that obstacle. Was it a clever play on words or a brash, confident challenge swaggered by Corporate Advertising and Marketing to be attractive?
Forks and spoons clanked softly against plates. The soft murmur of patrons in varying stages of conversation balanced the ostentatious sirens songs of the slot machines a few paces away.
Christopher never minded the noise. Nevada could be an active place; even the desert, with its secrets, had audacity and cadence.
People came for the atmosphere. The environment.
Two booths ahead of him sat a family. He could tell they were tourists by the way they all gathered around an iPhone 12 Max Pro as some might circle around a campfire for a good story. The mother was younger, pretty, with straw colored hair plaited into French braids. The collar of her casual, denim jacket stuck up in the back but she didn’t seem to notice.
Beside the woman was a boy of about fifteen. Across from them sat a man, obviously the husband and father to the children, and a girl who favored her mother. Each of them carried a smile, a sense of security that this would be the best family vacation to date.
If Christopher wanted to guess, he would’ve put them in an older SUV with a luggage rack on top and one of those sun visors clipped to the window to help keep out the blistering sun. They weren’t wearing flashy jewelry or fancy clothes, just a regular family having lunch at a pit stop on the way to their final destination. Probably Vegas, why not? There was so much to see, do, even with a young family.
Dark eyes drank in the vibration of laughter; the young girl’s high pitched giggle with a hitch in the middle as if she lost her breath midway through. She stuck her tongue out at her brother and another fit of those innocent giggles ensued in response to his rebuttal.
On Christopher’s plate sat a wedge of buttered white bread perfectly crisped. Yellow yolk encircled the ninety degree angle of the toast like a halo, as if declaring his meal blessed by the god of breakfast. One sausage link had crept into the soupy mixture, another half consumed stayed put on the cleanest part of the plate.
His cup of coffee sat half-empty and nearly untouched after that.
He listened as customers came and went. He assumed that during the lunch rush, or even on a good day, the staff took home enough to get by.
The waitress stepped up to his table. Her red lipstick complimented the white of her teeth, hazel eyes studying the partially filled cup and then the man it was indulging to gauge whether or not he would want more. If he even cared. By himself, she had an odd feeling about him. He wasn’t a bad looking fellow; dark brown hair and eyes, pale skin and a hard jawline.
Leanne’s smile grew a touch when he finally noticed she had come over. “Sorry hon, didn’t mean to surprise you, you just seemed…” she began, searching for the right word. “...in need of more coffee.”
Christopher looked at the mug, studied it without touching it, and then his smile became easy as those dark eyes crept up to meet her own hazel ones. “I’m okay, really. But thank you. I will take the check though, if that’s alright.” Leeanne nodded, beginning to mouse through her apron when the man at the table spoke up again. “Say,” he began, eyes darting to her little plastic name tag. “Leeanne, if it isn’t too much to ask..”
Drawing her attention up, she fixed her eyes on his and waited, eyebrows lifted in curiosity.
“Honestly, I’m kind of embarrassed to ask,” he admitted, laughing a bit. His head lowered as he thought, and Christopher felt his cheeks redden a touch. “This is some of the best food I’ve had in a long time. You guys probably hear this a lot, but I would really like to say thank you to the chef. Breakfast is one of the meals I look forward to.” He looked at the tables around himself, thoughtfully. “Oh,” said Leeanne, her smile falling a bit. She had tables to mind and the customers were beginning to line up to be seated.
“It’s okay, really, don’t worry about it,” he laughed, shaking his head at her. “I know you’re really busy and you’ve been so kind.”
Leeanne blushed this time. She looked around at the diner to see if anyone was waiting on her for a moment, drawing the man’s ticket and her favorite purple pen from her apron. “I don’t usually do this, but Ronnie usually doesn’t mind.” A few strokes of the pen later and she wrote down the number of Ronnie Milam.
Christopher looked at the light purple ink. “Really? Thank you! You’ve made my day, Leeanne! I’m going leave a great review on Google for you, okay?”
She laughed, “Okay, great. You can either leave your ticket here or pay at the front. If I can do anything else please let me know, okay?” Christopher grinned, nodding at her. “You’ve done so much already, thanks again.”
As the waitress fluttered away to help another table Christopher took a snapshot of the number with his phone. He left two crisp twenty dollar bills face up on the table. The ticket went into his pocket. A last bite of egg sopped up with toast and Christopher left the diner with a spring in his step.
It had been two weeks since he had begun following Ronnie Milam; he spotted the man leaving a natural food store in Vegas and had been hooked ever since. He didn’t think the cook even noticed he was being followed. Christopher knew the routine by now. The next step was making contact.
”If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody baby,” Christopher sang under his breath. He climbed into the driver's seat of his red Honda Civic, backed out of the parking lot and drove off toward Vegas to set the next phase of the plan into motion.