Page 84 of Matchmaking On The Menu

17

TEDDY

OBSERVER BECOMES PARTICIPANT

I don’t say anything. There’s nothing I can add that wouldn’t make this stranger than it already is.

The diner swallows us whole the moment we step inside—chairs scraping, voices overlapping, the smell of food hitting like this is just another normal Sunday afternoon. Like we didn’t just walk in from whatever the hell that was.

The woman with the coupon gets seated, completely unbothered by what she witnessed. She’s maybe mid-forties, composed in the way of someone who’s been through something and come out the other side of it still standing. She glances around the diner with a quiet, assessing look, like she’s deciding whether it meets her standards.

Apparently, it does.

I stay near the counter. Close enough to see. Far enough not to get pulled in.

Dannica surveys the table. Her friends have arranged themselves with the energy of people waiting to be sentenced. Then she looks at Luke, and something in her expression shifts—not softer exactly, but different.

“Luke.” He looks up. “You can go sit down. You didn’t know what you were getting into.”

He blinks. “Well, technically…”

“Luke, I didn’t give you the whole story. So this is all on me,” one of the women says.

He looks at the youngest of them all. “What do you mean, Mary?”

“You two can sort this out later,” Dannica says. “Right now, I want to know what the hell is going on. Luke, go grab a pack of peas in the back. Dinner’s on us.”

He goes, visibly relieved. When he’s back with the peas, he settles into the chair across from the woman with the coupon, who is watching this whole exchange with open interest.

“I’m Diane, by the way,” she says to Luke.

“Luke.” He looks at Diane with an expression that borders on lovestruck before adjusting the ice pack. “Sorry about the chaos.”

“Honey,” she says, “I was married for nineteen years. This is nothing.”

The others all introduce themselves to her, talking over each other, filling space that doesn’t need filling. I hang back until they get to me.

Quadri glances over. “Mystery Man.” Half a joke, half a prompt. “You got a name?”

I consider deflecting. Staying exactly what they’ve already made me in their heads. But I don’t like the way it sounds, and after today I think I’ve earned the right to correct it.

“Teddy,” I say.

Dannica turns, a brief smile moving across her face. “Pleased to meet you, Teddy. Finally.”

I nod, settling back against the counter, hands tightening on the back of the chair beside me.

It should be fine. It is fine. But it doesn’t sit right. I should have told her when she asked. When it was just us, when it might’ve meant something. Not like this—thrown into a room full of people, stripped of any weight it might’ve had if I’d given it myself.

My jaw clenches slightly. I let it go.

Dannica moves to the head of the table. That’s the only way to describe it. Not at the end, not near the front. At the head. Like it was always hers. Her hands rest lightly against the surface, and she doesn’t rush, doesn’t stumble, doesn’t fill the silence with anything unnecessary. She just looks at them, one by one, until the room quiets on its own.

I watch three grown women fold under a look. No raised voice, no spectacle. Just the particular stillness of someone who doesn’t need either. I haven’t seen that since my grandmother. It’s a specific kind of authority that can’t be faked—you either have it or you don’t.

She has it.

“So,” she says. “Let me get this straight.”