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Riley nodded, waves of nausea making her hesitant to move an inch.

Josh didn’t linger. He strode toward Fifth Avenue and hailed a taxi.

Thirty

Saturday at lunchtime, Ben performed for a New York audience for the first time.

While diners tucked into French toast and steak and eggs, he teamed up with two servers for the “Greased Lightnin’” portion of the Grease medley. His brief sing-along earned applause, starry-eyed swoons from a table of teen girls, and a generous ten-dollar tip from a retired British couple, but he barely had time to breathe, let alone savor those moments. The restaurant was slammed with people, and vacated tables didn’t sit empty for more than a minute thanks to a growing line of hungry customers looping around the block. Once inside, guests were swallowed up in a Broadway musical on steroids. Back-to-back performances, all sung with microphones cranked up to maximum, made normal conversation impossible, but the tourists ate it up.

Shadowing one of the diner’s veterans, Ben picked up the slack with a smile (“Always a smile!”) and dashed to the kitchen to collect burgers, chili-smothered tater tots, and milkshakes.

“Doing great, Ben!” Stavros, the diner’s manager, hiked up the waist of his trousers. “Listen, one of the guys called in sick and we’re splitting his section. How ’bout you take two tables? Think you can cope?”

“Yeah.” Ben’s stomach growled, not that anyone would hear in the noisy restaurant. He nodded, eager to make a good impression.

“Cool. Table six is finishing up and table seven—the corner booth—just arrived.”

Ben leaned in. “Pardon?”

Stavros pointed to a blue and red striped booth stuffed with four kids and a middle-aged dad. “Dive in, buddy!”

Don’t fuck this up. Ben took a deep breath and filled his arms with menus, waiting for the performance of Wicked’s “Defying Gravity” to end so he didn’t have to yell over the vocals. Make it quick before the singing starts again. “Hello! I’m Ben and I’ll be taking your order today.”

“You talk funny.” A boy, around seven years old, scrunched up his freckly nose and whirled a fidget spinner on his finger.

“I’m from England.” Ben set a menu down in front of the little guy as well as his tween-age sister who scrolled non-stop on her phone, his three-year-old twin siblings—a girl and a boy, dressed up as Elsa from Frozen and Spider-Man—and their dad, phone glued to his ear. The whole family was golden-haired and looked like they had stepped out of Central Casting. “Do you know where that is?”

“Don’t care.” The kid pouted and spun his toy again. “I want nachos!”

Ben glanced at the dad, still yapping on his phone. “The kids meals are on page five—”

“I want nachos!”

Ben’s eyes circled the table. No one was paying attention. “I’ll give you time to decide.” Turning away, orange-stained fingers from table six grasped his elbow.

“I’ve been waiting ten minutes!” A chin popped out of a turtleneck sweater, its owner squeezing Ben’s arm and shoving her plate of untouched carrot sticks and decimated chicken wings to the table’s edge. Urgh! BBQ sauce fingers! “Take that back and bring us soda refills.” She ‘tsked’ at her husband, whose nose was stuck in a newspaper’s sports section. “And get us our check.” She let go of Ben and pushed her husband’s half-eaten burger and fries towards him.

With a forced grin, Ben flipped through his notepad and tore off their bill, leaving it on the table. He picked up their plates. “I’ll be right b—”

“I-I need…!” Little Spider-Man at table seven was hopping across his banquette, clutching his ass. “I-I-I need go POO!”

Shit! Ben’s eyes flitted from the kid to the dad, who was more interested in his phone than his panicked son’s wails, and back to BBQ sauce lady. “Ah, I have to make sure Spider-Man doesn’t hurt himself first.” Or with my luck, shit himself—whatever comes first.

“You’re gonna make us wait again?” Like a magnet, her bellow dragged the manager over.

“Everything all right, Ben?”

“We only wanted refills.” Eyes bulging, the woman picked up a napkin and fanned her scowling face, her whining on a loop. “The service here is—”

“POO. I need, I need, NOW!”

Ben fought back a laugh. Great timing, kid.

“I’ll get the drinks.” Stavros turned to Ben. “Make sure that kid doesn’t fall, ’kay? Don’t need a lawsuit.”

Hands full of dirty plates, Ben returned to the family’s booth. “Hey, Spidey, take a seat and I’ll get you some crayons—”

“We don’t want crayons!” the seven-year-old interrupted, knocking baby Spider-Man closer to his social media-addicted sister. She was sitting on the edge of the booth, embarrassed to be seen with them. “Find my fidget spinner—I lost it!”