“I don’t know. So expensive there. A one-room apartment probably costs as much as a mansion here.”

“Yeah, but San Francisco’s not any better,” I spoke the words while thinking “where the fuck is Kyle?”

“What does your boyfriend do there?” The waitress asked after staring at my barren left ring finger.

I took a deep breath, assuming it was nearly impossible to not see that I was annoyed about the whole situation at this point.

“Uh, he is a wedding photographer.”

“Oh,” the waitress gave a quick laugh before going on. “Is that a real job?”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I know what you mean.”

“I always wanted to go to New York, or San Francisco,” the waitress said and kicked back into her chair in a whimsical manner. “But things didn’t really work out for me.”

I could tell that the waitress was waiting for me to say something like “what happened?” but I didn’t care, I was pretty much only concerned with the men’s room door that remained closed.

“I was living around here when I was 15 and started working at a diner in town. The owner seemed like a real nice old man. He hired me even though I was young and it was my first job. So when he asked me to come out to his place by the lake one weekend, I did it. Caught the bus all the way over to Tahoe and went to his house. My parents were fine with it. Maybe they just didn’t care, but I went out there.”

I shot a look to the men’s room again. Nothing.