She sits quietly and alone at an all night diner near the front counter. It is a repeat of a nightly ritual. She nurses a cup of warm, black coffee and take a deep draw from a Salem cigarette.
A soft winter rain causes the blacktop road outside to glisten with mysterious shadows as the bewitching hour of midnight draws near.
Her thoughts are personal and takes precedent over the muddled voices that drift from the booths in the very back. Dolly Parton’s sweet, syrupy voice from the jukebox tells of lost and found love in the lyrics of “I will always love you”. Her memories are filled with mixed emotions from high school and college days.
She realizes now she was pretty and perhaps too smart for her own good, but at the time she didn’t know it until years later when her beauty faded, and her so-called friends reminded her just how beautiful she was back then.
She was voted Homecoming Queen and Most Likely to Succeed in her senior year of high school, but she had few dates because most boys had put her on a pedestal not realizing if they had asked her out for a date, she would have gladly obliged.
“Now it was too late; the door to sincere love and a family had almost closed through the fleeting years,” she thought to herself.
She never had the proverbial house, the children, dog and white picket fence as her classmates had, but were they really still in love and happy, she wondered. Had she missed the happiness boat or was she happier watching the love boat depart, leaving her alone on the shore.
The waitress whispered in her ear from behind, “More coffee honey? Fill her to the brim, black coffee, and unforgettable memories go well together on a night like this!”
