Girl Meets Waitress: Opening Up
Disclaimer: I don’t own Waitress. I don’t own Girl Meets World. This is a fanfiction written just funsies.
Looking around, seeing the same things every day brings
Maya woke up to darkness every morning. Her eyes peeled open after a mere six hours of sleep and were met with nothing. For a split second, there was only darkness in front of her, around her, within her. It was then that she and the world had their daily battle of wills, the war over who would break the stillness first and stir the other into motion. And always it was Maya who surrendered. Her eyes would adjust to the low light and a hot puff of breath would warm her face, still partly under the covers to avoid that first shiver of a New York morning that was always chilly no matter the season. She sat up in bed and surveyed the smoking battlefield of her bedroom, taking in her losses from the night before and wondering which of them would show on her face for the rest of the day. Beside her, the world’s weapon lay dormant, harmless unless she were to challenge the demands for peace. If she came quietly as the world beckoned her, he would slumber on. She didn’t look at him as she swung her legs over the bed and tapped her toes against the smooth hardwood floor beneath her. Her white flag of surrender was the tug on the long curtains that shielded the sunlight from shining into the apartment through the wide window on her side of the bed. This was her cry out into the world that she would not fight. And then the day would begin.
Wake up, use the toilet, brush the teeth, comb the hair. Put the hair up. Makeup over the dark circles and fading yellow-green lump above the eyebrow. Panties, bra, uniform. Socks, then shoes. Purse. Nametag out of the purse and on the uniform. Every day, the routine was the same. There was ease to it, but it would be a lie not to admit that it was also repetitive. She didn’t know what her life was supposed to be like, but she couldn’t help feeling that it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was as though there was some missing ingredient that she had long ago forgotten to include in the recipe, which always left the dish edible, but unsatisfying. A ritual she had not shared with anyone in the six years of living in her Lower East Side apartment was that the last thing she did before giving in to the reality of her life was standing at her window and waiting for the first rays of light to peek over the buildings in her neighborhood. She never watched the sun fully rise up into the sky. She simply waited for it to appear and then raced it to work. She never won.
The ride across town on the subway would have been daunting at best for a tourist, but for a born New Yorker like Maya, the odd little scenes playing out right before her eyes, even as early as six in the morning, were just as natural to the routine as tying her shoelaces. On the way to work, swaying gently along with the subway car, Maya would pull out her sketchbook (which wasn’t a sketchbook at all, but a pathetic server’s pad on which she took down her orders) and mimic the likeness of what she saw and sometimes, on her lowest days, what she felt. Today, there was a particularly amusing picture of an eccentric woman with some sort of hat, though Maya couldn’t quite bring herself to call it that. It was tall, a violent shade of purple, and topped with hot pink feathers. These feathers were of great interest to a small little girl, whose mother, wearing the scrubs of a nurse, was snoozing against the window of the subway car. The little girl was standing up on her seat, using the handrail for balance, and blowing on the feathers of the woman’s hat. The woman gave no indication of noticing this invasion of personal space and was instead muttering to herself about some sort of building with her name on it. The two of them were immediately transcribed into her notepad in short, quick lines of ink.
From the subway, she made her way through the streets of the Lower East Side, weaving in and out of passerby with an expression that was as equally bored as it was underground. She didn’t look up at anyone and instead chose to keep her eyes down on her white sneakers. The less she looked open to communication or interest, the greater chance she had of making it to work having avoided any unwanted attention—because yes, some men really were in the mood before seven in the morning. Then finally, there was the diner. Where her life played out day by day, where the routine really began and always finished; the diner was more of a home to her than her own apartment, which, of course, wasn’t really hers at all. But the diner? It was the closest thing to belonging that she felt since being held in the arms of her mother so many years ago. She entered through the door in the back of the building that led to the kitchen.
“Is it a woman thing?”
“Excuse me?”
“The being late. Every damn day. Is it a woman thing?”
“Oh, shove it up your—”
“Good morning! Who’s ready to start the day?”
Of course, no home was complete without its inhabitants. Maya supposed she could have had it much worse when it came down to the universe selecting her partners for this life thing. She didn’t hate the people she worked with every day and she guessed that they didn’t hate her either. With that being said, however…These partners were no picnic either.
There was Zay Babineaux, the cook. All Maya knew about him was that he was from a small town in Texas and he came to New York when he was a teenager. He still had a slight drawl to his snarky voice, the stubborn southern streak within him that refused to be beaten down by the hustle and bustle of the north. He never offered any detail into his personal life, like why he chose to be a cook or how he ended up at the diner, and Maya never asked. When he wasn’t flipping pancakes on the griddle, he could be found grumbling to anyone who would listen (and that was exactly no one) about how nothing in his life made sense and why women were the reason for that. Though he was technically her boss, he and Maya had an ongoing feud over who should be giving who orders within the unhallowed walls of their place of employment.
Riley Lawrence was a young woman of thirty who was made up of sunshine and daisies. She married her high school sweetheart right on the heels of graduation and went to NYU for a degree in political science. A year into law school, she dropped out to start working at the diner in order to care for her husband, Charlie, who had suffered severe brain injuries in a freak bus accident. Though all of her dreams were now wasted, she still smiled like sunshine in the rain and danced like a daisy in the wind. It was for Riley’s sake that squabbles between Maya and Zay were quickly put to bed—neither of them had the gumption to disappoint a soul like Riley’s, who had endured so much already and never uttered a single complaint.
“Me. Thirty minutes ago. Why are you women always late?”
“Perhaps it’s because we know you can’t afford to fire us.” The newest addition to their band of misfits was Isadora, who for some reason allowed them all to address her by her ridiculous surname: Smackle. Even her nametag introduced her as such to the customers. She was a twenty-three year old grad student living the dream that Riley had once chased and for that reason, Maya and Zay tolerated her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t likable; she was nice enough. It was just that Maya had never met anyone who was more tightly wound. Smackle had a particular way of doing things and though the diner had never been cleaner, more organized, and more efficient than when Zay took her on, Maya simply didn’t appreciate changing her way of doing things just to fit Smackle’s compulsive need for order.
“Actually, I can. I don’t own the place. I just run it. I wouldn’t lose anything but the weight of carrying this business if I had it my way and kicked you three to the—"
“Business? It’s a diner. And it didn’t miss us for the fifteen minutes that we were late. But it will miss us for thirty if you keep us from actually doing our jobs with your whining.”
“Alright, you know what? Get out of my kitchen. Get out.”
Snickering, Maya led Riley and Smackle through the swinging door that led into the dining area. Though Riley sighed unhappily as they left Zay to his dramatics, the girls easily fell into their habitual duties for opening up. Riley got to work on the register, counting bills and setting up the front desk. Smackle wiped down each table and sorted the condiments in whatever order made sense to her otherworldly brain. Maya got to work on the pastry display case. The first thing she did every shift was rearrange it so she could display her creation of the day, which was dreamt up sometime before going to bed every night and arriving at work each morning. What made all the elbow grease she put into the job worthwhile was found underneath the diner in its basement: the bakery. Each dessert, particularly the pies, was made from the imagination of her mother. Every dressing coating its recipe, particularly the cakes, was designed from Maya’s. Serving the sacred combination to the diner’s patrons, who had no idea that they were seeing into the very essence of her being with every bite, was the most gratifying thing Maya got to experience in a montage of diner meals that left her secretly hungry for something more. In another life, perhaps Maya would have liked to be an artist. But she was living in this life and if she couldn’t be that, she supposed being a waitress that got to bake the cakes was the next best thing.
“What’s the special today?”
Maya’s fingers twitched towards her apron’s pocket where the sketch of her subway ride lived frozen in time between the pages of her server’s pad. She was planning on using it as inspiration for some kind of cake resembling that crazy old woman’s hat, but Riley’s hopeful expression was especially sweet this morning. Her brows lifted in the direction of her hairline ever so slightly, creating the barest traces of wrinkles that were not yet etched into the still youthful skin across her forehead. Her lips parted in a preciously premature smile of delight. Maya never wanted Riley to know the harsh truth that she did, that hope was for suckers, and so she never let Zay put Riley’s pie on the menu even though it was continuously requested by the regulars. As long as it wasn’t on the menu, Riley still got to hope every morning, for just a minute or two, that that would be the day that her pie was the special of the day.
“Why, Aren’t You a Peach Polka-Dot Peach Pie, of course.” Maya painted on an indulgent smile and admired how Riley beamed sunlight at her.
“Peaches, you shouldn’t!”
“Too late, I already did. Today’s a good day to serve everyone a little Riley, I think. I know I could use a little of whatever it is you got.”
“Well, I’m happy to share.”
“Go check the stock downstairs and make sure we have enough kosher salt. We were running a little low the last I checked and I don’t think Zay is ordering new stock until tomorrow.” Riley abandoned the hostess station where she was organizing the trio’s sections as if they ever changed and raced downstairs into Maya’s sanctuary.
“When am I going to get a pie made for me, Maya?” Smackle asked without accusation, just curiosity.
“Maybe it’s not a pie. Maybe it’s a cake. Or a cookie.” The blonde answered thoughtfully, to which Smackle snorted and shot her a grin from across the room.
“I am at least a brownie by now, thank you very much. How did Riley end up with a peach pie anyway? Because she calls you Peaches?”
“Nah, she calls me peaches because that’s what the pie is.” Maya explained, “I don’t know, she’s just so nice. It kind of threw me off when we first met, being New Yorkers and all. When she learned about how I make the desserts and dress them up, a peach pie is the first thing I thought of when she asked me what kind of dessert she would be. The polka-dots came later when I thought about how she dresses out of uniform. That’s what makes it Riley.”
Smackle hummed in understanding. “And what makes it yours, with that kind of personal touch. No one can bake like you can, huh?”
“No one but my mother. I just try to do it like she would.” Maya answered with a casual shrug and brushed her hands against her apron as she finished up with the display case. Smackle was obviously done with the condiments as she had moved on to adjusting the number of napkins at each table. Maya regarded her for a moment. She wasn’t sure how to say so, but the spectacled girl had unwittingly stirred a feeling of warmth in her chest at the astute (and the very gracious, at that) compliment—the kind of warmth that spread slowly, like a pie crust in the heat of an oven. So she said nothing at all. Maya got through each day by watching the people she saw and jotting her notes down into her art, be it on the dish or on paper. She had never considered that Smackle might do the same. Dimly, she wondered where her coworker took her observations. Perhaps a scholarly notebook; that was presumably what a good NYU student like Smackle would use in her classes at school. Or maybe she just kept it all in that great big brain of hers. It probably was time for Smackle to get her own dessert by now, wasn’t it?
Without Riley around to peer over her shoulder and ask questions, Maya pulled out the server’s pad from her pocket and flicked through its pages until she found her sketch from the subway ride. Some of her glimpses into inspiration never quite revealed their whole picture and without that, she couldn’t transcribe their stories into a cake. Maya had a gnawing ache deep in her gut that this lady and her crazy hat were one of those torturously brief peeks into something special that she would only ever wonder about for the rest of her life. Sighing, she walked over to the hostess stand, tore the sheet from the pad’s binding, and slid the sketch between the thick cardstock page of a menu and its plastic cover. This was the eulogy of all the subway sketches that never went on to become something more. The idea of one of the diner’s patrons finding it out of the blue and seeing what Maya saw, even if it was only for an instant, was exactly what Crazy Hat deserved. She deserved the chance to connect with a stranger who was not looking for her and make them wonder just like Maya did; if she was lucky, that stranger could do something to tell her story more truthfully than Maya ever could.
Riley had returned from the bakery downstairs. “I think we should have enough to get through the day!” She announced joyously, waving a carton of the last of the kosher salt they had left over her head just to show them she was sure.
“Great, but why did you bring it up here?” Maya chuckled, sliding the menu back into the stacks that would be passed around to the customers throughout the day. Riley’s smile faltered for just a second as realization came to her. As quickly as it left, her smile sprung back into place as if it was never gone, albeit the accompaniment of sheepish awkwardness was an endearing new factor in Riley’s sunshine.
“I…I just…I’ll go put this back.”
“No need.” Maya offered her a gentle look of reassurance, the expression well-rehearsed for the times that Riley, feeling especially Riley, looked to her for permission to go on exactly as she was. She did this as though Maya would ever want her to change. “I should probably get started anyway before the morning rush gets in. There’s some crust defrosting in the fridge, but I’ll have to make the filling from scratch. I’ll just bring it back down myself.”
“Well, then get to it! I want my pie!” Riley pitched her the kosher salt that was not even in the same vicinity as her direction, which Maya had to scramble to catch in an almost cat-like maneuver. Smackle made a move to shoo her away in jest, but she was already hurrying along down the narrow spaces between tables to get a move on. She skipped the stairwell leading to the bakery and headed straight for the single bathroom in the back of the building.
She couldn’t get the door open fast enough and she still had to find the dexterity in fingers that were not so nimble as they were when baking to lock it. The kosher salt was forgotten, carelessly thrown to the floor and forced open upon impact with the ground. Hard flakes of it dug into her bare knees as she dropped and flung her head into the waiting toilet bowl. It was the fourth time this week that Maya had emptied her insides at work. She didn’t think that anyone had noticed this theatrical display of her stomach’s hysterics, but if it went on, it would be impossible to keep hidden. She didn’t want to deal with that intervention, because that’s exactly what it would be with those two goofballs for coworkers, and she certainly didn’t want to have to deal with Zay. She didn’t want to deal with any of this, not at all. She didn’t know how. All she knew was the diner, the customers, the girls and the cook. The desserts. All she knew was being a waitress. If Maya added anything more to her plate, it would not be a matter of whether she would break, but when.
