Chapter 2 Avery

Avery

Ricky swears under his breath and peels himself off the counter the moment the toddler lets out a wet, panicked sob. He’s across the diner in seconds, crouching down in front of the booth just as the kid tries to shove the straw even farther up his nose. Ricky catches his wrist gently but firmly, murmuring something calm and steady while the parents spiral. The dad’s face is bright red; the mom looks like she’s deciding whether to cry or laugh or pass out.

I watch from behind the counter as the crisis resolves itself in a flurry of napkins and apologies. The kid is soon coated in chocolate milk, sticky and miserable but no longer actively injuring himself. The dad pulls out his wallet and peels off a stack of bills, presses them into Ricky’s hand with an embarrassed laugh. “Seriously—keep the change,” he says, like money might erase the image of his child trying to drink through his face. The mom keeps apologizing as they herd the kid toward the door, chocolate milk footprints trailing behind them.

When the bell jingles and they’re gone, Ricky looks down at the bills, then up at me. He grins, lifts the stack slightly, and mouths, drinks on me, punctuating it with an exaggerated wink.

I shake my head, smiling despite myself.

I grab the fresh cup of coffee and bring it back to the girl, who takes one suspicious sip and then ignores me entirely, already back to her conversation. I move on without comment and start wiping down an empty table near the window, the motions automatic, my mind drifting the way it always does when my hands are busy.

I don’t want to be a waitress. I never have. It’s just a means to an end—a way to keep my head above water while I work toward something that actually feels like me.

Languages have always made sense to me. My parents spoke French and Spanish and Italian interchangeably at home, switching mid-sentence like it was nothing, and I absorbed it all without realizing I was learning. When people talked around me in languages they assumed I didn’t understand, I caught fragments, patterns, meaning. By the time I hit high school and took Mandarin on a whim, it clicked completely. Structure. Flow. The way ideas move differently depending on the words you choose. That was when I knew. I didn’t just like languages—I saw them.

I want to be a translator. Not a tourist with a phrasebook, not someone who butchers pronunciation for fun. I want to take meaning from one mind and place it carefully into another. I want to be invisible and essential at the same time.

My parents don’t really get it. They’re always somewhere else—another country, another hotel, another experience they swear will change their lives. They spend freely on themselves and sparingly on me, and whatever they send barely covers books, let alone tuition. So I work. I pick up shifts. I say yes when I’m tired and smile when I don’t feel like it.

I can’t afford much. Definitely not Starbucks. My apartment is a one-bedroom if you’re being generous—a narrow space where the kitchen is close enough to my bed that I can make ramen without fully standing up. The bathroom is barely big enough to turn around in, and the window sticks when it rains. But it’s mine. It’s quiet. It’s enough.

I finish wiping the table and straighten, tucking the rag into my apron. Across the diner, Ricky is already back at work, still smiling to himself.

I grab a couple of menus and drift toward the back corner, already halfway on autopilot. The table had been empty not five minutes ago, but now there are two men sitting there, long legs stretched out beneath the booth, shoulders broad enough that the space looks suddenly too small for them.

I frown.

I didn’t see them come in. I don’t remember the hostess seating anyone back there either. For a second I wonder if I’m just more tired than I thought, if I missed it while wiping tables or laughing with Ricky.

Probably.

It happens.

They’re tall—both of them. Not in a flashy way, not the kind that announces itself, but solid, contained. One sits with his back straight, posture almost military, dark hair falling into his eyes as he scans the room with quiet focus. The other leans back more casually, one arm draped along the booth, his gaze sharp and assessing, like he’s already taken inventory of everything and everyone inside the diner.

Something tightens in my chest, an instinctive little warning I don’t quite understand.

I smooth my apron, pull my pad from the pocket, and step toward them, already rehearsing my opening line in my head.

“Hey, guys—”

The sound hits before I can finish the thought.

A deep, heavy crash—not sharp like glass, not quick like a car backfiring. It’s low and wrong, like something massive colliding with the world itself. The windows tremble faintly, silverware rattling against plates. A few people gasp. Someone near the front laughs nervously, like it must be construction, or thunder, or anything normal.

I stop and turn toward the front windows.

Outside, the street looks the same. Cars. Streetlights. Darkness pressing up against the glass. I can’t see anything out of place—no smoke, no flashing lights, no obvious reason for the sound that just rolled through my bones.

Weird.

I glance back toward the corner booth.

The two men aren’t reacting at all.

They’re both looking at me now.

And for the first time that night, I feel something cold slide down my spine, slow and deliberate, like the world has just taken a breath it doesn’t plan on letting out.