“Psst!”

Joey glanced over from his usual spot next to the kitchen door to see a frantic Christopher pointing at the entrance. Following the direction Chris was pointing at, he saw the girl walking toward the diner. He took Chris’ excitement as confirmation that his bizarre plan of snooping around her table was still a go. Why Joey agreed to it, he had no idea.

Chris grabbed a regular and special menu while making sure that the table the girl normally sat at was free before facing her. Joey laughed quietly to himself as he watched his friend take on a sudden professionalism as he guided the girl to her table. Chris was a little too serious for the occasion – he barely smiled.

After setting the menus down and probably verbalizing what the special was for the day, Chris bowed and made a sharp turn and walked swiftly toward Joey. “Holy bananas… Did I just bow?” Chris’ eyes were about ready to pop out of their sockets.

“Yeah, man. Rest in peace.” Joey laughed.

“Hopefully she didn’t notice.”

Joey looked back at the girl to see that she was busily chatting with her waitress, Diane. “Doesn’t look like she cared. Why don’t you just ask Diane to do all the snooping? She’s the only one that can get close enough.”

“This is a man’s job, Joseph.”

“Exactly. A man, not men. I don’t see why you need me.” Joey whined.

“Dude, I’m stuck in the front! You clean up tables so you have a better chance than I do. You can’t back out anyway since you already agreed to help.” Chris snapped.

“Fine, fine. I hope you know this is borderline stalking.”

“So?”

Joey shook his head as Chris made his way back to the front to seat a party of five. Strategically, he sat them behind the girl’s table and gave Joey a wink. As more people came in, Chris took the liberty of seating them near the girl, continuously cueing Joey.

Finally, a man from the party of five finished his bowl of clam chowder. Joey was at the man’s side before he could put the spoon back onto the bowl. Without acknowledging the man’s gratitude, Joey threw the bowl into the basin as he eyed the girl’s laptop. Her head was in the way and he could only make out the corner of a spreadsheet. Unable to stay in the same spot without looking suspicious, Joey tried to steal a few more glances before heading back to his place by the kitchen.

As the day progressed, Joey made it a priority to keep his eyes glued on nearly every single customer who looked like they were about to finish their food. On normal days, he would’ve been absentmindedly staring out in the distance until he notices a party stand up from their table and then he would head over and clean up everything all at once. Each time he passed the girl’s table, the list of things he could make out from peaking over her shoulder were: spreadsheets, an on-screen calculator, furniture, and silverware.

Chris made a few attempts to check out her screen as well but from the looks of his face, Joey took it as a sign of disappointment and failure to figure out what she was doing. Nearing the end of the day, Chris’ initial expression of excitement turned into a bored one. His plan didn’t turn out quite as he had hoped.

When the last of the patrons aside from the girl stumbled out of the diner, Chris made his way to Joey while trying one last time to take a sneak peak. He shrugged with his palms faced up “Aye, no luck brudda.”

“No luck, indeed.” Joey repeated.

“Either she loves math or she’s looking for new furniture for her place. But that doesn’t explain why she’s so preoccupied with it.” Chris crossed his arms as they both stared at her.

“Hey… it’s almost closing. Doesn’t she usually leave way earlier than this?” Joey questioned.

Chris looked at his watch and saw that they had to start cleaning up in a few minutes. “That’s weird. What do we do?”

“She’s not even eating anything.”

Chris played with his fingers, “So… do we ask her to leave?”

“Here’s your chance to talk to her.” Joey nudged his friend’s shoulder.

“No way, dude! You do it!”

They spent the next couple of minutes fighting over who would be the lucky one to tell the girl to leave. At one point where Joey had Chris in a headlock, they both froze as they noticed the girl watching them. Joey immediately let go of Chris as they both straightened themselves out.

To their disbelief, the girl raised a hand and wiggled her pointer finger, motioning the both of them to approach her. Chris and Joey looked at each other and then back at the girl. Both feeling as if they had been caught in an act of disapproval by their mothers, they took a nervous gulp as they marched in the direction of the girl.

“Take a seat, boys.” As if already adding to their feeling of nervousness, the way she ordered them to sit sounded like she was their mother.

Chris and Joey sat with their mouths slightly open, unsure of what to say. Joey rubbed his neck while Chris played with a napkin. Neither of them made eye contact with the girl as she stared at them for the next few moments with her arms crossed.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” She asked, finally breaking the silence.

Joey spoke next, “Pardon?”

“It seems like you two took a particular interest in my laptop. Don’t think I didn’t notice the repetitive passing by and staring. I felt like I was a victim of a drive by.” She gave them a stern look.

The two of them started to break a sweat. Chris took his turn to speak, “Well… um… you see…”

“Uh huh?” she interrupted.

“W-we were – I-I was curious about it. You’re here a lot and I just really wanted to know what you were up to so I got my friend to help me out with it. I’m Chris, by the way. Chris Kirkpatrick, the host. He’s Joey Fatone, busboy.” Chris spoke so fast Joey could barely make sense of his words.

“I know; it says so on your name tags.” The girl laughed as she pointed at their metallic pendants with their names engraved on them.

“Nice one.” Joey whispered softly enough so that Chris was the only one to hear.

“I’m Hailey and if you m-.”

“Hailey…” Chris repeated before he could stop himself.

Joey elbowed Chris to snap him out of his entrancement.

“Yes… Hailey. As I was saying, if you must know what I’m up to, you could’ve just asked. I was trying to put together all the details for my café I want to open.” Hailey explained as she brushed some of her dark hair behind her ear.

Joey took note of her olive skin and soft chocolate eyes for the first time. “You’re going to open a café?” He asked.

“Well it’s more of a hangout style café. There’s too many coffee shops around here and I’m more of a tea person so I figured it would be nice if I can open a tea shop that sold comfort food as well. I also want to have a small stage for an open mic.” She continued to describe all the ideas she wanted for her tea shop, noting that everything was almost done.

“What are you calling it?” Chris leaned in closer showing his genuine interest.

“I don’t have a name yet. I’ve been struggling with that for quite some time.”

Chris put a finger to his chin as he thought of a name. After a few moments, he blurted out “Tea Party!”

Joey stared at him incredulously, “That sounds –“

“Perfect!” She exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that before?!” Hailey opened her laptop and rushed to take note of it.

Chris winked at Joey and mouthed the word ‘SCORE!’ as he did a low fist pump.

“What were you going to say, Joey?”

Her inquiry took him by surprise since he was in total disagreement with the name before she decided it was perfect. “It sounds good.” he lied.

She pursed her lips and looked to Chris, “Joey doesn’t seem interested and you seem to be the one with the great ideas so if it’s not too much to ask, is it alright if you could spend some time with me tomorrow to go over a few things for the place?”

Chris’ jaw dropped while Joey was taken aback by her not so far off assumption. He wasn’t interested at all but her stating it out loud seemed rude to him. Joey wasn’t too sure if he was too fond of her.

“Hell yeah!” Chris nearly jumped out of his seat.

He and Hailey exchanged numbers while Joey felt like a third wheel. He was sure that if he got up and started cleaning up the place, the two wouldn’t notice. As Hailey stood up to take her leave, she bid her goodbyes to the two men while Chris got up to walk her to the door.

Soon as the door was shut, Chris zipped back toward Joey and threw his arms around him. “Woohoo!” He screamed.

“Happy for you.” Joey said behind gritted teeth.

“I got a date!” Chris let go as he proceeded to dance around the diner. “Isn’t she great?”

"Uh huh." Joey couldn't say that he was too thrilled about their encounter with Hailey so he went on to clean up the tables while his friend blissfully prounced around.