I’d come before my shift at LeLane’s, and after I did what I had to do, I had to go straight to LeLane’s. So I was in my LeLane’s uniform of polo, khakis, and Converse (though, LeLane’s didn’t require Converse, that was my nod to style because everyone knew Converse rocked).

Joker had mentioned he’d thought my dress was cute and my heels were sexy. I didn’t have an excess of cute dresses and shoes (well, I did, but none of them fit me anymore), but I was a cute-dress-and-heels type of girl. I had more than just the butterfly one that fit me.

But this was me. The new me. A single mom, grocery store clerk in khakis and Converse. And if he asked me out on a date and eventually kissed me again, this would be the woman he’d be kissing.

I hadn’t been about me. Not for a long time. Maybe never. I had been coasting in life for so long, I actually didn’t know who me was.

I just knew right now most of me was being a mom and a grocery store clerk.

So the LeLane’s uniform it was.

I threw open the door and kept walking in as my eyes adjusted to the dim.

They’d just done that when I heard, “Fuck, you movin’ in?”

I turned my head right and saw Joker at the bar with three other people. One was the lanky guy from the first time I’d been there. The other two were a man and woman. Both looked about my age. Both looked a lot like the goateed man I met the first time I was there. They had to be brother and sister. Though, she was with the lanky guy. I knew this by the casual way his arm was flung around her shoulders.

They all were outside the bar, Joker was behind it.

“I believe the tally is now seventy cents,” I returned.

Joker put both hands to the bar, spread wide, leaned his weight into them, and dropped his head.

He was handsome even in a pose of frustration.

“Seventy cents?” the girl asked, and I stopped taking in Joker’s handsome and looked to her.

“He owes me a nickel for every curse word, a dime for every bad one,” I explained.

At my explanation, without hesitation, the girl burst into laughter. It took a moment for the two guys to process it, in fact, they looked so surprised by this, I wasn’t sure they were going to process it. But once they did, they joined her.

Joker lifted his head and glowered at them before he turned that glower to me.

“Clean sheets, clean clothes, Butterfly,” he stated irately. “So you’re here today why?”

I stopped by their huddle and I did it with my gaze on him.

“First, would you introduce me?” I requested.