I tried to notice things about this stranger. He was eating eggs, no pepper, no ketchup. Nothing else on his plate. Coffee, black. I’d seen the waitress refill it at least twice while Lou and I were eating. So maybe he was stalling. Maybe he didn’t want to leave the diner and go back to whatever waited for him outside.

He buried his face in his eggs when I reached him. A man like that, a man who doesn’t even pepper his eggs, has no business trying to play it cool. He did try, though. Even though he might as well have been a billboard advertising loneliness, he did his best not to notice me for a good twenty seconds.

I didn’t say anything. I waited until he looked up. When he did, I smiled at him. I traced a figure on my collarbone with one fingertip. I pressed my measurements together and tilted forward a little. I figured he liked a direct woman.

“What’s your name, handsome?”

He shriveled into the eggs. A miscalculation. It was all a lie; I’d never been good at reading men. No wonder he left me. I couldn’t unsay what I’d said, and the words got bigger and bigger and I saw myself as Plain Eggs must’ve seen me—some blowsy burnout, messy hair and loose hips, trying too hard to be sexy. Panicked, I looked for Lou, who was watching me, thumbing that cigarette, her face a big blank.

Of the three of us, I was probably the most surprised when I burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sobbing. “I don’t know what I was trying to—You seem like a nice man, God, what am I doing? I’ve been driving for days and I don’t—I can’t—”

“Jesus Christ,” he said, his voice rising high on an alarmed note. His eyes were watery and the color of weak tea. They say you never forget your first. “Jesus Christ, sit down.”

It was more surprising than the tears. I sat. I let him feel useful and hand me some napkins to use as tissues. I told him a story, but not the same one I’d told Lou. A breakup, a broken heart, an empty checking account. I thanked him profusely. I told him I was there with my sister, and she said I should go talk to him—didn’t he look handsome in that silk shirt?—but I didn’t know what I was doing anymore, and he seemed like such a nice man, I needed a nice man, so—