Unpublished short fiction

The plates are old and chipped and the coffee mugs are old and chipped, but nobody cares—the waitresses least of all. Linda’s Sunnyside-Up Cafe opened in 1978 and never left this aluminum storefront on Franklin Street, even when Linda died. That was almost twenty years ago. After she died, a guy named Brian took over, and they changed the name to Brian’s Sunnyside-Up Cafe, but everybody still calls it Linda’s. If you call it Brian’s, the customers here will know you’re not one of them. Not that I’d want to be. Linda’s is filled every day with working class Georgia boys in dusty Carhartt jackets who argue over Sheetrock and brushless Makita impact drivers. They’re also the same guys who used to pick on Dusty and me in high school. Now they know how to weld.
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3,421 words