“I was hoping you’d be here tonight,” Greg said with a tired smile. He waved away the unneeded menu the waitress only half-heartedly offered.

“I’m always here, you know that.” She cleared away the extra table setting she knew he wouldn’t need. “The usual then?”

“With a whiskey and Coke,” he agreed.

With a smile she was off, hair swinging behind her to get back to the half full bar. He watched her go, reminding himself again that he shouldn’t ask her out. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

The drink arrived quickly, as he knew it would. “I needed this,” he said in thanks, taking a long pull of the drink.

“Long day?” She asked, glancing over her shoulder but apparently deciding she had time to stay and chat.

“You’ve seen it out there. 95 degrees in the shade and if there was a gust of wind it made sure to not come near me.”

“Sounds like you should be hydrating with, you know, water,” she gently scolded him, rolling her eyes when he waved her off.

“So what are you building today?”

“Same parking garage we’ve been at for weeks. Finally starting to come together, though.” When she didn’t rush away, he explained some of the more interesting bits, grinning at her impressed exclamations and offering simple answers to any of her questions.

And when she had to leave in the middle of a sentence he turned back to his drink, making sure to not watch her walk away this time.

A man could get awfully lonely at times, especially with his long hours and back breaking work. Looking at his fingers clamped around the glass, he grimaced at the callouses bulging around the edges of his fingers and the small bits of black and brown dirt that never came out no matter how he scrubbed. He liked his job, he really did. But the fact of the matter was that his life was not very appealing to the opposite sex.

Lynn didn’t seem to mind his dirty clothes or windswept hair when he came in to eat. She’d been kind to him from her first day, and after she served his dinner for the third night in a row they’d gotten to chatting when she had the time. But he shook the thought away, physically and mentally.

The poor girl was just here to serve him dinner, and he didn’t have the right to take any piece of kindness she gave him and turn it into something more.

Lynn soon slid his standard dinner - an open-face meatloaf sandwich served over potatoes with a side of green beans - in front of him.

“You need anything else with that, Greg? Another drink?”

“Nah this is fine, thanks.”

“Do you have a second?” She asked after a moment, with her typical glance over her shoulder. And was he glad that it was a slow night.

“Anything for my favorite waitress,” he said easily, running his suddenly sweaty palms off on his jeans.

Her smile demanded one in return. And luckily he was able to keep that smile in place when she started asking him if he knew anything about roofs and gutters. A leak had sprung up in her attic and she didn’t know whether the gutters were backed up or if she had to actually call professionals to fix the place.

And her assumption was right - of course he knew what she meant and who to contact.

On the one hand it irked - her assuming that he knew about a roof problem because he worked in construction, that that was all he was good for.

On the other hand, maybe this was the fair trade off. He got to see a friendly face every night and she got some pieces of advice that might make her life just a little easier.

Yes, that was fair. Not fun or fancy, but a fair trade for a simple man.