Dead To You

41. old wounds

Before, when I first formulated this plan to drive Noel's car into town under the guise of finding him something to eat to avoid a long walk home in the dark, I had intended on choosing the Wendy's a block away from my apartment—cheap and close—when I spotted the glow of familiar block scarlet letters on the corner of a small plaza down the street about a mile away from the bookstore still. Sub Type, a little restaurant right beside a laundromat and an antique mercantile, and the parking lot usually smelled like a mixture of fabric softener and grilled onions, a combination that was oddly nostalgic as I tried to remember the last time I had been there, maybe the year before we moved.

It was one place that hadn't changed since the nineties, and whenever someone slid into one of those cracked vinyl booths, it was kind of like sliding back in time too, like if they listened hard enough, they could almost eavesdrop on Harry and Sally discussing if men and woman can ever truly be friends, take a side, and then realize that the movie proved Harry's point. Still a classic, though.

I flicked on the turn signal as the car approached the restaurant, and I wondered while I pulled in if Noel had ever been here before but, judging from the slight furrow of his brow, it seemed as if he hadn't, which I really should've guessed. Noel Preston didn't exactly have an aesthetic that a diner would complement.

But nevertheless, he unbuckled his seatbelt and followed me through the parking lot without a condescending or judgmental word, while I took in a deep inhale of lavender scented detergent mingling in the air with what smelled like fresh baked bread and let a small smile slip through in the dark.

Bright fluorescent light spilled out over the sidewalk through the glass entrance doors smudged with fingerprints around the steel bars across the middle, and the sign crookedly taped to the back told me that the hours still hadn't changed. The tiles on the floor were scuffed, black scratches streaked across a shade that probably used to be white at some point but was now an almost faded sort of cream hue, with the occasional colored tile—alternating between a dark yellow, teal, and a dusty pink—like a path toward the booths sandwiched against the wall.

The booths were also a dark shade of teal, cracked near the seams with the occasional strip of clear duct tape confining the cushioning, and rimmed with chestnut wood like the white table bolted against the wall, which was partially paneled with two different types of wallpaper—the first a splotchy combination of purples and blues, and the second was a textured ivory. The menu behind the front counter was bleached from the sun, the picture of a sub just beneath the restaurant's name decorated with toppings in varying tones of blue, and the prices were reflected in interchangeable foil stickers.

Beside the counter was a display case of packaged pastries, slices of cakes with sloppy frosting stuck to the plastic and pie, and then to the left of that was a small soda fridge with canned Coke products. Somewhere in the back, I heard a box fan droning and muffled conversation, but otherwise, the diner was relatively quiet.

Aside from us, the only other people there were an elderly couple sitting at one of the booths near the front, quietly chewing on their respective subs. Sub Type was practically a time capsule, a portal back to a world that I was never even a part of but yet somehow found myself missing, and each step inside was a stroll through memory lane, deeper into the realistic version of the nineties, not what I soon realized was a romanticized contemporary version. Nothing ever changed here. It was the same as it was yesterday as it was thirty years ago.

And I loved it.

We stood there for a moment before a middle-aged man poked his head out the doorframe from inside the kitchen, the overheard lights gleaming over his clean-shaven scalp and shadowing the bulging dark bags beneath his round eyes, an apron tied around his waist with the chest half flapping against his legs as he approached the counter.