Can You Hear the Ocean? - Chapter 3: Chapter 3

"Mia, get that latte and omelet to Table 3," came the gruff, commanding voice of Mia's manager, Todd. "The customer's been asking for it."
"Sorry," Mia said, reaching to grab the drink and hot food from the counter. She balanced the two carefully. Though it had been two months since she'd been hired as a waitress at Cappucino Café, she still found the daily lunch rushes to be difficult, and balancing the dishes was always the worst part of the job.
As Mia pushed open the glass door onto the patio, she left behind the smell of roasted coffee beans and welcomed the scent of the ocean breeze. Every day when Mia worked herself to death in the café, wanting nothing more than to throw her rag down and quit at the end of the night, it was the atmosphere that made her stay. That and the fact she wouldn't be able to afford rent without a job.
Mia quickly located the customer. He was a dark-haired man in a business suit who was presumably visiting on his lunch break. He at first appeared to be writing in a planner, but as Mia approached, she realized he was doodling on a napkin.
Slowly, Mia set down the food at the table.
"Sorry for the wait, sir. It gets busy at lunchtime, and we're short-staffed today," she explained, eyeing the drawing out of the corner of her eye. It was merely some illustrations of the oceanside and buildings of Kennebunkport that had been hastily drawn, and yet, her eyes fixated on them. They weren't bad at all.
"Can I get you anything else?" Mia asked the man, turning her gaze back to him.
"That's all right," he said.
Mia nodded, about to move away, but she lingered in place. "Your drawings are quite good," she noted.
He glanced down at the napkin. "Oh, these? I just draw on napkins for fun sometimes. Helps pass the time. That and my phone died."
"Do you draw professionally?" she wondered.
He shook his head. "Just a fun pastime. Are you an artist?"
Mia opened her mouth to agree, then found herself hesitating. "I got my degree in art and studio design, but I haven't found a good use for it yet—"
"Mia! Stop flirting with the customers and get back to work!" she heard her manager shout from afar. He was delivering food to a separate customer sitting outside.
"Excuse me. Enjoy the food," Mia said, ducking away from the man. She couldn't help but grind her teeth as she returned inside to distribute more food to tables. It was rare she got the opportunity to talk about art. In New York, it had been a more common topic of conversation, but since returning to Maine, Mia hadn't found any way to meet other artists.
In fact, sometimes Mia wondered why she had even returned back to Maine. It had done nothing to aid her in her career. The move had forced her to take a crappy customer service job and scrounge around for some place to live, but it wasn't like she'd had much of a choice. Her lease in New York had ended, it was too expensive to remain in the city, and Maine was the only place she could think of returning to.
"Mia, can I speak to you for a second?" Todd asked as he returned from outdoors.
Mia stopped wiping down a table and followed her manager back into the kitchen, away from the customers.
"Look, I understand you're going through a lot," he said, his voice slightly softer and kinder than it had been a few moments ago, "but you need to get your head out of the clouds if you want to continue working in this position. I lost my father around your age too, but sometimes some hard work helps with the grief."
"I'm sorry," Mia murmured. "I'll try harder. I'm more settled in now than I was when I first started."
Her manager sighed. "All right. Just consider this a warning. Back to work, then."
Mia tried to not let her thoughts wander for the rest of the day. She picked up the pace, worked diligently, and clocked out later in the afternoon with aching muscles and throbbing feet. She still hadn't gotten used to that part of the job either—the physical labor of it all. Of course, she wasn't meant to do this type of work. She longed for the ache in her fingers that she used to experiencing after drawing for hours on end instead.
Mia took a few seconds to recline in her car's driver seat before pulling out and driving away from the coast. She glanced at the ocean in her rearview mirror and smiled slightly before it faded. She expected to drive herself back to her apartment, but she knew her roommate probably had her boyfriend over, so she drove to one of the only other places she frequently visited. The plains gave way to sprawling pines, and slowly, Mia pulled into the gravel parking lot of the cemetery.
She exited her car and stretched before walking the familiar lines of marble rows down toward the one particular grave Mia was heavily acquainted with. Her mother's white-marble headstone was larger than the others, rounded and rectangular in shape. Engraved into the stone were two doves and a note that read:
Here lies Alicia Cunningham
A loving daughter, wife, mother, and fearless fighter
Glancing at the birth and death date, Mia didn't have to do the math to know her mother had died at 40 years old. She remembered it all so vividly, even though she had only been eleven at the time. It hadn't settled in at first, the day that Mia's mother sat her down and told her she was going to die, that there were no other treatments they could do for the cancer. Mia had sat and listened, not believing a word until the day of the funeral, when she stood in the front of her mother's grave with her father.
"Hey, Mom," Mia said, brushing some spare dirt and debris from the gravestone. "Sorry, no flowers today."
Mia hadn't meant to visit so often, but she could never go a week without doing so, not since returning to Maine. Since the day she and her father had left this town, they had not once returned. The first time Mia had visited after her move back, she had spent hours cleaning up the twelve-years-worth of dirt and debris from the gravestone. Only now was it looking polished again, and she made sure to bring by flowers often to spruce up gravesite. Her mother always loved bringing some fresh color to the home with floral arrangements. Mia wanted to continue that tradition.
Mia took a seat on the ground, ignoring the fact that she would surely have dirt stains on her pants when she rose. She pulled her knees close to her and sighed as she glanced forward at her mother's grave.
"Work was okay," she explained. "Though I have a feeling if I don't get it together I'll be fired. It's so frustrating, Mom. I don't know what to do. I made the decision to come back here, but at the same time, I feel like New York was where my friends and career was." Mia laughed slightly to herself. "I mean, I say that, but I would've made more of an effort to stay if I believed that," she admitted. "Once Dad died this past spring and the lease expired, well—you know all of this already—but I just didn't know what to do. I still don't really know what I'm doing."
Already she could feel her throat going chalky. Mia had thought the twelve years would make the grief more bearable, but she never managed to visit without crying. The guilt drove her mad inside. Why did she cry looking at her mother's grave when her father had died suddenly in a car accident only a few months before? Of course she had been saddened, but she and her father had been distant for some time.
Mia sniffed and wiped some tears from her eyes before standing up and brushing spare dirt off her pants.
"I'll be back with some flowers next time," Mia murmured to the silent grave before returning to her car. Slowly, Mia calmed her tears and gathered the energy to return home.
As Mia expected, when she entered the small two bed-one bath apartment, the living room couch was occupied by two individuals, as it often was these days. Mia couldn't be upset about it though, not when Abby had aided her tremendously. Mia had met Abby Steiner through an online housing group, desperate to find somewhere to live during her spontaneous move back to Maine. She hadn't even found a stable job yet when Abby approved her as a roommate.
Living conditions were not ideal, but Mia was thankful for Abby's kindness. Mia had a room to herself, and while they shared the bathroom, Mia had lived in much worse apartment complexes in New York, and yet, there were fonder memories to be found there.
Abby was thirty years old, which, though only seven years older than Mia, felt like an eternity in Mia's eyes given the different paths their lives were on. They certainly got along fine, but they couldn't emotionally connect like she could with her friends her age.
Mia hoped her eyes had returned to normal and that they weren't still swollen and puffy as she waved hello.
"Hey, Abby. Hey, Kyle," she said to Abby's boyfriend. He seemed to be an honorary third member of the already-small apartment these days, but once again, Mia kept quiet. She had no right to complain at all, not when Abby let Mia's boyfriend, Julian, stay over occasionally.
"Hey, Mia. We're going grocery shopping later. Do you want to come?" Abby asked.
"Thanks, but I'm meeting Julian at the bar in a bit," Mia explained. With that, she disappeared into her room, which was still fairly undecorated despite her move two months prior. The walls were blank and the window view was not extraordinary as it just looked onto the side of another building, but for the time being, it was her home.
Still feeling down from her visit to the gravesite, Mia collapsed on her bed and laid on her back, staring up at the ceiling. With a sigh, she reached for the pale seashell on her dresser and twirled it in her fingers. It had become a familiar soothing sensation at this point. She held it up, just briefly, to her ear before setting it back down where she kept it. She realized she couldn't linger long. Julian would be expecting her soon.
Abby and Kyle were already gone when Mia left for the bar. She drove a short distance back into town until she arrived at Cloud Bar, where Julian worked as a bartender. Mia stepped inside the dimly-lit bar, navigating around waitresses carrying drinks and food to customers in the thin aisles.
Mia took a seat at one of the barstools, smiling to see Julian had not noticed her yet. His back was turned as he worked on making a drink for a customer. Mia glanced at the back of his slightly curly brown hair and thought about how nice it felt when she ran her fingers through it.
"Excuse me, sir," she said.
Julian spun around, his body relaxing when he recognized Mia.
"You're here early," he said. "I still have a few minutes left of my shift."
"I figured I'd get a drink before we headed out," she explained. "After all, it's so romantic, this being our first meeting spot and all, don't you think?"
During Mia's first week back in Maine, she'd come to the bar with Abby for an evening and ran into Julian there. They'd had their first date shortly afterwards, and before Mia knew it, she found herself in a two-month long relationship with him.
"Yeah, but we seem to come here too often these days. Either way, what can I get you?" Julian asked as he set down a drink for another customer sitting near Mia.
"Just a gin and tonic is fine," she said.
"Nothing fancy tonight?" Julian wondered.
Mia shook her head and gazed down at her fingers resting on the cool, black counter.
"Hey, what's up?" Julian asked. "Why are you acting quiet?"
Mia sighed. "I visited my mother's grave after work this afternoon."
A long, drawn-out sigh wracked through Julian's body as he worked on making her drink. "I told you," he said, pouring some ice into a glass, "that you shouldn't go so often. You're never in a good mood afterwards. It ruins the atmosphere."
"I know, but I can't help it. It's so hard not to," Mia explained. "Especially after being away for so long."
"Are you still down for our date tonight, then?" Julian asked, setting the drink near her.
"Of course!" Mia argued. "I'll get over it. I always do."
"Good," Julian said. "Give me a few more minutes, and I'll come join you at the bar." He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss to her cheek.
Mia smiled some and sipped slowly on her drink. She had hoped it would improve her mood, but the grief she had assured Julian would fade remained. She wasn't surprised. It always did. She had just gotten better at hiding it.