The Tattoo

The restaurant was loud in the way small burger joints near campus always were—half-filled with students huddled over cheap meals, voices rising and falling in uneven waves.

The fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a pale, almost clinical glow over the red vinyl booths and the sticky laminate tabletops. Ginny sat across from Ollie, the scent of grease and salt heavy in the air, but it barely registered. Her thoughts spun elsewhere, circling like birds over a battlefield.

She'd chosen this place out of convenience, not care.

It wasn't the quiet restaurant she'd imagined when she first asked Ollie to lunch.

No soft lighting, no mismatched mugs of tea steeping at their elbows. Just cheap food and a too-close hum of conversation, a space that felt cramped and endless all at once. The clock on the wall ticked slower than time itself. Ginny wasn't sure she could stomach more than a bite of her burger, untouched on its waxy paper wrapper.