The smell alerted Logan two miles down the road; nothing quite smelled like the grease used to cook fish and hush puppies. He told himself it wasn't nostalgia that made him pull into the parking lot, gravel rooster-tailing out from under the wheel of his bike. Glancing around, he swept off the bike, pulling off the leather gloves he wore and tucking them into a jacket pocket. The wooden boardwalk creaked under his boots as he walked to the door.
“Hey, hon, be right with you,” a waitress said as he paused next to the cash register.
Taking the time to look around, Logan decided Rogue probably would've liked the place. Fishing trophies vied for spaces on the wall with wooden plaques with homilies burned into them. A mechanical pig rolled a unicycle along a string stretched from the door to the back of the joint. A stuffed bobcat glared impotently from a shelf, its paw raised as if it wanted to snatch the pig off its highwire.
There were people scattered throughout the restaurant, most of the men wearing ball caps advertising John Deere or some feed store or a patch with a fish on it. They barely glanced up at his presence; obviously, there was enough pass-through trade here that a stranger didn't make much of an impression. Not necessarily a bad thing, he reasoned to himself.
The waitress bustled up to him, her hair some impossible shade of red and piled up on top of her head in some style even Logan knew was out of date. He eyed the pencils she had arranged in her hair as she plucked one out and fished out a paper menu with the other hand. “Is it just gonna be you tonight, hon?”
Summers would be laughing his ass off at this one, the big, bad Wolverine eating in a fish place because he missed a girl. “Yeah,” he managed to mutter, drowning out the idea of Scott's laughter with the image of himself pouring a glass of ice tea over the other man's head. Yeah, that'd shut him up. Logan caught himself smiling at the image as he followed the waitress back to a table.
At least she put him in the corner, away from the kitchen. He wondered if the waitresses did that with all their single customers; stick them in the corner, where they wouldn't be much bother to the regulars. Not that he wanted to, hell, getting into a fight at a fish shack would probably mean his jacket would stink of fish grease for the rest of its days. And people didn't get into fights in restaurants, much. Bars, now, that's where you went for a fight.
That thought kept him occupied through his meal of catfish fingerlings, navy beans with ham and thick, country fries. The waitress made sure he always had a glass of tea so thick with sugar it could've been poured on pancakes, flirted with him the way waitresses comfortable with their jobs were prone to do and produced his bill after he'd finished eating, not before.
Logan left her a decent tip and went to pay the bill. The redheaded waitress grinned, took his money and hoped he'd stop back by. While she was counting change, he noticed the photo, on the wall behind the woman's head. “Can I,” his mouth was suddenly dry, “see that picture?” He pointed.
The waitress glanced behind her at the board with photos of all sorts of people, men in ball caps and women with kids in their laps and grandmas and birthday parties and a Polaroid of a sweet face, framed by two white strands of hair. “She's a cutey, isn't she?” the waitress asked, not taking down the picture.
“I know her,” Logan said, opening his wallet back up. He pulled out a photo, the corner creased, the face itself just a little grimy from being shoved in with his cash. But it clearly showed Rogue, peeping over the top of a book at whoever took the shot. “Here.”
She stared at the photo closely, flipping it over to see Jubilee's nearly-illegible scrawl. The words read, “I know she's thinking of you 'cause the book's upside down.” A grin quirked up the corner of her mouth. “Was she really thinking of you?” the waitress asked.
“I sure to hell hope so,” Logan said sincerely.
With a wink, the waitress peeled Rogue's photo from the bulletin board, comparing the photos. She handed them both to Logan with his change. “Good luck finding her,” she said.
He smiled, saluting her with the two pictures. The waitress held up a hand to stop him and pulled a camera out from behind the counter. When he opened his mouth to protest, she said, “In case she comes back. Looking for you.”
Logan relented, not going so far as to actually smile at the waitress' cajoling but he did manage a smirk when the flash went off. The waitress waved the developing picture in the air as Logan walked out the door, her call of, “Come back any time, hon!” following him into the parking lot. He straddled the bike, looking at the new photo of Rogue. It was dated only ten days ago.
Turning over the ignition, Logan smiled to himself. If she kept to her usual patterns, he might be able to catch up to her soon.
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