"Here you are, sir." Reya smiled as she poured coffee into a mug and set it down gently onto a wooden table, "Would you like sugar with that?" Her blue eyes looked up at the portly man sitting at the table, who looked back at her with a playful smirk from under his greying mustache.
"You're plenty sugar enough, doll, thank ya."
She forced a convincing laugh, "You just holler if you need anything, then."
Quickly she turned and took the coffee pot back to the kitchen, glad to escape further conversation with the truck driver who had spent the night in the tavern to get some shut eye before he headed out on the road again. Unfortunately, truckers were always hit or miss for her. Either they wanted to talk to you for hours on end, and slip in inappropriate comments along the way, or they didn't want to speak to you at all. She usually preferred the latter, although she remained grateful for all of their business. Awkward conversation was a small price to pay for the stability of her income.
plink.. plink.. plink..
"Ohh... Shit! Reya set down the coffee pot onto one of the kitchen counters and rushed to a cabinet which held a large soup pot. As soon as she pulled it out she ran to the middle of the kitchen where water was slowly dripping in from the ceiling, setting the pot underneath so that the water would collect there instead of on the old wooden floors. "Damn it..." She muttered to herself, eyes glued to the ceiling where the water was coming from.
Her father had been meaning to fix that leak in the roof for at least three years now. He never did get around to it. It annoyed Reya every year, and yet here she was having the same problem a year after the tavern had become solely hers. A year to the day, exactly.
Reya's gaze slowly turned toward the window, seeing that the rain was coming down in full force. She walked over to the window and sighed, staring outside and suddenly feeling a heaviness in her heart. One year ago today, on the Winter Solstice, her father had made the final decision to exit this life. He left her with everything, even this leaky roof. For a brief moment she wondered if perhaps she should take it as a sign from her father in the after life, telling her to get it taken care of before the weather got worse.
A weak smile began to appear on her lips as she watched the rain come down, puddling up on the ground outside around the tavern. Her father had always despised the rain, especially if it rained during winter. He loved winter, the snow, and the cold. Rain while it should be snowing was blasphemy in his eyes! The fact that it was raining on the winter solstice today would have sent him into an angry rant as he glared at the hole in the roof that he kept putting off fixing. No doubt the snow would arrive soon - the temperature had already dipped into the low 40s. But today, her dad would have been as irritable as ever.
Reya shook her head, "I'll get that fixed soon." She whispered to herself, turning to look up at the leaking roof again. "Ruben certainly won't be happy about this..." She smiled again, imagining the look on his face when he walked in for his shift today to see yet another year with rain water dripping into his beloved kitchen.
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