Save Me a Slice

The waiter brought the dessert menu out along with a fresh pot of coffee for the table. “Can I interest anyone in our specials? We have a delicious special today - Flaming Lemon Bar. Goes perfectly with a beautiful Summer evening like this.”

The brunette sitting across from the waiter set down the dessert menu and said simply, “We’ll have four slices of your chocolate cake.”

The waiter looked at the table and confirmed there had only been three ladies dining there so far that evening. “Would you like me to box one of the slices? Or, are you expecting a guest for dessert?”

“No,” said the brunette. “Just four slices.”

None of the women struck him as the type to eat two slices. And his restaurant served very large slices. Most tables would order one slice per party and still have some leftover to take home. He’d had odder requests than four slices of chocolate cake. However, he could usually guess which tables would throw him a curve ball from the minute they sat down. This one left him slightly curious.

As the waiter turned and left for the kitchen, the younger blonde woman said in a hushed tone, “Madelyn … I swear you love to confuse and shock people as mere sport.”

Madelyn smirked. “Of course I do, Brooke. It was our favorite pastime. And, at the end of the evening, we would compare all the stories of the dumbfounded stares we had left in our wake. She was quite talented at derailing a conversation and line of thought, you know.”

Brooke nodded her head. She knew exactly the impact Jolene had on a room. Jolene would literally be the most memorable person of any evening, both because of her stunning looks and her sharp wit.

Kristin, the third woman sitting at the table, let out a little sniffle. She had held herself together all night but Madelyn and Brooke both knew she wouldn’t hold out much longer. She was always the most sensitive soul of the bunch.

“I just can’t believe she’s not here. I know we had time to wrap our heads around her condition and the possibility that she wouldn’t make it even six more months … but, she was literally the life of the party. What happens to the party now that the life has gone out?”

Madelyn grabbed both Brooke and Kristin’s hands and looked each of them in the eye. These women had been the closet of friends for over ten years. They had been inseparable from their first days of work at the magazine. They had seen each other through heartbreaks and triumphs, through all of their growing pains and through each new adventure they had embarked on over that decade of friendship. There wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for each other and, if Jolene had any say in the matter, they would have all grown old together.

“What we do now,” Madelyn said with more confidence than she was actually feeling, “is we live the life Jolene wanted us to. We grow old together. We keep a guest bed and bottle of Cab on hand for any event that may arise. We celebrate our lives each day and we lean on each other whenever we need a little more strength. We will carry her with us. The life of the party isn’t gone … it will always be here with us.”

Brooke and Kristin both nodded their heads and gave a slight smile. They knew Madelyn was right.

The waiter returned with the four slices of chocolate cake and set one down in front of each of them. Madelyn nodded her head at the open chair, indicating that the fourth slice should be set down in the open spot.

As he walked away Brooke asked, “So, what do we do now?”

Madelyn tilted her chin up and put on her brightest smile. In her best effort to imitate Jolene, she declared, “Why, ladies, you know exactly what we do now. Jolene was a complicated woman with simple tastes. So, we eat Jolene’s favorite cake and we savor every bite just as she would have.”

The waiter looked back over to their table to see the confident brunette hold her fork up as if to make a toast. He smiled and nodded his head somberly as he heard them declare, “To Jolene.”