Baby, Kitten, Sweetie

Jane was an actress, technically. But mostly she was just exhausted. She worked mornings at Jack’s Wife Freda in Chelsea, serving pancakes to tourists and Bellini’s to mothers who didn’t look old enough to have daughters that age. Every day, she arrived just before seven and left by four, her apron smelling faintly of coffee and citrus. She liked listening into other peoples conversations. A father and son dissecting college options like it was a business deal. Two girls taking turns photographing each other with a chunky digital camera, the kind Jane’s mother used to have before it was trendy. Before anything meant anything.

All her life, people told Jane she was pretty. Not gorgeous. Not striking. Just pretty, in a way that suggested she might’ve been more if she were taller, or thinner, or better dressed. Her face was balanced. Her eyes were the color of iced tea, and her hair, a soft strawberry blonde, never quite fell the way she wanted it to. She lived in a one bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen with a guy named Tommy. They’d met at an off Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie. He played a minor character with major opinions.

It was a Saturday, just past noon, when Jane first noticed the couple who’d eventually become her favorite customers. The girl caught her eye first, tall in a way that made her seem unfinished, her limbs too long, her face improbably beautiful in that open, unformed way some people managed to stay. She wore oversized clothes that looked borrowed, sleeves swallowing her wrists, sweatpants sagging at the hips.. Jane assumed they belonged to the guy she was always there with. He had that slippery kind of hair that looked wet even when it wasn’t, and a body that suggested something violent, broad shoulders, hands that gripped everything too tightly. They came in together, always holding hands, kissing in line like no one else existed.

“Any shot you can fit us in?” The guy would ask, looking at Jane with a slightly flirtatious, slightly sinister gaze. And she always said she’d see what she could do, and somehow, they always ended up getting a table, and Jane always ended up serving them.

The guy always ordered the same thing: the burger, well done, with fries. The girl was never sure.

“I’ll have the burger too,” she’d say, soft and certain, until Jane was halfway to the kitchen. Then her voice again, calling her back.

“Actually, can I do the Greek salad? With grilled chicken?”

“Of course,” Jane would say, the polite smile she’d learned from the mirror still in place.

“But can you make sure the chicken is like… really well done?” the girl would add. “I have a fear of undercooked chicken.”

“Cooked to death,” Jane would say with a bright smile. “Got it.”

The couple always sat on the same side of the booth, pressed together like they couldn’t stand the space between them. They held hands under the table, stared into each other like they were watching a movie only they could see.

Jane found herself studying them. Not with envy exactly, more like curiosity. What it was to be that close to someone, to orbit them like a second sun. She’d had boyfriends, sure. Men who drifted in and out. None she’d loved enough to stop them. Except maybe Ronnie, back in college, another actor, pale and lanky and overly confident. He booked some small role in a huge movie and disappeared from her life like that was the whole point.

Jane figured the boyfriend of the girl must be rich, or came from the kind of family where money wasn’t something you had to think about. He always paid, always tipped too much, always smiled like he’d been trained to. The other servers noticed it too. The money, yes, but also the way the couple were together, how often they came in, how they kissed like no one was watching, how they curled into each other in the booth, laughing at things that didn’t seem funny. There was something about them that felt theatrical. Or maybe it was just youth, untouched by anything real yet.

After her shift, Jane looked them up online. The guy, it turned out, was the son of a hedge fund billionaire, according to Forbes. The girl was a model, though online she looked like someone else entirely. In the photos she appeared polished and glossy, with contoured cheekbones and voluminous hair. In person, however, she was always slumped in a hoodie, her hair matted in the back like it hadn’t been brushed in weeks. Pale, hungover, like the version of Jane who used to show up to class straight from Ronnie’s dorm room.

Ronnie.

She hadn’t thought about him in a while, and somehow she was always thinking about him. Was he still acting? Booking roles? Sometimes she checked his IMDB just to see if anything new was added, or watched his instagram stories from the burner account she made in 2021. She watched his girlfriend’s stories, too, blonde and polite looking, always tagging rehearsal selfies and yoga studios and vegan cafes.

A few weeks ago, there it was: the engagement post. A collaborative one.

Easiest yes of my life! the caption read. The photo was of the two of them kissing in Times Square, drenched in LED ads and tourist flashes. Jane had stared at it for a long time. It was so corny. So him.

The couple started coming in every day around noon, always looking vaguely disheveled. The girl never knew what she wanted to eat. Jane overheard her once, complaining that she felt fat.

“Get the pancakes if you want the pancakes, baby,” the guy said, voice low and amused.

“But I feel so obese” the girl said. “I should get the yogurt.”

“So get the yogurt.”

“But I want the pancakes!” She groaned.

He laughed, cupped her face like she was a child or a pet, kissed her with too much energy for that time of day.

“Then get the pancakes, kitten,” He looked at Jane after he said it, like they were sharing something, an understanding that his girlfriend was a lovable mess, and he was the kind of guy who put up with lovable messes.

Jane wrote it down without looking up. It was always like that, some tight little loop that never went anywhere.

From what Jane could gather, the couple never really talked about anything of substance. Mostly, they just made out and curled into each other, scrolling through their phones in silence. The guy played chess on his screen and the girl refreshed her own Instagram, zooming in on pictures of herself like she was examining them for flaws. They spoke in baby voices. Called each other kitten, baby, sweetie. Sometimes they talked about plans. Once, Jane heard them mention marriage.

“We should do something insane,” the girl said. “Like… I don’t know. Tanzania or something.”

“Kitten,” the guy said, playfully rolling his eyes. “We’re not getting married in Tanzania. My family would never allow it.”

Jane glanced at the girls hand; no ring. She wondered how long they’d been dating. The way they spoke made it seem like years. But the intensity, the manic affection, had that newly minted shine. Like they’d met the week before and decided they’d never be apart again.

Usually, that kind of couple would’ve irritated Jane. Made her roll her eyes and feel sick. But they tipped well, and she decided she liked them. One of the self help books she read once said something about choosing inspiration over envy. So she tried, really tried, to think they were sweet. Not revolting. Not irritating. Just… in love.

The way they looked at each other, that slack jawed hunger and passion, it made something tighten in Jane’s chest. She tried to imagine someone looking at her like that. Not with lust exactly, but with that same kind of stupid devotion. She couldn’t.

At some point, they started calling her by her name.

“Thanks, Jane,” the guy would smile, handing back the check like they were old pals. And because of the tips, always generous, sometimes absurd, she started making space for them even when there wasn’t any. Squeezing them in between tables, pretending not to notice the host’s raised eyebrows. She felt like she owed it to them, in some unspoken way. Besides, she liked when they came in. She liked watching them.

There wasn’t much to overhear, though, just the quiet hum of baby talk, the girl’s indecision over what to eat, the way he’d playfully sigh like it was the cutest most annoying thing in the world. Usually she ordered the salad and ate every bite. Then, like clockwork:

“I feel so sick." And he’d kiss her face, her neck, murmur to her in a voice reserved for toddlers or pets.

Jane remembered asking Ronnie once why he never called her anything sweet like baby, the names people used when they were in love or pretending to be. He looked at her like she’d said something humiliating. His dark, serious eyes flicking up with that familiar mix of annoyance and disdain.

“Because you’re not a baby,” he rasped. “You’re a twenty one year old woman.”

And yet, looking back, she’d been nothing but a baby. Soft. Innocent. Still waiting to be told what her purpose was.

One time, the boyfriend left in a rush, something about a forgotten meeting with the family lawyer. He kissed the girl hard on the face, right near her eye, then jogged out, barely finishing his coffee.

The girl stayed behind, legs folded up in the booth. She ordered the burger and fries. Then, after finishing the burger, asked for chicken fingers and a vanilla shake. Afterward, she disappeared into the bathroom and didn’t come back for fifteen minutes. When she did, she was on the phone, her voice pitched high.

“Can I come over now?” she said. “Are you done yet?”

A pause. Then she stood up too fast, nearly tipping her glass, and left a crumpled hundred on the table.

Jane didn’t see them for five days. She assumed they were on vacation somewhere because she once overheard the guy talking about taking her to his family’s house on some island. A private golf club, ultra exclusive, where his neighbors were Tiger Woods and Will Smith.

“Your mom hates me,” the girl had said, her voice childlike.

“She doesn’t hate you,” he replied. “She’s just uptight. And she’s seen all those photos of you in bikinis on Instagram.”

“What does she expect me to be? A nun?”

“Probably,” he laughed, leaning in to kiss her.

“But you make me happy. So she’ll just have to get over it.”

Jane had stood there holding the empty water pitcher, pretending not to listen. She wondered what it felt like to be defended. To be chosen over someone’s own mom. But also, the girl didn’t seem necessarily real to her. She was like a caricature of a girlfriend, sliding between hopelessness and vanity. Jane couldn’t tell if the guy truly loved her or just liked how she looked folded into his life, another beautiful thing to dress and feed and reassure. It was hard to imagine them on an island.

It was raining the morning she finally saw them again. Cold, heavy rain that made the windows fog and turned the street to a blur of gray. They came in early, too early. Eight a.m.

“You’re back!” Jane said automatically, trying on a smile. But the second she looked at them, something in her shifted. They looked wrecked. The girl’s face was swollen and raw, the kind of puffiness that only comes from crying so hard it changes your facial structure. The guy looked jittery, wired in a way that didn’t match the hour, but his eyes were dull with exhaustion.

Jane led them to their usual booth, though they didn’t sit their usual way. They sat across from each other now.

“Can I have the spaghetti and meatballs?” the girl asked, her voice weirdly bright. “Or is that like, totally insane for breakfast?”

“Not totally insane” Jane said, still smiling. “You should definitely get the spaghetti and meatballs.” Jane felt a flicker of something like pity, maternal almost. The girl looked unraveled, undone. Whatever had happened, it was bad. Jane knew.

The couple barely spoke. The guy scrolled through his phone with frantic thumbs. The girl just sipped her coffee and picked at the meatballs, moving them around her plate like they might say something if she stared hard enough.

Jane hovered nearby their table, pretending to wipe a counter, hoping to catch onto what was going on. At one point she approached with the coffee pot and asked the guy if he wanted a refill. He didn’t look up. But the girl did.

The look she gave him was radioactive, pure hatred, hot and buzzing. It hit Jane so hard she had to pretend she forgot something in the kitchen.

At one point, the guy disappeared to the bathroom. Jane walked over, balancing the tray against her hip.

“Do you want me to clear the plates? Or are you still working on the meatballs?”

The girl didn’t answer straight away. She was staring down at the table, her hands wrapped tightly around her coffee cup. Her eyes were red, puffy, the rims raw like she’d been rubbing at them for days.

“You can take them,” she said, wiping her face with the sleeve of her hoodie. Then, after a moment, she looked up at Jane.

“We probably won’t be coming back here anytime soon.”

There was something soft and defeated in her voice that made Jane’s heart hurt. The girl gave a small, lopsided smile, like she was apologizing for making a scene she hadn’t made.

“God,” she said, burying her face into her hands. “Why are men so fucking cruel?”

Jane wanted to ask what happened. She wanted to sit across from her and say, tell me everything. But she didn’t. She just stood there, running the possibilities through her head. Maybe he cheated. Maybe he had a second phone. Another girlfriend. Maybe he dumped her the night before, out of nowhere, like it was a meeting he forgot to cancel. Maybe he just made her feel stupid, in that small, deliberate way men do when they’ve already decided to leave someone.

“Why are they such assholes,” the girl muttered, not really asking.

Because they are, Jane wanted to say. Because they’ll take everything you give them until it stops being convenient or fun and then they’ll disappear. Because no matter how patient or soft you are, how much you twist yourself to be easy, they’ll always want someone else in the end. Someone shinier. Quieter. Someone their mother likes. And you’ll see it on Instagram, the engagement photo in Times Square or some island you weren’t invited to, and you will keep watching. You’ll watch as they get married and have children. And they’ll call that person their forever. Their baby. Their kitten. Their sweetie. And they’ll pretend like you never happened. And it will ruin you in very quiet and specific ways.

But Jane didn’t say any of that. She stacked the plates quietly and walked away.