"Bella, table six is up," yelled my boss, Embry Call, from the kitchen.

"I'm coming," I yelled back. I shook my head and looked back to the people sitting in the booth in front of me. "Sorry about that. What can I get you today?"

"Do you have organic food here?" the girl asked. She was tall, thin, and needed to gain at least twenty pounds be at a healthy weight. Her impeccably styled hair and flawless make-up plastered made her look like a Barbie, perfect in every way.

"No," I scoffed, stifling the urge to roll my eyes. "This here's a grease joint. If you want healthy food, I would suggest you go look elsewhere, honey."

"Okay," she said, slowly.

Barbie shared a look with the Ken doll who was sitting across from her. Just like her, he had the perfectly styled blond hair, clear blue eyes, and fake smile. He wore an ironed red polo shirt, khaki shorts, and white tennis shoes that matched Barbie's red and white sundress. He shrugged his shoulders, clearing unwilling to make the decision for himself and leaving it to Barbie to decide.

"Bella!" Embry yelled again.

And once again, I waved him off and looked from Ken over to Barbie. "Well, what's it going to be?"

"I think we'll go someplace else." Barbie slid out of the booth, throwing me her fakest smile yet.

"Probably a good idea," I smarted off.

I shoved my order pad back into the apron of my blue and white checkered uniform and headed back around the corner. The door slammed shut as Ken and Barbie left. Embry was standing in the kitchen, scowling at me. Like it was my fault everything he served in his little diner was sure to clog the arteries and send a person into full cardiac arrest.

"Took you long enough, Bella," he spat, flipping a pancake.

"Yeah, yeah," I muttered, pulling the plates off the shelf and balancing them on my arm. "Get my order for table ten up or I'm sending the old man back here to bitch your ass out."

"Go ahead," he laughed as I walked away. "I ain't scared of that old man."

Embry Call was all talk and very little action. If the old man at table ten really did come back there to yell at him, he'd piss his pants and push him off onto me. That was why Embry worked in the kitchen and I worked in the front. The man had zero people skills at all.

"Here we go," I said, depositing the four plates onto table six. "Can I get you guys anything else?"

"No, I think we are good." Sam Uley, one of my regulars, looked around at their plates and smiled. "Thanks, B."

"Let me know," I said, grinning at him, his wife Emily and their two girls, Cassie and Bridget.

Sam worked security over at one of the casinos. I forget which one. Emily almost always brought the girls in to meet him for breakfast before they had to go to school. Of course, school was out for the summer so they didn't have to rush the way they normally would. Their girls were carbon-copies of their mother, from her long, silky jet black hair to her striking black eyes. Sam and Emily had come to Las Vegas to elope, and never left. Like so many people in the city seemed to.

Walking back around the counter, I picked up the order for table number ten. I grabbed the pot of coffee on my way over to his table and slid his plate in front of him. The old man was slouched over the table, wearing a dark suit that was at least two decades old and smelled of mothballs. His dark brown hair was matted down to his head, several streaks of silver mixed in, but the rest of him was very clean, something I could tell he took great pride in.

"It's about time," he groused, turning the plate full of eggs, bacon, and hash browns around in a full circle. It was a crazy tradition that he'd done every morning of the last two years that I have been waiting on him.

"Embry was being extra slow today," I told him, ignoring his mean demeanor. I was used it. "You should go yell at him."

"Just pour me some more damn coffee," he grumbled, shoving his half empty cup toward me.

"I was going to," I said, coolly. I filled up his cup and moved it back to where he always wanted it. "Can I get you anything else?"

"No, just let me eat," he muttered.

Inwardly, I sighed and headed back behind the counter. The old man picked up his fork and closed his eyes, saying a short blessing before shoveling the food into his mouth. Every morning was the same. He walked in around ten in the morning, sat at the same table, and either stared out the window or read the paper while he waited for his food. By now, I knew better now than to even ask what he wanted. I just turned in the order of two eggs, two pieces of bacon, and an order of hash browns before I took him his cup of black coffee. He'd grunt, but never said thank you. The old man would eat his food, push his plate away, toss twenty dollars on the table, and leave. His order only cost him a little over five bucks so I kept the rest as a tip. That was just the way the old man did things.

The rest of my shift went by in much of the same way. The old man left his money sitting on the table, Sam and Emily left with the girls giggling in front of them, and I went back to waiting on mindless morons who'd drunk too much the night before and lost all, but the few bucks in their pockets. Instead of using it to find a way back home, they chose to use in this shit hole.

Once the clock struck five, I clocked out and headed back to my apartment. My feet were killing me from spending the last twelve hours busting tables and all I wanted to do was put them up and get lost in my painting. I stumbled into my danky apartment and shut the door behind me. The small one bedroom apartment was nothing more than shoebox, but it was mine.

I changed out of my work uniform, hanging it on my wire hanger, and placing it on the small nail on the back of my bedroom door. Tomorrow would be another day in the salt mines and I would once again don the outfit and go back to the diner. For now, however, I slipped on a ratty T-shirt and made my back into my living room, settling on the stool that sat in front of my easel. While staring at the blank canvas, I prayed for inspiration to hit, however it never did.

My muse was gone.

EPOV

"Another round for the VIP's," Alice Brandon hollered, laying her tray on the bar.

I sighed and started pouring shots of tequila into ten shot glasses. Placing them on her tray, I cocked an eyebrow at her. "How many is this for them?"

"Six, seven, eight," she said, waving her hand in the air. "I don't fucking know and I don't fucking care."

I laughed as I placed the last glass on her tray. Alice muttered another series of four letter words under her breath as she lifted her tray and sashayed her way through the crowd, putting more sway in her hips than was needed. Alice Brandon was a tiny thing, barely standing five foot two and weighted about a hundred pounds, but you did not want to get on her bad side. She had a quick temper, a quick right hook, and sharp nails that she wasn't afraid to use.

I watched her until she disappeared into the VIP room of the bar she and I worked in together. Murphy's Law was considered one of the best places to come and get a cheap drink, live it up for a while, or just get your ass so drunk that you won't remember what you did the night before.

If only it was so easy.

My attention was pulled from the bachelor's party that Alice was currently serving when someone on the other end of the bar yelled for another beer. Sighing to myself, I pulled the beer out of the ice and took it to him, taking his five bucks and ignoring his mutter about how expensive they were. If you want cheap beer, go down the street to one of the joints that water theirs down. The sole purpose here was to get assholes drunk. Period.

"I swear to God, if one more drunk man grabs my ass," Alice muttered, slamming her tray back down onto my bar. "I'm going to bury my nails in some fucker's eye."

"Do I need to go back and have a conversation?" I asked, seriously.

"No, I can handle them," she said, waving me off. "I just don't understand why, when a man is getting married, they would get shit-faced drunk and palm the ass of their waitress the night before. Don't they have any kind of conscience?"

"Nope," Emmett McCarty snickered, coming over and tapping his nails on the bar. "Of course, you do have ass, Ally-Cat."

"Fuck off, meathead." Alice laughed, and smacked him in the back of the head. She looked over at me. "Give me another round for the assholes."

"Last round, shorty," I told her, pouring the drinks.

"I know, I know," she said, loading them onto her tray.

Emmett waited until Alice, left, watching her shake her ass, before he turned to me. "Edward, man, can you cover the rest of my shift? There's a blond over at Cassidy's and she's fucking hot. She said she'd go out with me tonight, if you get my drift"

I rolled my eyes.

"Fine but you owe me, Em," I said, pointing at him. "I will collect."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," he yelled, already halfway to the door.

"You're a sucker, Edward," Alice laughed, coming back to the bar.

I snorted. "Tell me something I don't know."

By the time we locked the doors for the night, Alice and I had served hundreds of drinks and called three taxis to come pick up the drunks. She changed out of her tighter-than-skin jeans she'd been wearing into a shorter-than-should-be-legal black, leather skirt and headed out, talking about some blackjack dealer at one of the casinos. I forget which one.

I re-stocked the bar before I headed out the back to where my motorcycle sat, hidden in the shadows. Pulling on my helmet, I headed down the strip toward my apartment. I walked up to the trashy one-bedroom apartment I rented for way too much money and locked all three locks behind me. Tossing my keys into my helmet and shuffling into the bedroom, I stripped off the clothes I'd been wearing and pulled on a pair of flannel pants.

I made my way into the living room and settled down in front of the second hand piano I bought at an estate sale for two hundred bucks. Looking down at the ivory and black keys, I waited for inspiration to hit me. But as usual, all I could do was stare.

My inspiration was gone.