Chapter 7 #2
“Nightmares,” I say instead.
His whole face lights up again like I just handed him a new side quest. “I have the perfect crystal for that. Wait here, I’ll be right back!”
And then he’s gone, leather jacket flapping behind him like dark wings.
I fold my arms, lean back in the chair, and let out a long breath. What a weird, beautiful little town.
The kitchen door swings open, and a waitress comes out balancing two plates that look tragic. One is a piece of chicken that has clearly witnessed horror. The other is a sandwich that looks like it lost a battle with a toaster.
My stomach growls anyway because it has no morals.
She sweeps past my table, and right behind her, the kitchen door flaps again.
Ducking under the doorframe, out walks an older, impossibly taller, broader version of my Fairy Boy, with the same freckles sprinkled across his nose, same soft features, but on a much bigger canvas.
His dark-blond hair is casual and a little messy.
His eyes are light, but the color is impossible to pin down from this distance.
He also has way more piercings than I expect on someone wearing an apron—studs in both ears, eyebrow ring, nose ring.
He’s dressed in black pants and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, balancing four plates—four—stacked up both arms as if it’s nothing and weaving between tables with easy confidence.
He stops at one table, leans in with a quip that makes an older woman laugh and swat at his arm, then moves to the next with that same relaxed energy.
He looks like one of those people who have been doing their job for so long that competence has become indistinguishable from personality.
There’s no particular effort to it, no look-at-me in how he carries the plates, tells the jokes, or pivots to the next table.
He’s just doing the thing because it needs to be done, and he’s the one there to do it.
I’ve been that person in every kitchen I’ve ever worked in. The one who doesn’t clock out when the shift ends, because who else is going to do it?
Then his eyes catch on the brunette waitress across the room, and his posture shifts. His smile stays in place, but his gaze follows her like…
Someone with a crush.
When she’s finished serving the thing they call food in this restaurant, she walks by him without so much as a glance, and he immediately trips over literal air.
The plates wobble and for a split second, I’m convinced they’re going to crash.
But somehow, he catches his balance with this weird athletic grace, redistributes the weight, and keeps moving as if nothing happened.
He even shoots the middle-aged couple at the nearest table an easy grin as he sets their plates down.
The man pokes the blackened thing on his plate. “It’s… burned.”
I wince. Hard.
This is a war zone.
Fairy Boy appears back at my side as if he teleported, and I jump so hard in my chair that my knee bangs the table.
He’s carrying a laptop tucked under one arm, and in his other hand is a notebook, a tarot deck, and something else dangling from his fingers.
He dumps everything on the table with zero grace before he beams at me and thrusts an amulet at me with a flourish.
“This is a rainbow moonstone. It’s perfect for nightmares. And it helps with sleep, calms the mind, balances energy, all that.”
I blink at it before I take it. It’s a silver pendant on a long chain with a big oval stone set in a silver frame. The stone is milky white with black specks threading through it, and when the light hits it right, a blue sheen ripples across the surface like moonlight sliding over water.
I may not be a crystal person, but I do have a weakness for pretty things. And this? It’s gorgeous.
I’m also desperate enough to try anything to get a few hours of peaceful sleep.
“Thank you.” I slip it over my head, and the pendant settles against my chest, heavy and cool at first, then warms, as if it recognizes skin. “So… what exactly is happening in here?”
“Oh, that?” Shaw chuckles. “My brother is just being embarrassing again. He’s in love with Sydney.
” He gestures toward the pretty brunette waitress, now stacking utensils as if she hates them.
“Like pathetically in love. He can’t function around her.
Yesterday, he spilled an entire tray of drinks because she smiled at someone else. Not even him. Someone. Else.”
Oh wow, poor guy.
“That’s so not Scorpio behavior,” Fairy Boy adds dramatically. “But he’s a Cancer moon, so it makes sense. Don’t tell him I said that, though. He hates anything astrology-related. Which, honestly, is peak Scorpio.”
I smile. “Well, thanks for the tea, but I meant what is happening with the food.”
“Oh, right.” He grins sheepishly. “The chef quit yesterday.”
Ah, shit.
“Then you have to close the restaurant until you find someone new,” I advise, already slipping into chef-brain. “And I mean someone who knows how to cook.”