Chapter 5 Stella
FIVE
STELLA
I walked through into the front door of the Watering Hole, and the low lights and cozy factor immediately set in. I could see why Anna talked about this place so much.
“Welcome to the Watering Hole,” a young woman in her young twenties greeted me.
“Hi. Can I sit at the bar?” I asked her.
“Sure, take any open seat,” she replied, and I began walking over to the very large bar on the right side of the large room.
I spotted him right away, though that wasn’t saying much since Axel was so tall.
He had a presence that filled the whole room and drew your attention in his direction.
He was focused and looking down, but as I approached the bar, he looked up and his gaze met mine.
He instantly smiled at seeing me, and I found myself unable to do anything but smile back.
“You made it,” he said as I walked over to a chair. “Here, sit on this side. That side belongs to Tammy.”
He turned to face the woman next to him behind the bar, who was holding two glasses in her hands.
“Tammy, this is Stella, from Scandinavian Sweets,” Axel said, pointing at me. “Stella, this is Tammy, my fellow bartender for tonight and also the manager.”
“Nice to meet you,” I told her, recognizing the name from my conversations with Anna.
“Ooooh, I’ve had some of your pastries, and they are divine,” Tammy said to me, causing me to smile.
Even though I had been baking for nearly two decades, it always put a smile on my face to hear that someone liked what I made.
“You didn’t happen to bring any with you, did ya?” Tammy asked hopefully.
“No, sorry, I didn’t. But I can the next time I come.”
“I brought you two things yesterday,” Axel told her.
“Yeah, but they’re gone now, and I want more,” she shot back as though this was obvious. “Plus, Ruthie gets to have first dibs, and she always takes the best ones.”
Axel rolled his eyes, and my smile got bigger listening to them discuss my bakery items.
Tammy moved back over to her side to set a drink down and talk with another customer while Axel came to stand right in front of me and leaned over the bar to place a napkin down at my seat.
“Thanks for coming. What can I get you to drink?” he asked.
“I’ll just take a Dr. Pepper, please,” I told him.
I watched him move behind the bar to get my drink while also checking on one of his other customers. He moved seamlessly, as though he’d done this before.
“I know you said you were new here, but have you worked at a restaurant or bar before?” I asked him.
“No. Never.”
“Well, you wouldn’t know it,” I told him. “You look like you know your way around pretty well.”
“That’s because he had a damn good trainer,” Tammy said, chuckling as she walked up beside him.
Axel rolled his eyes and then looked back at me. “Thank you. Let me drop this off over to that man, and I’ll be back to take your order.”
I was one of those weird people who looked up a restaurant’s menu before I went there.
I liked to have an idea of what I wanted beforehand.
In most cases, I even knew what I was going to order before I ever stepped foot inside the place.
But I still picked up the menu and pretended to look while Axel worked his way around the bar, attending to customers and pouring drinks for some of the other staff.
He came back to take my order and then went back to helping Tammy bring in some new clean glasses for behind the bar.
I watched as he delivered one order and then handed his other customer a check before coming back over to me. “Okay, now I should have a few minutes to talk. Sorry about that.”
“No need to apologize. I get it. I work in the food business too,” I told him just as he leaned over the counter to my left.
His elbows and forearms were on the edge of the bar in front of him, his body tilted slightly so he was facing me, even though he was technically in front of the seat to my side.
He had on a dark-green short-sleeved T-shirt with the restaurant logo on it, along with a pair of jeans.
It was the same outfit that Tammy was wearing, but Axel just seemed to wear it better—at least to me he did.
He was only inches from me, and I could smell his divine scent of pine and peppermint.
His hair was pulled up into his standard messy bun that he’d had every time I saw him, and my fingers itched to work their way through the soft hair.
My gaze came back to his eyes, and the look he wore told me he knew where my thoughts had gone. Okay, time to redirect.
“Umm…I thought of some more, uh, confusing words and phrases for you,” I said, stumbling through my words as I stared at the sexy man in front of me.
“I’m ready,” he said, smiling at me.
I reached for my drink to distract my eyes from staring at his playful expression.
“Uh, the word killer,” I started. “Obviously, it can mean someone who has killed someone. But if you were to go see a movie or a concert and someone said, ‘That movie was killer,’ it actually means the movie was great.”
Axel stared at me for a second and then shook his head. “Your language is very weird.”
I chuckled, nodding. “I’m not disagreeing with you.”
“Okay, give me another,” he requested.
“Well, there’s also the word hot. That can mean the temperature is too high and uncomfortable, or sometimes even it refers to food being too spicy.”
He nodded as if I was telling him deep government secrets and he was thirsty for that knowledge.
“However, it can also be a form of flattery if you call someone hot,” I added. “Like if I tell you that you are hot, it means I think you are attractive, good-looking, or sexy.”
He paused after that and stared at me for a moment.
“Do you find me hot, Stella?” he asked, his voice a little lower than normal.
It was a simple question, but I found myself suddenly nervous to answer.
The truth was, yes, I found him unbelievably hot, but he was so far out of my league, it wasn’t even funny, so I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know that I had pictured him naked countless times over the last few days.
My delayed response caused his smile to transition from teasing to lascivious, which in turn practically caused my ovaries to spontaneously combust. This man should come with a warning label.
I gulped, feeling my face heat. “Objectively…yes.”
With my thoughts now diving into naughty territory, my brain thought of yet another confusing phrase to add to the list.
“Umm…there’s also another one,” I began, looking around me and leaning in closer to speak quieter so no one could hear me. “You can tell someone you want to fuck them or you want to fuck them up. The first one is usually a good thing. The latter one means you want to beat them up.”
After I said it, I felt like maybe I shouldn’t have. The blue in his eyes deepened to an almost black color, and I realized I may have taken this lesson too far, but then he produced a naughty grin, and I realized he was enjoying this.
“I understand the latter phrase now, but I think I need more of an explanation about the first one,” he said in the same quiet tone I had. “What did you mean exactly when you said you wanted to fuck me?”
Did someone turn the heat up in here? My body felt like it was on fire with the intense heat his eyes were throwing my way.
“Hey, Romeo,” Tammy called out, breaking through the sparks that were clearly flying between the two of us. “Help me swap these two kegs out.”
He leaned back from the bar but still maintained eye contact with me before winking and turning to help Tammy.
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until the deepest sigh known to man released from my body.
When he finally came back a few moments later, it was with my food order, which he set down in front of me.
“Now, what were we talking about before I had to go help Tammy?” he asked, a smirk on his face letting me know he definitely remembered.
I, however, wasn’t ready to answer yet. Sure, I probably should have thought of that while he was gone, but I hadn’t. Nope, instead I had sat there and thought about what it might be like to see Axel naked. Which meant here we were, facing each other with my answer looming between the two of us.
If there was one thing my years in the food industry had taught me, it was how to politely divert a conversation.
“Umm…I’m actually really hungry, so I think it’s best if we pause on our tutoring and I eat this delicious club sandwich in front of me,” I told him, trying to give him my best confident face and attitude to hide my nerves.
He grinned back at me, letting me know he saw my play but was going to let me have it.
“I’ll let you enjoy your meal, then,” he said before walking over to a new customer who had just sat three chairs down from me.
The good news was I did spend my time while eating thinking of what to say next, just in case he tried to bring it back up again. That meant I was ready when he came back a few minutes later, asking how everything was.
“It’s good,” I told him. “I have a question for you, though. Why do you want to learn all these extra things? Just so you can understand the language better?”
He crossed his arms, standing in front of me as he took a moment to answer.
“In my job, I need to be able to read into the things that people say. Sometimes people are not obvious when they need help or when they are lying to you, so I need to be able to read their faces. That is normally hard to do, but it is even harder when you don’t speak the language or know everything they are saying. ”
That made sense, and I thought it was great that he was pushing himself to learn this.
“Tell me, Stella. If you were not born in Sweden, how did you learn how to cook such delicious bakery items?”
I smiled, appreciating the fact that he thought they were delicious.