Two
Kat
Enjoy the Silence – Depeche Mode
My hands are steady as I pour the steamed milk into the cup of espresso, as I make what seems like the millionth pumpkin latte of the day. Who even drinks this stuff? It’s more dessert than coffee.
“Make them Instagrammable,” Kaycee, our manager, had said the day they gave us our training.
Harper and I rolled our eyes at that comment, but we quickly figured out they were right—we were busier than ever at The Ground, and people were actually posting their lattes to Instagram, which meant we were making no less than a hundred pumpkin latte arts a day.
We can’t really complain when our tip jar is practically bursting at the seams.
The Ground wasn’t really built with a huge amount of customers in mind.
There are five small tables scattered around the small room, and two bars facing the window.
But thanks to Kaycee’s obsession with trending on social media, we’re easily pulling in triple our capacity at least once a day.
I don’t know who they fucked to get the fire marshal off our backs, but my wallet is thankful.
I’m not rich—not by a long shot. But I have enough in my account that letters with big red ‘overdue’ stamps on them have stopped coming to my door.
I can now afford to buy a few items of fresh produce a week, though part of me misses my dollar store ramen diet.
There was something so comforting about not having to decide what to cook every evening.
I finish the final touches on my pumpkin latte and hand the coffee to the customer with a smile, careful not to spill any down the sides or Kaycee will be all over me like a rash. He looks at it with appraisal for a few moments before muttering a thanks and dropping a dollar into the tip jar.
One dollar down, four hundred thousand to go before I can buy my house, I think hopelessly as I grab the last ticket.
I breathe a small sigh of relief when I see it’s a banana smoothie. I feel like I can breathe a little as my mind wanders, my free hand toying with the gold necklace resting against my chest as I pile bananas and peanut butter into the blender.
Who the fuck was that man last night? Did he want to fuck me or kill me?
Did I want to fuck him or run for my life?
My automatic response should be to run, right?
Then why was my pussy so drenched that even after two orgasms when I got home, it wasn’t enough?
I still couldn’t get my mind off him or the way he looked at me.
What does it say about me that I’m not sure if a guy wants to kill me, and I get off thinking about him?
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone look at me with lust, but I don’t remember it being that fucking intense.
He looked at me in the way a lion looks at an antelope, and I basically rolled over and showed him my belly.
There was something primal there; there’s no denying that.
But it was different. When you think of a man as a predator, you think of someone following you down a dark alley.
Hunter and prey. But he didn’t. He didn’t reach for me.
He didn’t corner me. He didn’t do anything at all.
And the worst part?
I ran away like the fucking prey that I was.
I’ll unpack that one later, I think to myself as I set the smoothie on the counter.
“Well, looks like lunch rush is over,” Harper calls over to me as she unties her apron. “Kaycee, we’re going on break,” she shouts over to our manager.
Kaycee doesn’t even look up from the table they’re cleaning and just waves their arms, telling us to go.
We hang up our aprons and make our way through the narrow back corridor.
This corridor is the polar fucking opposite of the front of the coffee shop.
The front is beautiful. Subway tiles line the bottom half of the walls, and obscure feminist art hangs proudly above.
The large front windows let the bright morning light flow into the shop, the perfect setting for a morning cup of coffee.
Monstera are everywhere, snaking up and over almost every surface and wall.
They have a strict watering schedule to make sure they stay alive—I’ve definitely forgotten this an embarrassing number of times.
In comparison, this corridor looks like it’s straight out of a hoarder’s TV show.
Kaycee refuses to throw anything away. What used to be our break room is now almost three feet high with boxes, flyers, and various other knick-knacks.
An old refrigerator from the 50s sits in the far corner, which Kaycee plans to restore.
It’s been gathering dust for the entire time I’ve been working here.
For someone who’s so paranoid about their social media image, this den of sins is definitely too close to where customers eat and drink.
I think they’re definitely fucking the health and safety officer too.
I grab the wall as my foot catches on an old wooden broom that definitely wasn’t there yesterday. I pick it up and gently rest it against the wall next to the four other almost-identical brooms.
Harper pushes open the back door, and the cool breeze washes over me, replacing the heat of the cursed espresso machine Kaycee refuses to replace.
“So… how did things go last night with Muscles Marinara?” I joke, gently shoving into Harper as we slump into our usual spots on the back porch stairs.
The wood creaks under our weight. I don’t know how long it’s been since someone maintained these stairs.
I found a small family of raccoons under here a few weeks ago.
“His name is Nathan,” she says as she rolls her eyes. “And it was… mind-blowing.”
She pauses, as if she’s reliving last night in her mind. I grin and wiggle my eyebrows, gesturing for her to continue.
“I came so hard I saw stars, Kat. Stars! I thought that was only something that happened in books.” She grins, but I don’t miss the blush creeping into her olive cheeks.
A pang of jealousy snakes through my stomach.
I’m not jealous of Harper and her night.
Fuck, if anyone needed a good railing, it was her.
I’m jealous because I’ve never felt that with anyone.
My entire life has been bad sex after bad sex.
I have my trusty wand, which gets the job done, but I’ve never had an orgasm where I basically black out, even with a vibrator.
I’ve faked more orgasms with men than I dare to count.
I push the thought down before it has a chance to fully form.
“I thought so too,” I shrug, forcing my mind to focus on my best friend in front of me.
“Kat, believe me when I tell you, he really knows his way around a woman’s body.
The shapes he put in made me feel like I was doing Pilates.
But in the best way, obviously,” she adds, and I can’t believe I missed the glow on her skin, it’s so obvious.
She’s practically reflecting the mid-afternoon sunlight.
“Good for you, girl. At least one of us is getting some action.”
“Still no luck on the man front?” she asks, her eyes filling with the familiar look of sympathy.
“Put it this way—I think my virginity’s grown back.”
“You know some weirdos will pay for that?” she says, and the look in her eyes tells me she’s completely serious.
We laugh together as she grabs my arm and rests her head on my shoulder. I lean into her without thinking, my cheek brushing against her hair. No expectations, just the comfort that comes with two best friends. Our breathing evens out in sync as the sounds of the city fill the silence.
Times like this with Harper heal the little girl inside me.
The little girl who never got invited to sleepovers because she didn’t like Barbie dolls.
Or the little girl who was bullied at school for being chubby.
Harper has always accepted me as I am with no expectations of anything else.
She’s definitely the type of bitch who I would call if I ever needed to hide a body.
She’d show up with a ready-made playlist and car snacks.
“Any word on the residency yet?” I ask, my voice suddenly sounding too loud.
“No,” she shakes her head pensively, leaning forward with her forearms resting on her knees.
“I’ve been checking my phone as much as I can today, and there’s nothing yet.
I wouldn’t worry though. We’ve done this kind of thing a few times before, and it’s at least a couple of days before we hear back usually. Good or bad.”
I’m the newest member of Tether, and therefore more na?ve to this kind of thing.
It took three full weeks of living with Harper and a few too many whiskeys during one of our girly nights in for me to finally pluck up the courage to pick up the guitar that had been gathering dust in the corner of her living room.
It had been a year since I’d last played, but my fingers moved over the fretboard by trained instinct alone.
Harper stopped me less than a minute later and told me I absolutely needed to join Tether. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. And the excitement in her eyes and voice made it fucking impossible to even think about rejecting the offer.
Tether had a guitarist who had been with them for two years prior, but he’d left to do some humanitarian work in Peru about a year ago. She told me they were desperate. They’d had auditions for weeks, but couldn’t find the right fit. Harper even told me one guy had shown up with a bass.
“What if they don’t vibe with me?” I’d asked, and Harper acted as though she hadn’t even heard me.
The next thing I knew, I was at Tether’s practice space a few days later with the borrowed guitar.
My hands were shaking so badly, I’d bummed almost every note of my first solo.
But they saw something in me that day that I didn’t see in myself.
And now? I’ve been there every Tuesday and Sunday night since.
“Hello?”
I snap out of my daydream to find Harper on her feet, her cell phone pressed to her ear.
“Who is it?” I mouth to her.
She flaps her hands in reply as she paces the small, rundown courtyard.
“Yes. Okay. Oh my god… thank you, thank you so much. We’ll see you then.” She turns to me, a smile and a look of disbelief on her face.
“We got the audition!” she squeals as she pulls me up for a hug.
I scream in return. It takes a few moments for the words to sink in.
We did it. We fucking did it.
Harper stops suddenly, pulling away, her face scrunched up in concentration. “Okay, we’ll need to have an emergency practice tonight because the audition is tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I blurt out, nerves making my voice rise a couple of octaves.
“Yeah, I forgot that part. I was too fucking excited that we got it.” She takes my hands and gives me serious puppy dog eyes.
“We’re not ready, Harp,” I say, apprehension building in my stomach, pushing a wave of nausea upwards.
“I couldn’t say no, could I?” She raises her hands in defence.
I release a breath as my legs begin to shake, and it’s not from the cool October breeze. The thought of hundreds of people looking up at us, watching us through every bum note and every missed chord is enough to send me into a fucking coma.
My skin prickles in anticipation. The idea of the lights hitting me is enough to make me want to vomit over the torn-up astroturf at my feet. I can already hear the feedback screech of a bad setting or the boos of the crowd.
What if my fingers lock up?
What if my brain goes blank and every chord I’ve ever known evaporates from existence?
What if they finally realize they made a mistake choosing me to play with them?
The nausea rises higher and higher, and I swallow it down.
“Okay, I’m not ready,” I admit quietly. “You guys have been together forever. I’m new, I can’t do this.”
Harper takes my shaking hands again and looks me in the eye.
“We never played this well without you, Kat.” Her words are gentle yet firm. “If we’d done the audition with Mark, we wouldn’t have even gotten a call back. You are a part of this dysfunctional, fucked-up family whether you like it or not.”
I let out a shaky chortle as her words linger in the air.
Family.