12. Megyn
CHAPTER 12
MEGYN
“I s anyone going to help me find my apron?”
I was frozen, unable to look away from the door, where Carter had gone. I was torn. At first, I had been glad for the multitude of customers, preventing us from having prolonged communication. My disguise wouldn’t stand up to more than a minute of scrutiny. Any scrutiny at all, actually.
But the way he had been looking at me made me wonder if I was wrong to hide. I should have been friendlier to him, especially after the tip he’d given me last time. I should have found a way to be the one to hand over his drinks, maybe let our fingers touch, to see if I could feel the same sparks I’d experienced during the party, when we held hands and danced.
I should have done something, before Suzie interrupted. Once again, she had ruined something for me.
Don’t kid yourself. You weren’t actually going to do anything. You don’t want him to know who you are.
Back and forth and back and forth, guilt and relief swapping places in a grueling dance spinning around me too fast to make any real sense of.
“Excuse me, miss. My change?” my customer reminded me.
I looked up fast from my register. “I’m sorry,” I apologized.
“Don’t be.” He looked past me at Suzie, who still tore the kitchen apart in her attempt to find an apron that wasn’t there, which shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
I smiled for the guy and checked to see how much change I owed him. I counted out quarters and handed them over. “There you are. Your name will be called at that counter over there when your tea is ready.”
He smiled back and promptly dropped all of his change into the tip cup. A lot of people did that, but not with quarters. Quarters still had some sort of value, but no one wanted to carry around a bunch of pennies and nickels.
“Thank you,” I said, really meaning it.
“No, thank you.” He flashed a cheeky smile and went off, occupying the same table Carter and Brian had just vacated.
I turned to my next customer, another polite guy a couple years older than myself. While I served him, I had to wonder why I didn’t try to get a boyfriend like him, or that other guy. I hadn’t had any interest in dating at all until Carter Bryant danced his way into my life and now all I wanted was him even though I didn’t deserve to have him.
What was wrong with me?
I felt presumptuous, like I had stepped over some sort of line. It was ridiculous. Suzie didn’t feel that way. Maggie hadn’t felt that way when she decided to go after Brian Holt. I could have feelings. But I felt that anyway and couldn’t get rid of it. It had sunk in, like a barb.
When I had finished with my customer, Suzie still hadn’t found her apron. She had torn the kitchen to shreds and managed to spill a drink, wasting a good amount of product. Giving up on her search, she stood in the middle of the kitchen, flustered and clearly hating it.
It was mean, but I felt a lot of satisfaction at her distress, maybe because she’d caused me so much already.
Darren, one of the other baristas, came up behind me and tapped my shoulder. “Megyn, can you do something about this?”
I paused in punching in the code for the iced tea my customer had just requested. “Do something about what?”
He rolled his eyes and nodded to Suzie. “Can you look for her apron with her? I’ll man the register.”
“That leaves Abram by himself, though.”
“We can alternate. And the sooner you get Suzie out of here, the better.”
I backed away from the register, without arguing. I was a better cashier than a barista. My forte was coffee sodas and those didn’t require the timing and artistry and proportioning that other drinks did. As much as I didn’t like it, it just made more sense for me to be the one to go help Suzie.
Darren stepped up to the plate and smiled at the customer. “I’ll be taking care of you for the moment. I apologize, but could you tell me what you wanted again?”
“Don’t abuse my numbers,” I murmured, referring to my cashier number, which I had to use to work the register. I was still logged on, which meant anything he did would be in my name.
Darren flashed me a thumbs-up without taking his eye off the register. I sighed and made my way over to Suzie. “Okay, let’s go find your apron.”
She shot me an indecipherable look. She went off, heading into the back and then into the break room. Another employee slept their lunch break away at a table in the back, face pressed into their folded arms.
I kept my voice low, to be polite. “Where do you think you last had it?”
“Um, in my locker ? Where everyone keeps their shit?”
I was beginning to think I understood what probably happened, though I hoped it wasn’t the case. “How do you mean?”
Suzie stared at me, green eyes blazing. “I put it in before I went home last night.”
That’s exactly what I thought.
“Maybe you accidentally put it in another locker by mistake,” I suggested without a lot of hope. “Let’s look.”
“I already did,” she sighed.
I went over to the lockers and, much to my surprise, she followed me over. “Which number is yours?”
Suzie pointed. “26.” Her finger trembled a little. Interesting, since I had never noticed her hands shaking before.
We opened up all the lockers surrounding number 26, for two layers, but no apron could be found, not even any belongings of any kind.
“Let’s look in the bathroom and lost-and-found,” I decided.
Suzie’s glare informed me she had already looked in those places, but again she complied and went along with me.
At the end of the search, no apron.
Suzie groaned and shook her head. I had never seen her so distressed before. My heart went out to her. “It’s not in the shop anymore, is it?” she moaned.
“No,” I agreed. “You know June’s policy.”
“Dammit.”
I tilted my head. “You know someone left their drugs here once and the cops tracked it to the shop overnight. It was closed for days. You know that’s why she tosses out anything left in the lockers after closing.”
“Ugh. But it’s an apron!” Suzie smacked her palm on the wall, her teeth gritted.
“And that’s her policy and we agreed to it when we were hired. It’s just the same as wearing a uniform and scheduling vacation time. If it hadn’t been trash day…” But today was in fact trash day, which meant Suzie’s precious apron was in a landfill somewhere on the edge of the city.
“Shit,” she swore again.
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” She spun, glaring down at me.
I hunched up my shoulders, shivering under her cold stare. “Well, yeah. I am. I mean, we aren’t friends, but I can tell that apron was important to you in some way. I’m sorry that you lost it.”
Suzie suddenly went slack, flopping against the wall. “Can I tell you something?” she asked. “Like you said, we aren’t friends. But you’re the only one who seems like they’d care. Darren and Abram sure won’t, the idiots.”
“I agree that they wouldn’t care. I think I shouldn’t, either.”
Hurt flashed across her face and she whirled again, this time away from me. “Forget it.”
“Wait.” I grabbed her arm. “I said I shouldn’t. But I do. What is it?”
She stared with suspicion written clear in her eyes before sagging on the wall again. “My mom’s going to kill me, is what. She had that apron made for me, to look exactly like the one I used to wear when I was a kid. Now it’s gone and she’s going to be so upset.”
“What did the one you had as a kid look like?”
“Why?”
I couldn’t believe I was about to say this. “I can make you one.”
“ You?”
“Me.”
Suzie’s suspicion returned. “Yeah, right.”
“That dress I wore to the party?” I reminded her. “I found that in a Goodwill. All ratty and plain. I’m the one who fixed it up and made it look so good.”
“You’re lying.” Suzie looked closer at me. “Holy shit, you aren’t lying. You really made that dress. You can totally make me a new apron. How much?”
“How much did your mom’s gift cost? Estimated?”
“$103.55,” she said, rattling off the number like it was no big deal. I hadn’t expected her to actually have an answer. I’d been under the assumption wealthy people didn’t pay attention to price. Or maybe that was how they measured love.
“I’ll make you one for $50. Just send me a picture of the one you had as a kid and I’ll make you a new one.”
“You aren’t doing this to have leverage over me, are you?” she asked, folding her arms. “Like, to try and get me to back down on the whole Carter thing?”
“What? No!” How could she even think that?
“Then why would you do this?”
I frowned, wondering how I could possibly get through to her. “Well, because I do feel sorry for you, and because I like making clothes. It’s my hobby. I don’t have an ulterior motive.”
Suzie looked at me for a long while before she nodded, satisfied I’d told her the truth. “Can I borrow your apron, then?”
“Sure. Locker 3.”
“Thanks.” She gave me another long, intense look. “You know, we’ll never be friends. But you’re not so bad. But you’re too nice. The world of the rich would eat you alive. You should consider yourself lucky that I’m going to be the one to get Carter, not you.”
With that parting shot delivered, Suzie trotted off. She held her head high, her shoulders back, like I hadn’t just watched her almost come to tears over a lost apron.
Same old Suzie.
I did, at least, have to admire her confidence.
I went back to the front. The shop was devoid of customers, though filled with a clutter of trash. I decided to take the opportunity to clean up, tossing out used napkins and wiping crumbs off the tables. As I reached the table where Brian and Carter had been sitting, I saw the corner of something sticking out from under a half-folded menu. I picked up the menu.
It was a wallet, leather, once black but now smudged green from years of handling.
I flipped it open and peeked inside for a driver’s license.
From inside the clear plastic flap, Carter smiled, his bright green eyes gleaming.
I shut the wallet in a hurry, my heart pounding hard. I had, in my hands, Carter Bryant’s wallet. Suzie would go absolutely insane if she knew.
Which meant she couldn’t know.
Carter would be back soon in search of his wallet and I would be the one to give it to him.
I picked up some of the trash on the table and brought it to the bin, before taking a sharp detour into the back. I put the wallet in the lost-and-found and went back to work.
Five minutes later, the door to the café opened and Carter stepped in. He looked around, saw me, and came over. I looked right at him before remembering my hat, my attempt at disguising myself, but I was too slow.
“Hey,” he said. “I think I left my wallet here?”
“I put it in a safe spot for you,” I reassured him. “Let me go get it real quick.”
I hurried off and fetched the wallet. His gaze followed me the whole way, making the back of my neck feel hot.
I brought his wallet back and thrust it towards him. “Here you go.”
“Thank you,” he said warmly, and wrapped his hands around mine, while I still held the wallet. A wave of dizzying tingles washed over me, a tide pulling part of me out to sea.
“Y-you’re welcome.”
Carter stepped back with his wallet in hand. The back of his shoe knocked against a chair leg and he stumbled. I grabbed for him, gasping. He righted himself, laughing, looking at the floor and shaking his head. “That’s what I get for walking backwards.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m…”
He stopped, still looking at the floor.
I also looked, and everything inside me went cold as I saw what it was that so captured his attention. My shoes, my blue Converse.
Carter snapped his eyes up to mine. His mouth opened.
My legs trembled and what little courage I had broke into a million pieces. “Have a nice day,” I blurted out in a rush, my words blurring together. I whirled and ran from him into the back, and threw myself into a bathroom stall. I fumbled with the lock for a few seconds and finally slammed it home.
My heart raced, my breath shuddering in my throat. “He knows,” I mumbled. “He knows it was me.”