4. Parker
4
PARKER
MMMBOP
The next day, I trudged into Holy Grounds for my shift to find Simon manning the helm through the mid-morning rush. He almost always took the morning shifts here, which worked well for me, since I was almost always up too late studying. I got home from Heathcliff’s sometime after three this morning, and I felt every hour of sleep I did not get. It was going to be a rough shift.
Waving hello to Simon, I wove my way through the line of patrons awaiting their caffeine fix and ducked behind the counter. Simon dipped his head in acknowledgement as he pulled the handle down on the steamer. He looked nonplussed amid the chaos, which never failed to impress me.
When I first started here about six months ago, I was drowning. Too many drinks to memorize, a plethora of equipment to learn. An army of customers waiting not-so-patiently as I figured it all out. Simon was the stillness in that storm.
And now, he was the stillness in my life, too.
I smiled at the thought as I dropped my things off in the break room and clocked in. He was chaos when I wanted crazy and calm when I needed to slow down. Which was basically always. At least here at work.
Tying my apron on, I rushed to the front. I could already feel the anxiety rising in my chest. I didn’t hate working here. The opposite, really. But putting a hardcore people pleaser in a position to disappoint people…well, that was an issue.
“Afternoon,” Simon said as I took my place behind the register. “You’re looking annoyingly gorg for someone who, I know for a fact, didn’t make it home till after three a.m.”
“I feel like four-day-old meatloaf that got microwaved for too long,” I replied as an elderly couple approached the counter. “Hi,” I said, smiling brightly as I faced them. “How’re you two today?”
Simon snorted, pivoting to get their drink orders started.
The next two hours passed by in a blur of customers and coffee orders. Somehow, I only managed to mess up one order—a record for me—and the dude was surprisingly not a dick about it. It was shaping up to be a not-shitty day, and not-shitty days were the best.
The first lull came on the heels of Simon scoring the phone number of the Timothèe Chalamet lookalike he’d been flirting with for weeks. As soon as the doors closed behind them, Simon spun to face me, his grin rivaling that of a lion after taking down an entire herd of antelope as he held up his phone in victory.
“Congratulations.” I leaned against the counter, laughing as he proceeded to bow and curtsy. “I don’t know how you do it. I can’t even talk to someone I’m interested in, let alone…” I gestured his way, indicating the feat of flirtation I’d just witnessed, shuddering dramatically.
He chuckled. “We’ve been over this,” he sang as he maneuvered around me. “You just gotta do it. Suck it up, resign yourself to possible rejection, and take a chance.”
“Not all of us are blessed with the charm of Flynn Rider and the jawline of a Kennedy,” I shot back. “For some of us, rejection is imminent.”
“You flatter me.” He whirled around me and sashayed through the doorway leading to the back. “Don’t stop.”
I laughed as he vanished around the corner. With my hands busy restocking, my mind fell back to last night. More specifically, to my conversation with Gigi. My stomach somersaulted as I replayed the part where she agreed to introduce me to Halle. My fingers tightened around the stack of Grande paper cups as realization set in: Gigi was going to introduce me to Halle. Which meant I was going to speak to her. After months of pining, months of chickening out.
It was going to happen.
“Crap,” I muttered to no one but myself. Our weekend writers in the corner table looked up from their laptops. I grimace-smiled their way, and ducked my head, letting my hair hide my burning cheeks.
It had to have been sleep deprivation. Why else would I have outed my crush on Halle and asked for an introduction? I must have seemed so tragic, so pitiful. She must have thought I—
I froze as another thought hit me.
Had…had she agreed to a pity introduction?
“Oh, god ,” I groaned, cheeks flaming hotter in retroactive humiliation. She totally did. She thought I was pathetic and pitiful and—
“So, I was thinking,” Simon said as he returned, oblivious to my inner meltdown. “What if we did a few practice runs?”
I did my best to tuck any vestiges of panic away and gestured to the cup stacks before me. “I think I’m good.”
“No, silly.” He sailed to the mini fridge to put things away. “You’re obviously giving Anna Kendrick a run for her money with your cup game.” He crouched down and opened the fridge. “I meant with Halle.”
My elbow knocked into the freshly stocked cups as I spun to face him, nearly knocking them over. Stabilizing the stacks, I forced a casualness onto my face that I did not feel. “What do you mean?”
He glanced up. “A little role playing, darling.” As he tucked away the almond and oat milks, he elaborated. “I’ll be Halle, you be your lovely, awkward self. We can run through a few scenarios, rehearse some lines.” Standing, he pushed the fridge shut with the heel of his sneaker. “In nerd speak, study up for the big test.”
I folded my arms across my chest, assessing and absorbing. It wasn’t a bad idea. It wasn’t a perfect idea, either. The thought of practice-flirting with my best friend, though? I shuddered. “No,” I said with a brisk shake of my head. “Thank you, but no.”
Simon looked me over, one perfect brow arching. “You don’t have to look so disgusted. I wasn’t proposing we do anything…physical. Just—” He shuddered, then, too. “Yeah, okay. I get it. Never mind.”
We were saved from any further discussion by the bell jangling over the door. I turned to find my sister, Anya, trudging across the shop. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Simon disappearing in the back and I chuckled to myself.
“Morning,” Anya grumbled when she reached the counter. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of giant black sunglasses, her purple hair scraped back into a messy ponytail. “One gallon of coffee, please.”
I obliged, sliding the largest cup we had across the counter. “Hitting the road?”
She grunted and grabbed the cup. “Chicago.” Moving down the counter, she filled her cup to the brim with our strongest brew. “Be back in about a week.”
Anya was a successful and prolific comic book artist, and she spent weeks, sometimes months at a time on the road, touring comic book conventions. For years, she didn’t have a home base, unless you counted her Subaru. But now, Port Agnes—and specifically, Gigi’s brother Vaughn—had become her home.
It worked out well that I’d set up shop here, too. Now, we had the chance to nurture the relationship we’d only begun to form. Our history was weird. We didn’t grow up together. Eight years separated us. Eight years and a landfill’s worth of family trauma. But, slowly, we were sorting through that landfill, building a relationship out of the trash we’d been given.
Cup filled, Anya returned to the register, already lifting it to her mouth. “You’re a saint,” she said after a long sip.
“I know,” I said with a dismissive wave. “Brunch when you get back?”
“You. Me. Big Richards. It’s a date.” She slid her sunglasses down and peered over the frames, her green eyes fixing on me. “And I’ll tell you all about the time Mom came to see me at one of my events for the first time ever.”
I gasped and slapped my palm on the counter. “Shut up . How did that happen?”
Propping her shades on the top of her head, she shook her head. “Wish I could tell you. She called the other night and said she’d noticed she would be in Chicago the same time as me, and when I tried the, Oh, darn, I’ll be so busy working tactic, she offered to buy a ticket.”
“Holy crap.” I stared at my sister, stunned. Our mom had barely shown an interest in Anya’s career for as long as I could remember.
“Holy crap , indeed,” Anya agreed, smirking at my lack of swear. I stuck my tongue out and she snickered.
“At least…she’s trying?” I thought back to even just eight months earlier, when the two women never spoke. They’d come a long way. We all had.
Anya nodded, her eyes a tumult. “We’ll see how it goes.” Flipping her shades back over her eyes, she grinned. “The Handsome Squidward cosplayers might push her over the edge.” Then, she pushed her glasses back up, turned on her booted heels, and tromped for the exit. “Thanks for the coffee,” she called, holding it up as she pushed through the door.
“Tell Mom I said hi,” I called back, laughing as I watched her get into her double-parked Subaru and drive away.
Moments later, Simon emerged from the back, hazel eyes darting around the space.
“She’s gone,” I said, barely containing my eyeroll. “You know she’s not really going to harm your manhood , right?”
Simon winced at the reminder of my big sister’s warning when I first moved in with him. Take care of her, she’d said, or I’ll crush your manhood with my steel-toed boot.
“Empty threat or no,” he said, waving to the couple that just walked through the door. “I’m rather attached to my manhood, so I’d prefer not to chance it.” He paused, shook his head, then cringed. “Nope. Not taking chances.”
Snickering, I took my place at the register. It was funny, I thought as I waited for the customers to make their decisions. I had gone from an only child, for all intents and purposes, to having a big sister that made threats of violence on my behalf. And that was only one of the changes my life had undergone in the seven months since I’d moved to Port Agnes.
And it was only the beginning.