CHAPTER 5
“Hey, Sarah?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you watch the place while I run next door?”
“Are you looking to buy a super short skirt or something?” Sarah asked.
“No,” Maisie said, laughing. “I’m grabbing coffee.”
“Coffee, where? They serve coffee there now?”
Maisie grabbed her wallet and phone off the desk in the world’s smallest back office.
“No, at Southern Roastery next door. They just opened a café inside, so I don’t have to go down the block anymore.”
“We needed another coffee place in this city?”
“Apparently,” Maisie said as she walked to the front.
“Well, we have zero customers, so I don’t think it’s a problem to watch the place, no.”
“Great. I mean, not great that we don’t have customers, but thank you. Want a coffee or something?”
“Can I get a tea, maybe? They have a good peach one.”
“Sure,” Maisie replied. “I’ll be back in ten unless there’s a long line or something. Oh, if anyone calls about the campaign–”
“Boss, you say that every time you step out, but no one has ever called about the campaign.”
“Right,” she said.
“Sorry,” Sarah replied.
“No, you’re right,” she said. “No one even knows I’m running except for the very few people I know, and they’re already voting for me.”
“That’s not true. You told that woman yesterday, and she bought a book.”
“She did?”
“Yeah, something from the front table. I forget what. And you made that money from the people you called, too.”
“Two hundred and twenty dollars,” Maisie said, disappointed. “For three people and four hours of work.”
“But it’s still something,” Sarah replied. “What are you going to buy with it?”
“More posters to cover up his bus ads,” she said. “I’ll be back with your peach tea.”
“Thanks,” Sarah said.
Maisie pushed open the door, putting her phone in her back pocket and her wallet in her front pocket because she’d gotten pick-pocketed once when her wallet was in her back pocket.
She’d also been mugged about four years ago while walking to the bus stop by her apartment.
They’d taken everything from her that night.
The phone, her wallet, and even the tampons in her purse.
What really got her, though, was the picture of her parents.
It was the only one she still had. Her mom had left before she was a teenager, so she had very few pictures of just her.
She’d only had one of the three of them together.
She’d kept it in her wallet to always have it on her, and the muggers took that from her.
Everything else, including the tampons, were replaceable, but that wasn’t, and there weren’t any other copies.
It had been one of those ridiculous mall photobooths that her father had pulled all three of them into.
Unable to all fit without squeezing together, she had sat on his lap, and her mom had been next to them.
Her dad’s arm had been wrapped around her shoulders, and they’d all smiled widely four times as the camera flashed for each of the photos.
The strip of four images had then printed outside, and Maisie still remembered reaching down to pick it up.
She also still remembered how, in the first and fourth pictures, her mom’s smile had faded, and in the second and third, it looked a little forced, while Maisie and her father had genuine smiles.
She guessed it was because her mom was about to leave.
Her dad had cut the strip of four into two parts, and he’d kept one in his wallet.
When Maisie had gotten old enough to have a wallet of her own, she’d put hers in it.
Years later, when her dad died, the pictures he’d carried, along with everything else in his wallet, were destroyed, meaning she had nothing left to show that they had once been a family, and that still got to her.
It got to her right now as she walked to the café.
What was she even trying to do for this city?
Customers no longer seemed to want books.
Everything was digital these days anyway.
People had mugged her at knifepoint. They had threatened her life over twenty bucks and a photo they probably tossed aside.
Maisie was spending her own money on a campaign she had no hope of winning, all to give the people someone who actually wanted to help them, someone who really cared, but it didn’t even seem like they wanted that help.
“Can I help you?” a woman in a security guard uniform asked from the lobby’s front desk when she entered the building.
“Just grabbing coffee.” Maisie nodded toward the café.
“Are you an employee?” the woman asked.
“Employee?”
“Of Southern Roastery.”
“Oh, no,” Maisie replied, confused.
“The café is employees-only.”
Maisie turned then because she recognized that voice.
“Hi,” the woman from yesterday greeted her.
“Oh, hi. Wait. What?” she asked.
“The café is for employees. It’s a store we use mainly for training purposes. It just opened.”
“I know. I saw all the trucks and stuff. I asked one of the guys working on it what was going on, and he said they were building a café. I thought it was just another location.”
“It’s not,” the woman said with a smile. “But if you want something, I can get it for you.” She held up her badge, indicating that she worked there. “I have a way in.”
Maisie laughed a little and said, “You sounded all James Bond there.”
“Well, that’s what I was going for.”
“Will you get in trouble?”
“No, but you should know that our very first class ever is there, training, so you’re risking a terrible drink.”
“Hey, now,” another woman said, walking up next to them. “I heard that. And my trainees are doing great.”
“Sorry, Juliet. I meant no offense,” the woman replied with a smile.
“No problem. And I meant it: they are doing good. So, if you want something other than drip coffee, I recommend taking the risk.”
“What do you say?” the woman asked her.
“Oh, if it’s no trouble,” Maisie said.
“Hi. I’m Juliet,” the other woman said and held out her hand to Maisie.
“Hi. Maisie. Sorry, I work next door, and I thought this was a regular café.”
“How did you hear about it, though?” Juliet asked. “We don’t have any signage up for that reason.”
“A contractor told her,” the first woman said.
“Ah,” Juliet replied. “Well, I need to get back. Let me know what you want, and I’ll get them started.”
She looked at Maisie expectantly.
“Oh, a peach tea and a caramel latte. Do you have the cookies here?”
“Sure. Which one?”
“The peanut butter,” she replied. “Two?”
“No problem. I’ll see you over there,” Juliet said and walked off.
“I’m India, by the way.”
“Sorry. You’re from India?” Maisie returned her attention to the first woman.
“No, but I get that a lot,” the brunette replied, laughing. “My name is India.”
Maisie smiled and said, “That’s a pretty name.”
“Thank you. So is Maisie.”
“Maisie just makes people think of corn.”
“What?” India laughed.
“You know, like maize. Corn.”
“Oh,” India said, nodding. “Right. Well, I didn’t think of corn, if it makes you feel better.”
“A lot better, actually,” Maisie said. “Maybe I should’ve gone by my middle name instead.”
“What’s that?”
“Mae.”
“Maisie Mae?” India asked with a smile. “That’s sweet.”
“Mae was my grandma’s name,” she said proudly. “So, I went by Maisie, even though Mae isn’t associated with corn.”
“I think you’re overthinking this,” India replied. “How many people actually still know that corn and maize are the same thing?”
“That’s true,” she said.
“So, let’s go get you that coffee,” India suggested.
“Thanks. You really didn’t have to. I could’ve just walked down the block.”
“It’s no problem.”
“Wait. You didn’t order anything.”
“I’m just getting regular coffee. Superfast,” India said as they started walking toward the café.
Then, they approached the counter where India handed over her badge, and the woman behind it scanned it before handing it back.
“Large coffee with room, two peanut butter cookies, peach tea, and a large caramel latte,” India told her.
The woman rang up everything and gave India her total, which sounded surprisingly cheap.
“That can’t be right,” Maisie said, holding out her credit card for India to take.
“It can’t?” the woman at the counter asked and went to double-check her computer screen.
Juliet walked over and replied, “No, it’s right. Is there a problem?”
“That’s just so cheap,” Maisie noted.
“Oh,” India said, laughing. “Employee discount.” She handed the woman her card. “My coffee is free and yours is thirty percent off.”
“Here. Take this,” Maisie said, trying to hand India her credit card.
“It’s fine. I got it.”
“No, I’ve already saved time on the walk down the block. Let me pay for this.”
“Too late,” India said, taking her credit card back from the woman. “You can owe me one.” She smiled at Maisie.
Maisie smiled back at her, and they walked over to the bar where they’d wait for their drinks.
“So, you bought a book yesterday? Sarah told me.”
“Oh. I did, yeah.”
“What was it?” Maisie asked her with a shrug. “Just curious.”
“I decided to be a little bad, honestly.” India lifted an eyebrow. “I grabbed a romance off that table.”
“Romance? Really?”
“Yeah. Do I not seem like a romance reader to you?”
“Honestly, not really, no.” Maisie chuckled. “You seem like you read a lot of business books or something, or like you listen to the audiobooks on your drive to the office, I guess.”
“I do read a lot of business books,” India said. “Usually. But this one had two women on the cover, which intrigued me.”
Maisie cleared her throat and asked, “It did?”
India nodded and said, “I didn’t know your shop sold books like that.”
“Books like what, exactly?”
It wouldn’t be the first time Maisie had had to defend the very few books about women loving women she sold in her store, so she was prepared to do it again if India were about to make a comment about how she’d only bought it to get it out of the eyes of impressionable children or something.
“Gay romance? Sapphic fiction? Lesbian books? Whatever you call them.”
“I only keep a few in stock.”
“Well, I bought one. I started reading it last night. Not bad.”
“No?”
“No,” India said. “I might finish it tonight and buy another one.”
“Another book about two women?”
India smiled and asked, “Is that a problem?”
“No,” Maisie replied, shaking her head. “Nope. Not a problem.”
India nodded again and asked, “Do you want to sit here and have that coffee with me?”
Maisie definitely wanted to do that. She was pretty sure India had just told her that she liked women.
India was also gorgeous and was sexy in her pantsuit today, complete with another pair of heels that looked crazy expensive, just like the ones from yesterday.
Maisie was wearing a pair of jeans that had a hole in the left knee that she’d put there herself and a T-shirt with a light-gray sweatshirt over it that had the NASA logo on it.
She’d gotten it from Target in the boys’ section.
There hadn’t been any in the girls’ section, so she’d moved half the rack over there before she left with her purchase.
Her tennis shoes were scuffed all over, and her hair was pulled back into a messy bun because she hadn’t expected to run into the classiest woman she’d ever seen again.
“I can’t,” she said. “I’d love to, but I have to get back. I left Sarah with the store, and it’s her tea. I think she’d like it to come back hot, you know?”
“Our peach tea is iced,” India noted.
“It is?” she asked. “Does Sarah know that?”
“I’d assume so, if she asked you to get it for her,” India replied.
“Drip coffee,” a guy said, placing India’s coffee on the counter.
India picked it up and asked, “So, how’s your campaign going?”
“It’s not,” Maisie said.
“No?”
India walked to the condiment bar and poured a generous amount of soy milk into her cup.
“Lactose intolerant?” Maisie asked.
“What?”
“The soy milk.”
“I grabbed soy?” India asked and looked down. “Shit. I meant to grab the half-and-half.”
“Want me to remake it for you?” the guy asked.
“No, it’s okay. I can stand it,” India replied.
The trainee just shrugged and moved on to other drinks.
“So, nothing new on your campaign?” India asked.
“Not since yesterday. Well, technically, I made two hundred and twenty dollars in donations from the mini phone bank we had going.”
“Hey, that’s something.”
“It doesn’t even cover the posters I’ve already bought, but yeah, I guess it’s something,” Maisie replied.
“Don’t give up,” India said.
“I won’t. The election is coming up, so I’ll just accept my fate when the time comes. I wanted to help, you know?”
“I think that’s noble,” India said. “We need more people like you out there, trying to do that.”
India took a sip of her coffee.
“The guy I’m running against is kind of a dick.”
India choked on her coffee a little.
“Are you okay?” Maisie asked her.
“I’m good.” India coughed a few more times.
“Soy milk?”
“Yeah. I think I will get this remade, after all.” India set the cup down on the bar, and the guy nodded apologetically in acknowledgement. “He’s a dick?”
“Yes. My best friend called him smarmy. It fits, I think.”
India laughed and said, “Well, with a name like Colter Stone, I’d say so.”
Maisie laughed as two cups were placed on the bar along with a bag.
“Peach tea, caramel latte, and two peanut butter cookies,” the guy said.
“Thank you,” she replied. “I need to get back.”
“Don’t want that tea to get cold,” India teased.
“I’ll see you around?”
“I might stop by later,” India replied.
Maisie smiled.