FULL NOVELXO Chapter 7
Norah
For the first time since Josie opened the door at six, the quaint wood beams and brick walls of CAFFEINE are blissfully empty, and I am exhausted.
I don’t know the official population of Red Bridge, but I’d hedge my bets that the entirety of it has been here this morning. Josie had no issues keeping up with orders and chitchatting at the same time, of course, but I was like a sinking ship in a raging storm as I tried to manage both the register and writing names on cups. A simple set of tasks, it would seem, but still, I managed to be inept.
My feet hurt in Lil’s half-size too small shoes and all I want to do is sit down, but as Josie comes out of the back with another batch of cinnamon rolls, I make myself head over to the glass cabinet and help her put them on display.
Despite the effort, both of my sister’s shoulders still seem remarkably cold. Honestly, I’m not sure she’s ever going to get over our rift enough to look at me like a human instead of a roach she just found in her kitchen.
Josie closes the cabinet door and sets the empty baking sheet on the worktable behind us, and I head back to the register to exist in silence.
I’m nearly there when she startles me. “Okay, then. No customers, nothing else pressing to do… I’d say it’s time, wouldn’t you, Nore?”
“Time?” I turn around to meet her persistent gaze. “Time for what? Because I’ve got to tell you, sis, I don’t know that I have the energy for more.”
Her brows lift. “Time for you to tell me what’s really going on.”
I have to stop myself from letting out my frustration via an ear-piercing scream at the top of my lungs. Out of all the things we could talk about right now, explaining the monster inside me is the thing I have the very least energy for.
“I already told you.” I pretend to be interested in the big fancy espresso machine behind her. “I needed a break.”
She scoffs. “We both know Carlton has all sorts of houses you could go take a break in. I’m sure Mom was mad that you left the perfect man at the altar and all, but you’ve always had Stepdaddy Dearest wrapped around your finger.”
Carlton Prescott, our very rich stepdad that our mother married when I was eight and Josie was fourteen, for all his faults—getting together with our mother while he was still married and having a torrid workplace affair that ended in a divorce and speedy remarriage—is a decent human being. A friendly ally in a sea of enemies.
But he’s still our mother’s husband, and at the end of the day, I’m not ready to face him, the fancy penthouse on Central Park he put us up in, or any of the other houses he has across the globe. If he knew where I was, it’d only be a matter of time before our mother did too.
When I don’t offer my sister any sort of explanation and start organizing all the cups and lids by the register that are most definitely already organized, she lets out a humorless laugh and grips my shoulders to turn me around to face her.
“You do realize you’re going to have to tell me eventually, right? I’m not an idiot. No one takes a Greyhound bus when they have the kind of trust fund that could feed the world’s impoverished kids for a lifetime if there isn’t a reason. Plus, I’m pretty sure your boyfriend’s bank account isn’t hurting either.”
I should correct her and tell her that Thomas was my fiancé or that I’ve been completely cut off and have about eight hundred dollars to my name, but I’m not ready to get into the whole mess. I’m still trying to process it all myself.
“It’s a long story, Josie.”
“Yeah, they usually are,” she comments and hitches a hip on the counter. “But the only way it’s going to get shorter is for you to start telling it.”
My vocal cords remain frozen.
Josie lets out a sigh. “Fine. Don’t tell me now.” She takes off her CAFFEINE-embroidered green apron and tosses it on the counter. “Hold down the fort while I run over to Earl’s. I’m low on whole milk.”
“Excuse me?”
“You hold down the fort while I run to the grocery store and—”
“I heard you the first time. What I need clarification on is the fact that you’re going to leave me here. By myself.”
“You’ll be fine.”
My eyes go wide. “I don’t know how to make a single thing.”
Josie looks around the store with a knowing smile. “And lucky for you, there’s no one in the shop. Probably won’t be until the noon lunch rush.”
“Josie, you cannot leave me here on my own. It took me two hours to learn the register!”
“Earl’s is right up the street,” she continues like I’m not standing here having a nervous breakdown. “I won’t be long.”
“Josie!”
“You’ll be fine!” She offers a wave over her shoulder, and the bell above the door punctuates her departure with another jingle.
Did she seriously just leave me here to run her freaking coffee shop? By myself?
I look around the store with incredulous eyes and confirm that I am the only person inside CAFFEINE.
“Okay… Everything will be okay,” I try to reassure myself and offer up a silent prayer that no one will come in here until my sister gets back.
I stare at the clock, willing the minutes to pass like seconds. I even try to busy myself with menial tasks like wiping off the already clean counter and organizing the cups and lids for the tenth time today, but when the bell above the door rings, I instantly want to teleport myself anywhere in the universe but here because CAFFEINE’S newest customer is him.
The big, muscular, grumpy, still-nameless man who drove me into town and promptly kicked me out of his truck so I had to walk the rest of the way to Josie’s.
You have got to be kidding me.
Considering downtown Red Bridge is so small it only needs one stop sign and a single traffic light to keep the roads safe, I know the odds of my running into this guy, in this little town, are high. I just don’t think it needed to happen right now.
Just be cool, Norah. Just. Be. Cool.
When his eyes meet mine, I know that he recognizes me, and I swallow past the ball of nerves that’s lodged itself in my throat and try to go with an affable, customer-service approach.
“Welcome to CAFFEINE.”
“What are you doing here?” It’s the first thing he says to me when he steps up to the counter.
“I work here.” Today, anyway.
“You work here?” he questions like it is the most absurd thing he’s ever heard—like I have a sign on my chest that reads World’s Biggest Dumbass.
Despite the friendly smile I’m trying to keep on my face, my hackles start to rise beneath the surface. Sure, I don’t know jack shit about coffee or making coffee or drinking coffee or practically anything in this entire building, but he doesn’t know that yet, so I haven’t earned this kind of incredulity.
“Yep. I work here,” I eventually answer, pleasant smile impossible to keep intact, and nod toward the counter between us. “Hence the green apron and the fact that I’m standing on this side of the counter. Usually, those are telltale signs of someone’s employment.” I don’t know if it’s the fact that Josie left me here by my-freaking-self or if it’s just this guy in general, but something lights a fire in my belly. A sarcastic-as-hell fire that has me adding, “And I know this might be a hard thing for you to grasp, but I’m standing right here, behind this register, to take your order.”
For the briefest of moments, I swear his lips almost twitch into a smile. But before it’s there, it’s gone and in its place a frown the size of Texas.
Gaze to gaze, my brown eyes to his blue, I hold his stare and try not to get distracted inside the tempting swirls of gold and green and azure within his irises.
But the longer the quiet stretches between us, the more my mouth wants to move.
Just say something! I mentally shout at him. Anything. You’re the one who came in here, so you need to do the talking. Not me. I refuse.
“I’ll take a latte,” he finally says, and I want to fist-pump my victory into the air.
But I don’t. Understandably. Because that would be weird.
Also, I don’t know how to make lattes or what a latte even contains, so I’m in serious trouble here and should not, in any way, be celebrating.
Way to go, Bravado. Way to go.
“A latte?” I ask, my voice completely accusatory, as though he’s the problem.
“Yes,” he responds, doing that gruff-I’m-about-to-lose-it-on-you voice he did right before I snapped and got kicked out of his truck. “A latte. A drink generally offered at coffee places.”
I blow out a begrudging breath that makes a few curls move away from my face. “So…funny story, but I just started here this morning, and I haven’t quite learned the art of lattes yet. Is there something else I can get you that’s not a latte?”
“Oh yeah. You work here, all right.”
“Excuse me, what’s that supposed to mean?”
He shakes his sharp-cut jaw with something that looks awfully close to derision. “I’ll take an Americano instead.”
“An Ameri-what-o?”
“An Americano,” he repeats, and it still might as well be in another language. “Two shots of espresso in hot water…?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure. An Americano. A drink that requires the espresso machine.” I nod like I understand but frown a little when I have to tell him the truth. “Another funny story for you, but I haven’t quite mastered the espresso machine yet.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me.”
My cheeks heat with a rush of rose-colored embarrassment.
He narrows his eyes. At me. “What can you make?”
“Um…hot tea? Cocoa?”
“Just give me black coffee. Or kill me if that’s easier, but for shit’s sake, please release me from this misery.”
“Look, I’m sorry! I told Josie not to leave me here alone, but she didn’t listen!”
He sighs, audibly tiring of the hysterical girl with no business barista-ing.
“Look, do you want a cookie or something? We’ve obviously gotten off on the wrong foot, and you can consider it a peace offering, so I’ll throw it in for free.”
“Just the coffee. I don’t like cookies.”
“Of course you don’t like cookies,” I mutter to myself. He probably doesn’t like rainbows and puppies either.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” I ring up his order and keep a big-ass friendly smile intact on my lips. “That’ll be $1.85.”
I take the five-dollar bill from his outstretched hand, and as I start to cash him out, I become downright tickled over the next step in the coffee-buying process—his name.
Our interactions the other day were both too fast and too one-sided for me to learn it, and with the way he’s looking at me this morning, I’m not sure he would give it to me now if he didn’t have to. It shouldn’t matter, but I feel like a lone reed dancing in the wind out here in small-town Vermont, and nonsensical or not, I have a yearning, burning need to know.
“Thanks. And I just need your name for the cup.”
He glances around the shop with just his eyes. “Why do you need to write my name on my cup? I’m the only one in here.”
“Yeah, well, anyone could come in at any moment, and as you’ve seen, I’m still learning the ropes. I’d hate to get yours confused with someone else’s.”
“Oh yeah. It’d be tragic if my black coffee got mixed up with someone else’s black coffee.”
“Just give me your name!” I snap. “Josie told me to get every customer’s name, so I need a dang name, okay?”
“Norman Wallace,” he finally says, shocking me to the center of my core. He doesn’t look like a Norman at all, but I guess my mom doesn’t look like an Eleanor either—she’s way too ritzy.
“Oh. Okay. Norman.”
He sighs. “What? You have some kind of problem with the name Norman now?”
“No,” I force myself to say with a soft voice as I write Norman on his cup with a Sharpie. “I…just wasn’t expecting it.”
He barks out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting to see you here this morning either.”
Okay, I’ve had enough of this guy’s crap. Seriously.
“Do you hate everyone, or is it just me?” I blurt out and don’t regret a single word. “I feel like it’d be really good for me to know for future reference.”
“I don’t know you enough to hate you.”
Wow. I was expecting some kind of apology or, I don’t know, outward chagrin for having treated me the way he has, and instead, I’ve been left with…whatever this is.
“How heartwarming,” I remark with a roll of my eyes and return to the coffeepot that’s almost full of something that looks suspiciously like coffee. Wow. Go me. I pour some in a cup and secure it with a lid before returning to the counter and handing it over to him.
Our fingers brush for the briefest of seconds, and a trill of energy runs through my previously twisted stomach.
Funny. I didn’t think that’s what touching pure evil would feel like.
“Have a nice life, Norman.”
The shake of his head is barely there but visible, nonetheless.
“Good luck, Norah.”
There they are, the first nice words he’s said to me since the moment we met, being used as goodbye.