Page 9 of A Barista's Guide to Love & Larceny
“Yeah, I better close up shop.”
“Can I help?” Accurately anticipating a rejection, he added, “Please?”
She bit the inside of her lip so she didn’t break out into a smile. “You could take out the trash, if you really want.”
“You got it.”
Dani hurriedly shut everything down and tucked the beleaguered scones into her bag. Scones weren’t her favorite, but they were better than an empty stomach until her usual meager lunch of ramen. She only ate breakfast on the mornings after a shift where there were pastries too old to sell.
Once she had gathered her things and locked the front door, she headed to the alleyway behind the café, home only to a dumpster and a decorative array of spent cigarettes and joints. Kass was waiting patiently, tapping his fingers on the strap of his backpack. It was misting finely, and the streetlights looked like wispy dandelion heads. Dani shivered and buttoned her jacket all the way to her chin.
“I’m headed toward campus. You coming?”
Kass squinted against the rain. “Nah, I’m in the opposite direction.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what to do with this disheartening information. “Okay, well, see you later, then.”
“Hey.” He touched her arm as she turned to go, and she sensed the spark of urgency in it. “Can I—could I maybereallysee you later, sometime?”
The smile that smoothed her lips felt waterproof. “Sure,” she said, trying to sound as casual as a girl who got asked out, or asked-out-adjacent, oh, maybe ever. “I work at Quarter Cast most nights, if you’re looking for a solid study spot. Open every night until two.”
“Perfect. I’ll see you tomorrow night, Dani the oracular barista.”
“Yeah. See you then.”
She watched him walk away, then blushed when he looked back and caught her. Kass ducked his head, which she’d already come to think of as his signature move—or maybe he was just embarrassed for her—before he was eaten by the rain. Dani watched the sidewalk where he’d been, entirely spellbound.
Three
By the end of her last class the next afternoon, Dani was highly considering a new patron goddess, one that had some jurisdiction over time. She was drained and bedraggled from both the sheeting rain and the speed-wifting around campus.
The Norns, maybe, she thought to herself as she jogged up the steps to the library.Or Janus. I could be open to a god, if he helped me get to class on time.
She’d set an all-time record, late to not one buttwoclasses today, which officially brought her up to three tardies—the maximum she was allowed per semester while keeping her scholarship. And her tarot professor had, while not unkindly, firmly declined to consider her already-extended assignment on time instead of late; then Dani had gotten a C on her pop quiz in statistics, dragging her average in the class dangerously low. She hadn’t expected the gen ed requirements at Fox’s Leap to be as tough as the specialty courses.
All in all, today had not been her finest work so far. And it wasn’t just that she’d gotten only three hours of sleep—it was that her brain was being assailed by intrusive thoughts about everything that had happened yesterday. Her anxiety about Silva reared its head every so often, of course, but her main issue was how hopelessly, embarrassingly impossible it was to stop thinking about Kass. She’d caught her mind drifting to him during every class, reliving the handful of hours they’d spent together. As soon as she realized what she was doing, she’d reel herself back to the present, only to float away again seconds later.
Now, she was determined to make up for her failings with a productive study session until she had to go to work.
Dani paused inside the doorway of the library to let the entry charm do the work of drying and disinfecting her, a soft glow of warmth passing over her body and leaving her clothes as cozy as if they’d just come out of the dryer. She stayed a moment longer than necessary, eyes closing, dreaming of all the sleep she hadn’t gotten last night.
“Miss Dani,” a voice called from up ahead. “There you are.”
Dani’s eyes snapped open, her insides turning igneous with dread.No, she thought, glancing around for the owner of that voice, hoping she had misidentified them.No no no—
Yes. It was Professor Silva, click-clacking over from the front desk in a satin pencil skirt and a rose-pink peacoat. Gods, literally everything about her was intimidating, like if Circe was into couture. Her face was unreadable as she approached Dani, who cowered in front of the entrance.
“Sorry if I startled you,” Silva said as she came to a stop. She was a thousand feet taller than Dani, and her heels weren’t even that high. Up close, Dani still couldn’t decipher her expression. She looked a bit like she’d been trying to solve a particularly difficult math problem. “I was hoping I might run into you today. Could we have a word? It’ll only take a moment.”
Dani nodded. So she wasn’t being paranoid last night; Silva really had been trying to chase her down. Had the professor been camping out in the library in case Dani came in? Was shestalkingher? The idea felt absurd, and yet…
Dani was unable to speak or even really think as Silva guided her into the corner near the water fountain, where a boy was leaning against the wall as he filled up a reusable bottle.
“You’re clearly a very busy person,” Silva said, “so I’ll be brief. You caught my attention last night, and I think you know why.”
Was her vision going black? Dani blinked hard, but she couldn’t stop the surge of acid roiling like a tempest in her stomach. Her worst fears were being realized, and there was nothing she could do but brace for impact.
“I’ll be honest with you,” Silva said, looking over her shoulder at the boy by the fountain, whose back was facing them. His bottle was nearly full. “I didn’t join your little game night just to relive some childhood memories. I went because I was hoping that it would attract people with—shall we say, unusual skill sets. And I was right.”
