Page 19 of Faking Cinderella
Rhys
The Bee& Nugget coffee shop, as I understand it, is an institution in Snaggletooth Creek. It’s a corner building at the end of the main drag in downtown, with a large fiberglass bee hung over the door on the outside. Inside, there’s a massive central wood fireplace, a smattering of tables and booths, one large picture window overlooking the mountains and the lake in the valley below, and another window made of bee hives between glass.
And people.
So fucking many people today.
I hate crowds.
They’re where problems always started on the job.
While the bells on the door jingle behind me as I step inside and into the crowd, I scan over everyone’s heads until I spot Decker waving at me from the bar.
Dude’s in his normal hiking pants, long-sleeved performance tee, and puffy vest. His brown hair is shaggy and his face is its normal scruffy.
The only thing different is the horrified way his eyes go round when I get closer to him. “Dude. The fuck happened to your hair? And your face?”
I take the stool beside him, wishing the damn thing faced the door instead of putting my back to it. I hate having my back to the door. “My unexpected roommate booby-trapped the place becausesomeonefailed to tell her she wasn’t the only one borrowing your cabin and she’s…paranoid. Clearly.”
He stares at me briefly, then looks past me.
I turn to look at whatever he’s looking at too, but he grabs my arm. “Don’t look,” he hisses. “Donotlook.”
“Is she here?” I mutter.
I want a cup of coffee and one of those scones he’s always talking about. And to figure out why Margie feels familiar.
There’s something nagging the back of my brain about her, and I can’t decide if it’s irritation that she got the better of me or if it’s something else.
Like we’ve met before.
“Yes. No. Not her. Other her,” Decker says. “We need to?—”
“Morning, Decker,” a short, curly red-haired woman says on the other side of the bar. “Who’s your friend?”
“Shit,” Decker whispers.
And one more thing about this place clicks.
Bee & Nugget is his cousin’s coffee shop and kombucha bar.
His cousin.
Sabrina.
Gossip.
Knows all. Learns all. Decides when and where to tell all.
And I’m sitting here with an uneven dye job in my hair and faded purple smears all over my face and in my fucking eyeballs.
The mirror and I had a conversation this morning.
I lost.
It’s still laughing.
No idea what my roommate thinks of my face. I saw her just long enough in the kitchen to grunt something that she might have interpreted asgood morningbefore I left the house.
