Page 159 of A Lick and A Promise
We had this partner stuff down already.
“Absolutely.”
He gave me another lip touch and took his coffee to bed.
Jacques, having snarfed down his breakfast through our convo, looked after him.
He then looked at me.
Back down the hall.
At me.
Then he trotted down the hall.
I took no offense.
If my choice was to watch some woman shower and put on clothes and makeup (even if that woman fed me and gave me more than my fair share of snuggles), or cuddle in bed with Knox, I’d be trotting down the hall too.
As I idled in the suicide lane, waiting for my chance to take my turn, I scanned to ascertain if I saw Cheyenne or her car (yeah, like Jayden said, this shit was insidious), then I gave up on that and looked at The Surf Club.
One of the front windows was taken with the sign for Willow’s Good Stuff, a business she ran alongside SC.
The other window had a revolving daily display of Tex’s sketchy artwork, considering he used a tube of white shoe polish on the window to declare the day’s coffee special, and he always drew his version of what that special would be.
And today’s looked pornographic.
There was something that might be a mattress, and a flood of something else was pouring down on it with some shoe polish dots rising up from it.
If he hadn’t put the words beside it (salted caramel mocha, I was assuming the mattress was a chocolate bar and the dots were salt), I’d have no clue.
Therefore, I was laughing to myself when my opening came and I turned into SC.
I did the parking, walking in, stowing my bag, grabbing my apron thing, and headed out to the main restaurant, calling a hello to Lucia, our chef, as I did so, who, per protocol, ignored me.
After sending a salute Tito’s way (his sunglasses dipped to me in return), I went behind the bar noting Byron was already there, waiting for Raye to make his dirty chai.
I logged in at the register and headed his way.
“You okay?” he asked.
Totally a good guy.
“Yeah,” I replied, then shot him a sisterly-sly smile (practice?). “And apparently, you’re a really good kisser and a fast mover. What’s on tap for Dream tonight?”
Raye audibly swallowed a laugh as she set his big mug in front of him, red started crawling up his neck, but my teasing was interrupted when an abrupt clamor came from the coffee cubby that included shouts of “Where’s he going?” “Don’t leave!” and a screech of “I need my salted caramel mocha!”
At this juncture, Tex appeared in the doorway to the cubby, but he turned back and boomed, “You’ll get your coffee, suckas! Keep your pants on!”
Two things of note here.
One: Tex had mad skills at an espresso machine. I didn’t understand the magic, but I’d had many of his coffees, so I could attest it existed.
Two: although Tex was part-owner, he had an iffy relationship with customer service. You got one of two Texes. If you kept your mouth shut and just grabbed your coffee when he was done making it, he’d ignore you. If you engaged him even in the slightest, say, to bid him good morning, he’d treat you like garbage.
I considered this a microcosm of the balance of the universe as the last would not be acceptable without the first.
At promises their coffee would be forthcoming, the din died down (though it didn’t die out), and Tex lumbered up to the bar, eyes on me.
