CHAPTER NINE
Cami
“Cami,” Blade said blowing into the front of the shop like his tail-end was on fire.
“Yeah?” I asked, snapping to attention and leaping off the stool I had been perched on behind the counter.
“There’s a woman out there and she’s coming in here. Tell her I’m not here,” he said as he booked it to the backroom.
That woman he was talking about was tall, busty, and bleach blonde so badly done that it looked like her hair would go up in flames if she so much as stepped near a match.
Oh, and she was currently pulling open the door.
Which meant that she had definitely seen Blade and therefore, the lie I was about to tell her most certainly would not be believed.
“Where’d he go?” She didn’t so much ask as demand in some kind of high pitched, scary as all get out, scream. Her eyes held a crazy, wild look in them and I honestly had no idea what direction I should have run in. “I fuckin’ saw him. Blade! Get your no good ass out here now and face me like a fuckin’ man! You can’t just do that!”
Do what?
Maybe I didn’t want to know.
Looking over at her again I decided that I definitely didn’t want to know. Not even a little. But I guessed it didn’t matter because she then put it all out there for everyone of us that was around to hear.
“You can’t just fuck me, leave, then turn around and fuck my damn sister!”
Oh…yeah…that was bad. Like bad, bad.
“I didn’t know she was your sister. You two look nothing alike,” he called out from the safety of the closed door to the backroom.
“We have the same color eyes and our lips are like identical.”
“Well, in my defense, you were facing away from me when I was fucking you. So I didn’t really get a good look at your eyes and your lips.”
That was it. The shoes were now coming off. The five-inch stiletto shoes, of course. Then one was flying through the air at in the direction of the back, missing its intended target by a few good feet. The woman was not only a bit crazy, she had a bad arm as well.
“Yo, crazy bitch,” Sketch said as he stepped out of his room, only to lean back into it when the second shoe went whizzing past his doorway. “I don’t get paid enough to deal with this typpa shit.”
“Fuck it. You ain’t worth it,” she said, clearly losing steam.
She shot me a nasty look, flipped her stiff hair over her shoulder, and sauntered out—shoeless.
“Well, that was fun,” I mumbled after the door closed behind her. “It’s safe now. You can come out.”
“Thanks, Cami. I owe you,” Blade said stepping out of the backroom, his eyes scanning the shop for good measure.
“Yes, and I will take that payment in the form of lunch.” I wasn’t even joking. If I had to put up with that level of crazy while he got to hide in the backroom, then I was going to need to keep my energy up. Fingers crossed that the sister wasn’t going to toss in a final act later on today.
“You got it,” he said with a smile as he pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and handed some cash over to Sketch.
“Hell yeah! Please tell me you want a sub.” He looked at me all but pleading with his eyes. I wasn’t sure what got him more excited, the food there or the girl that worked the order counter.
“Yeah, fine.” I waved him off with my hand. I thought for a moment, trying hard to remember what the special of the day was. “Number three. And get Brand something too, he should be back soon.”
Sketch darted off with an extra bounce in his step and I laughed at his crazy self.
“Sorry, Cami,” Blade said coming up behind me and making me jump a little. “I shouldn’t have put you in the middle of all that and I have a feeling if Brand found out, he’d have my nuts in a jar.”
I had no idea why he would have thought that because Brand seemed to be pretty chill about everything. Then again, I could tell he hated any sort of unnecessary drama in his shop. And really, that whole thing could have been avoided, or at least happened somewhere other than here. But it was over and done with, and there was no bloodshed, so I didn’t see the problem with it. If anything, it was very entertaining.
“Maybe you should really pay attention to who you are…sleeping with,” I said jokingly.
“Oh, I assure you, there was no sleeping.”
I laughed, loudly actually.
This Blade was different from the man I’d first been introduced to, and I found that I liked him this way. He was intense most of the time, but then there were moments like this, where he joked with me.
The door jingled and I turned my attention to the biker walking in. Yes, I’d been around enough to spot that leather vest—or ‘cut’ as Sketch had corrected me many times now.
“Hi,” I said with a bright smile.
“Hey there,” he smiled back. “Brand around?”
He looked around my age, maybe a year or so older. His blue eyes held a light in them that made me relax.
“He should be back—”
And I didn’t get to finish because Brand was suddenly walking through the front door, intense look on his face, and I wondered what had happened in the last hour to make him seem on edge.
“Hey, Lake,” he said, a bit of the intensity of his mood fleeing his face. “Meet me in the office.”
Then the guy, Lake, was headed towards the back with quick, long steps.
“You alright?” I asked, true concern in my tone.
“Yeah,” he answered shortly, then his eyes met mine and it was like his shoulders relaxed. “Sorry, just people in this town sometimes…”
I hummed and nodded because I understood that statement to its fullest. He could have been talking about anything from being on the road with the insane drivers, to being at the grocery store and having to deal with the stupidity that seemed to exude from people here tenfold.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said as I unknowingly reached out and touched his bare arm.
Warm. I was so warm inside instantly. My breath hitched and I did my best to play it off.
“Sketch is getting lunch and you don’t have an appointment for another hour.” I smiled, hoping to cover the fluttering in my belly, as well as make him feel better.
“Thanks, Cami.” He pinched his lips together as his gaze bore into me for all of a half-second. “Things alright while I was gone?”
“Yep.” My eyes cut over to Blade, who was standing in the doorway to his room watching us with pinning eyes. “Nothing exciting happened, unless you count the fact that I couldn’t find the purple pen.” I shrugged as I heard Blade stifle a laugh.
Brand’s eyes slowly moved from me to Blade, then back again. With overly innocent eyes, I smiled up at him.
“Yeah, okay…” he said, seeing through the both of us. “As long as nothing is broken, I don’t want to know. I’ll be out in a minute.”
Then he was gone, our connection was severed as he took long, hurried steps to the back, just like Lake had.
“You’re horrible at that,” Blade said with a few shakes of his head before he disappeared into his room.
“Have a good day, Cami,” Lake said as he darted to the front door a little bit later.
My eyes widened and I gave a smile and quick wave.
How did he know my name?
Unless…they had been talking about me in that back room.
I shook my head, not wanting to go down that rabbit hole of wondering why the subject of me might have even been brought up back there.
Sketch walked in the door as Brand walked up and stood beside me. I tried to shake off the closeness as Sketch started to pull out the wrapped sandwiches from the bag, plopping one in front of me, then Brand. Sketch walked off, leaving us alone and I wasn’t sure why I felt a tad bit awkward.
With a sigh, Brand unwrapped his sandwich like he already knew what kind of disappointment was in store for him. He would never say anything though. I knew this only after such a short time. I smiled to myself as I pushed my finger down on the edge of the paper that held his sandwich and slid it in front of me. Then I plopped the number three down in the newly cleared space.
I swear his eyes lit up as he opened it to find his favorite sub. I didn’t directly look at him, but I couldn’t help but see it out of the corner of my eye.
“You ordered this…for me?” he asked like he couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yeah,” I said with a shrug as I picked up the grilled cheese that was topped with tomato, sprouts, and hummus. A sandwich that I very much didn’t mind eating.
I could feel his eyes on me, but I did my best to ignore him as I took a huge bite. A moan escaped me as the amazing taste hit my tongue.
He cleared his throat, then picked up his sub.
“Thank you,” he muttered before he dug in.
As the silence set in, I wondered if I should say something. Before I had a chance to open my mouth, my phone dinged with a text. I pulled it out and it continued to ding over and over again. All I could think was that it had to be Laurel. Before I even unlocked my phone, I had a good idea that there was probably a slew of questions and pictures of wedding stuff.
Yes, she’d jumped on the wedding planning pretty much the day after Brice had proposed. Her and my mother, both. Why she constantly asked my opinion, well, I had no clue. It was her wedding, after all. And I wasn’t really good at those things.
I wasn’t the girl that had been planning her wedding since she was six. I wasn’t the girl that wished for love and all that stuff.
But I did my best to give her an honest, but positive opinion. Unless it was just really bad.
Like the wedding dress that my mother was head over heels for. Come on, the thing had like a ten-foot train and looked more like a literal princess should have been wearing it. Yes, we were rich and there were standards my parents thought they had to keep up with. But the dress was just too much. I knew my sister didn’t really like it either so, I hadn’t felt all that bad about telling her it was the ugliest thing I had ever seen.
These texts were of bridesmaids dresses. I knew that our mother had hired a wedding planner, even if she ended up taking over most of the time anyway. I wasn’t really sure why my sister insisted on getting my input. I knew nothing about weddings. I barely knew about fashion. But as I scrolled through the three pictures she sent me, I couldn’t help but snort out loud at them.
“That good, huh?” Brand asked.
“Oh, God. You should see these. They are so bad.” I couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled up out of my throat. “Look at that bow. It’s so big. And that color…what is that even supposed to be? Burnt brownies?”
Then my laughter was gone as he moved into my space, his head right next to mine and his stupid summer and leather scent filling my nose. Yeah, an odd combination that I couldn't even begin to explain. But I loved it. It was warm and somehow had a sense of strength to it, like the security of big arms wrapping themselves around me.
What was I even saying?
That didn’t even make any sense.
But in a way it did.
I cleared my throat in an attempt to snap myself out of the craziness going on in my brain.
“Wow,” he said with a breath of a laugh. “Those are really bad. And is that a belt on that last one? I don’t get it. Lilac and tangerine are two colors that should not ever go together like that.”
My head snapped to look at him. I don’t know why I had been so surprised. I mean the guy was an artist. And gay. Yes, that I imagined might be a combination that would cause him to use specific colors versus just purple and orange.
Either way, he was so right.
And I couldn’t help but smile like an idiot. Because I just maybe had found my kind of person. Someone that would understand the workings of my brain. If we could just knock this slightly weird and awkward thing that lingered between us sometimes, I had no doubt we’d be good friends. And I could always use friends. It wasn’t like I had that many that weren’t more family acquaintances than anything else.
“You alright?” he asked, his head suddenly turned in my direction and his nose was almost touching mine.
Alarms were going off in my head and with a flinch, I jerked upright, my phone slipping out of my hand in the process. The clang that rang out from it hitting the hard counter was enough to break my thoughts away from the weird things that were happening to my body.
“Yes.” I let out a very obvious forced laugh. “I’m just wondering if she is actually going to choose one of those. They are really hideous.”
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those.” He smiled and his joke made me relax a little.
“Oh, I don’t know…I think you could pull off the mint green strapless one.”
“Yeah?” His brows went up right before he picked up my phone and unlocked the screen to look at the picture again. “I think I have the shoulders to pull it off, but my boobs are pretty much nonexistent. I think I need something with straps…maybe like those thin, stringy ones to help hold it up.”
I busted out laughing as his pinched fingers moved up and down his shoulder like he was trying to show me what he meant about the straps.
The bells jingled, and we both snapped our attention to see who was walking into the shop. Our moment, or whatever I should have called it, was gone and I could actually breathe again as Brand hopped up and walked over to greet the guy that had just walked in. His next appointment, I assumed, which meant he would be busy for a while. And if luck were on my side, he wouldn’t ask me to sit in on this one.
I may have needed a few minutes. Or an hour. Something. I had to take a moment to not figure out what was going on with me. The last thing I should have been doing was entertaining any sort of ideas that might have been going on in my head.
With the two of them tucked away in Brand’s room, the front was quiet. I had no idea what Blade and Sketch were doing, and for a second I debated on getting up to go find out. But in the end, I pulled out my sketchbook and flipped to a blank page. I let my mind get lost in the lines that my hand created. That was what I needed right then. My calm.
The shop music blared in the background and usually, I just tuned it out. It was an odd mix set on shuffle and after a while, I was able to pick out which songs were added by which guy.
However, the odd, soft strumming of a guitar rang out, followed quickly by a mix of two women singing caught my attention right away. I came to a dead stop, my hand paused with the tip of the pencil pressed against the paper.
“Is this Tegan and Sara?” I asked no one in particular. I think I was just so shocked to hear it there.
“Fuck yeah, it is,” Sketch said as he crossed the shop to me. “Fucking Tegan and Sara are the shit!”
I giggled like a fool. To say that Sketch was predictable was such a false statement it wasn’t even funny. The guy gave me whiplash with how he could be all over the place sometimes. I wouldn’t lie, I kind of loved it…most of the time.
Then like he couldn’t help it, he started humming along to Where Does The Good Go. Something about it seemed to speak to Sketch’s soul. Like I could see it wasn’t just a song to him. I wondered why, but I didn’t think we were at that point that I could ask. Then I started singing along because, well, I just couldn’t help it.
“Nah, this is the one we need right now.” Like the ADD Sketch I’d pretty much gotten used to, he scrolled through the tablet and hit something just as the song was almost over. “Come on, C-money, let me hear those vocals and see your dance moves.”
He grabbed my hand and swung me around to the open area between the rooms as Boyfriend started to play through the speakers.
So we danced and sang like no one was watching. I had to say it was a bit liberating. And I didn’t give a care that Blade had made his way out and was standing with his shoulder leaning on his door frame, chuckling and shaking his head at us. Or that the buzz had stopped coming from Brand’s room and his head was cocked in my direction, half smile on his face, making just one of those sexy dimples pop.
Why does he have to be gay?
I thought this to myself as my eyes locked onto Brand’s again. He was talking to the guy he was working on, but the music was too loud for me to hear what they were saying.
Then Sketch let out a loud laugh in my ear and my eyes went wide as I realized that I had not thought it, but rather mumbled it out loud.
“Oh you poor thing,” Sketch said shaking his head. “Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone but me heard you.”
He spun me before pulling me back in and he did some eighties pop dance moves that he actually pulled off really well. I laughed, the awkward moment forgotten.
I honestly couldn’t say the last time I’d had that amazing of a time. And there I was, not having to worry about what people were thinking and not caring that I was making a fool of myself.