Blake moved her eyes with the crowd that bustled past The Coffee Bean. She’d been working for about three hours—the first two of which she’d spent listening to some girl whose name she couldn’t remember introduce products and procedures at warp speed. Now she was thankful for the wall of windows that faced the busy street. Her mind wandered with the people outside, making up stories about who they were, where they’d come from, and where they were going.

A woman in a hot-pink miniskirt hobbled past in chunky black boots that laced up her calves. She’d clearly spent the night being ridden hard by a cowboy who’d come to town with a fictional rodeo. He’d roped her from his horse, stole away with her to his RV, and promised to look her up the next time his caravan rode through town. But he wouldn’t, and she’d be left alone, looking forlornly down random streets as the memories of the fierce fucking he’d given her swamped her mind at the most inopportune times. Blake shook her head. She almost felt bad for Pink Miniskirt. Hers would be a difficult life.

“Excuse me, Miss. Miss!”

Blake came back to herself with a start. Blinking rapidly, she focused on the woman in front of her—a lady with a severe black bun and a tweed suit.

“Sorry,” Blake said. A wide smile overtook her face as she continued. “How may I help you today?”

Black Bun didn’t return the smile. Instead, she looked harried and irritated.

Blake instantly grew wary of this woman who looked like the fate of everyone she encountered that day depended on whether or not she got a giant container of coffee—though it made Blake feel a bit like a superhero barista. With this one order, she would be saving this woman’s coworkers from being murdered with office supplies.

“I need a…”

And that was where Blake’s understanding of Black Bun’s order ended and her confusion began. The woman rattled off a combination of unfamiliar words with such speed that Blake wondered if the terms even applied to coffee. Surely there was no way all these words could be foreign to her. Though the woman ended her request with “latte,” a word Blake understood, it did nothing to clarify exactly what she was supposed to be making for this person.

“I’m sorry, what?”

Black Bun repeated her order, but the result was the same. Blake turned and stared at the giant menu posted on the wall behind the counter in hopes that she’d see something that resembled the woman’s order. No luck. Blake turned around slowly and stared at the woman awkwardly, unsure if asking her to repeat it again was worth either of their time.

“Jesus Christ,” Black Bun muttered. “I just want a grande quad nonfat one-pump no-whip mocha latte.”

This time, Blake heard all the words, but they meant nothing to her when strung all together like that. Blake put her palms on the counter and leaned on them. “That’s not a thing. I refuse to believe it.”

The woman gritted her teeth. “Do you have a manager?”

“Probably,” Blake replied. She figured the guy who had hired her was a manager, but she didn’t remember what he’d said his exact title was.

Black Bun’s face began turning an unnatural shade of red. “Can you get them?”

“Sure,” Blake said brightly. That was something she could actually help with. Kind of. She turned to address the three other employees she’d been working with that day. “Do we have a manager, and more importantly, is the manager here?”

They all stared at her as if she’d asked them to solve Hammurabi’s Code.

“Yeah, Stu’s in back,” a voice behind her said.

Blake whirled around to see the cute blond guy who’d been wiping off tables. He twisted a rag in his hands, making his forearms bunch. His was the only name she cared to remember because he was so hot. Gavin.

“I can get him for you,” Gavin continued.

“Great. Thanks,” Blake replied as Gavin started to walk off. “He’s going to get him,” Blake said to Black Bun.

The woman eyed her warily. “Is something wrong with you?”

Blake had heard this question a lot through the years, and it had stopped offending her a long time ago, especially since, yes, according to multiple medical professionals, there was something most definitely wrong with her. But Blake had also learned that people rarely wanted her to answer honestly, and even though Blake didn’t much care about what made other people comfortable, she needed this job. So she merely shrugged her reply, which she figured was as close to the truth as she could get without alarming a stranger.

“Is there a problem here?” Stu asked as he appeared at her side.

Blake gestured to Black Bun, meaning she was the one causing the problem, but the woman clearly took it as Blake leaving it up to her to answer because she started in immediately. “This person you have working here doesn’t know how to do her job.”

Which was true. Blake couldn’t really argue the point, but she couldn’t help defending herself. “This lady invented a drink and expects us to make it.”

The woman actually stomped her foot. “That is an outright lie. I get this drink here almost every day.”

“And what is the drink, ma’am?” Stu asked.

“A grande quad nonfat one-pump no-whip mocha latte.”

“Okay, no problem.” He turned to one of the baristas behind them. “Maddie, can you make this woman’s order?”

“Absolutely,” Maddie said as she sprang into action.

Blake glared at Maddie, who’d clearly let Blake suffer through dealing with Black Bun when the girl had known the order the entire time. Silently, Blake put a voodoo curse on the pixie-haired traitor.

Stu told the woman her order would be comped, which caused her to flounce to the waiting area with her chin up. Blake extended the curse to include her too.

The next person in line was a guy with a much simpler order. Thank God. Blake made his coffee and rang him up with no issue. Soon after, Maddie rushed the woman’s order over to her, and Black Bun disappeared into the crowd on the street.

Stu approached Blake a moment later. “Can I see you in my office?”

“You have an office?” The words were out of Blake’s mouth before she had a chance to think about them first.

“Yes,” Stu said slowly, suddenly looking at her as if she were something he needed to handle with extreme caution. “Gavin will take over for you until you come back.”

Gavin materialized at her side, and Blake signed off the register so he could sign on. Then she followed Stu back to a small alcove he was incorrectly categorizing as an office. “Have a seat,” he said as he pointed to an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair.

Against her better judgment, Blake sat. It was like sitting on a rock, which made her squirm. She had to make sure she focused on Stu instead of the sensation of sitting in a chair manufactured in hell.

Stu sat across from her in a rolling chair with a padded seat. Blake wanted to rip it out from beneath him and claim it for herself.

“So I see we need some more training,” he said as he folded his hands on his desk.

“Yes. Training would be good,” she replied, happy that it didn’t seem like he was firing her.

“I’m a little surprised you need it. You said you had experience in coffeehouses before.”

Blake rubbed her palms over her black yoga pants that had never seen a yoga class. “Yeah, I meant more along the lines of having gone into them rather than having worked in one.”

Stu steepled his hands and rested the tip of his nose against his fingers. It was one of the grossest poses Blake had ever seen anyone strike. “I see,” he said.

“I’ve worked on registers before.” Which was true. “And I’m a fast learner.” Which was a lie.

“Tell you what. I’m going to have you shadow Gavin for the rest of the day so you can get familiar with the orders. Then tomorrow, I’ll have someone show you how to make them.”

“Great,” she said with a smile that was genuine for the first time that day. “I won’t let you down.” In reality she probably would, but she’d do her best to do a good job.

“Good to hear. I’ll walk you out and tell Gavin the plan.”

Blake nodded and hurriedly rose from the abominable chair. Following Stu, she tried to focus on not walking too closely behind. People got agitated when she did that.

“Gavin,” Stu said when they got back to the counter. “Blake is going to shadow you for the rest of your shift to get more comfortable with our menu. That okay with you?”

“Sure,” Gavin replied as he handed change back to an elderly man.

“Great. Good luck, Blake,” Stu said before disappearing into the back.

Blake leaned against the counter and looked at Gavin since she’d only been able to shoot cursory glances at him before then. He was cute. Tall, blond, and broad. Though Blake was a bad judge of height at only five-two herself. But Gavin seemed really big in every way. And he looked to be in his midtwenties, which would put him somewhere around her age. “You’re hot,” she blurted out.

Gavin looked over at her. “Thanks,” he said casually. “You are too.”

Blake looked down at herself. The best descriptor she could come up with was curvy. She was thin, but her boobs had started growing when she was eleven and never seemed to stop, which made her look a little heavier than she was. Not that she cared. It usually led to people being pleasantly surprised when they saw her naked.

She decided she wouldn’t mind Gavin seeing her naked. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

Gavin rang up another customer and called out the order over his shoulder. “Nope.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Nope.”

Blake thought absently how she should be paying more attention to what Gavin was doing instead of how he looked, but looking at him was far more fascinating, especially now that he was this close to her.

“What about you?” he asked.

She was startled by his question, mostly because she’d started to mentally categorize him as more of a fantasy than an actual human and therefore hadn’t expected him to ask questions. “What about me what?”

“Boyfriend? Or girlfriend?”

She hunched forward, dropping her arms onto the counter and resting on them. “Neither.”

“Do you have a preference between the two?” he asked.

“Right now, my preference is decidedly male.”

That earned her a small smile as he worked. Just then, Stu came out of the back and looked over at them. “Maybe you should pay attention to what I’m doing, and we can talk more about your preferences later,” Gavin whispered.

Blake released a long sigh. “If we must,” she said before she straightened up and tried her best to not press her boobs into Gavin while he worked.