Chapter 2

Chapter Two:
My manager, Jeff Wall, watched me lay motionless on the table. “Hey, Cleo, you okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
There were a lot of things I could have said to him in that moment, but instead I chose one thing that was worth a thousand words. I gave him the middle finger.
“Okay. I won't ask,” he said defensively.
I sat with my head on the table for several moments, taking the time to slow my breathing and straighten out my thoughts. But it was sort of pointless. My thoughts were so tangled all the time anyway that when something really shook them up, there was no hope of working them into a comprehensible pattern. So instead of dealing with my sudden fright now, I decided to put it off until after work. Yes, that was good. Work made everything clearer- or so I liked to tell myself. Procrastination was my key to life.
I forced myself off of the table and went behind the counter, depositing my purse in a cupboard and trading it for the Bad Ass Coffee apron. Jeff covered the counter with me for the next half an hour, then his shift ended and I was running the place alone. But that wasn't a problem. We didn't get a ton of customers, so it was easy to work alone.
Work was at a meandering pace, especially this time of day. There were a few customers that I suspected were here on late lunch breaks, and the rest of them were either unemployed or punk kids too rebellious to be in school. Of course, I should be in school too, I reasoned. But I had moved here so late in the school year that we'd decided to just skip my last quarter of junior year and register for the next year. I'd have to make up a few credits for graduation, but I'd deal with that later.
For the most part, I spent my shift wandering through the shop wiping down tables and picking up trash, or staring out the window into space. Except today it wasn't space. It was that house across the street. It was probably my own personal punishment from God that the house just happened to be directly in my line of sight whenever I looked out the bank of windows that fronted the shop.
It was during one of these long moments of spacing off that two of the strangest customers I'd ever seen came into the shop. They were both wearing expensive, custom-tailored suits that made them look like they had to be weighty businessmen, but they were young, twenty or twenty-one at the oldest. One was well groomed, with his suit buttoned and tie neatly knotted. His skin was dark, from the looks of which I ventured to guess he was from the Mediterranean area of Europe. His black hair was gelled into a spiky, sexy mess that even the best looking movie stars would be jealous of. Even though it was tousled, not a hair looked out of place.
The other man, though he too had the expensive suit, was a stark contrast. His shirt was untucked under his open jacket, with a few of the top buttons undone. There was no evidence of where his tie might have gotten to. His skin was lighter, suggesting that he was of a Caucasian racial background, and his hair- by far his most striking feature- was an unnatural neon red. It was pulled back into a pony tail longer than even most girls could claim, hanging down the length of his back. The strands were razor straight, clean and well groomed. It was, if not attractive, interesting.
Both of them, besides their matching suits, were wearing dark, slender sunglasses and holding plain, silver topped canes. That above anything else made them look like pompous jerks, and I was resolved to be less than friendly. That was the great thing about working here- my boss figured that if I had reason to be rude to a customer, they probably deserved it.
They approached the counter as I tried to look busy, scrubbing away at a coffee stain on the counter that had been there since the dawn of time and wasn't about to yield to the likes of pathetic little me. They finished up their conversation before ordering, which, I noted with curiosity, was in another language- probably something European. Maybe the Mediterranean guy didn't speak English.
“Two tall Cappuccinos,” the dark skinned one ordered. Well, so much for not speaking English. Not only did he speak it, he had no trace of an accent.
I glanced up at them before moving to start the order; they were both watching me, but I couldn't make eye-contact thanks to the dark shades. It made me feel uncomfortable.
Sticking with my plan to be mean to them because they were snobs, I was slow making their order. More than slow, I was glacial. I meandered around the kitchen, dropping things, pretending I didn't know where stuff was.
“By all means, go as slow as possible,” the redhead said quietly. The remark was aimed at his companion, but I doubted he had gone to much effort to hide it from me.
I stopped in the middle of pouring milk into the coffees and turned to him, leaning on the counter and resting my elbows behind me. It helped me to puff out my chest, and feel kinda tough and awesome. “What's your rush, hotrod? Got a date with your right hand?” Both of them froze with this comment, so I smirked and went back to the coffees. “You keep goading me, you'll be using your left.”
I snapped lids on the drinks and turned back to them with a wide grin on my face, but was startled by what I saw when I strode toward the counter. The redhead had taken off his sunglasses and was grinning a brilliant, gorgeous smile at me. His eyes, now exposed from their previous cover, were a cool, icy blue, and they made me feel hot in the head and short of breath.
He took the two drinks from me and muttered something in the foreign language to his partner, who was looking at him warily. “Thank you,” he told me in a deep, smoldering tone. He finished up by tossing me a wink and stuffing a bill into the tip jar. Then the two walked away to find a seat in the far corner of the shop, and I found myself clutching at the counter for support. WHEW! No wonder he kept those shades on. If he went around giving looks like that to every girl he saw, they'd be dropping like leaves in his wake.
And he was still a pompous jerk.
They stayed in the shop for several hours after that. Even though I was suddenly enthralled with the strange redhead, I avoided looking at him too much. It seemed like every time I glanced in his direction, he was already watching me, and we made eye contact. His companion didn't seem too enthusiastic with his preoccupation, but there didn't seem to be much he could do. At first I heard him speaking harshly to the redhead in the foreign language, but after a while of having no effect, he gave up and spent most of his time staring out the window in the direction of the house.
An hour after the two strangers showed up, a familiar face appeared at the door. “Reba!” I huffed out with relief, glad to have a taste of normalcy today. She answered with a quiet smile and took a seat at one of the stools at the counter, immediately pulling out her sketchbook and drawing pencils. From the filthy state of her hands, I figured she had started a drawing before coming here and was looking to continue work. And that was fine with me. I just wanted the company.
Reba was the first friend I had made upon coming to Salt Lake and starting work at BAC. We weren't exactly alike, but we'd just been attracted to each other as friends without really knowing why. One day she'd come in and sat at the counter, we'd started talking, and it had stuck.
She was one of those interesting people that have a lot more beyond the surface than you could ever guess. For starters, she was Russian. Her full name was Reba Igorevna (because her father's name was Igor) Denisova, and she had lived most of her life in Russia. It was only a few years ago that her family had migrated to America. Despite this, she only had a trace of an accent, and spoke fluent English, as well as retaining fluency in her native Russian.
As far as physical looks went, she was the sort of person that some might be afraid to approach. Once upon a time, she had been a brunette with pretty, long, dark hair. But then she and her boyfriend had gotten in an argument, and in her anger, she had shaved it all off. This was about a week after I met her. Her ears had small gauges in them, framing her sharp, angular face. She wore her make up even heavier than me; she, like me, had the heavy eye make up that blanketed her deep set eyes, but she also had traces of blush and dark lipstick. Today she was wearing a black t-shirt and gladiator sandals that complimented her print skirt, which was decorated with Celtic knot work in black, white, and shades of yellow and green.
“New project?” I asked her as she started working.
“The tree across from my house,” she answered, showing me a picture she had snapped with the Polaroid she carried around with her.
“Looks good,” I encouraged.
She furrowed her brow and looked up at me. “What's going on? Is something wrong?”
I was, as always, stunned by her incredible perception. I sighed, then launched my story of the day. “I went into that house across the street finally,” I started; she stopped working and stared the half-finished tree on her sketch pad. “It was fantastic. Beautiful. All sorts of old, wonderful things. You'd love it.” I hesitated, then continued. “But there was someone else there. I don't know if he lived there or was just there the same time as me, but he was... weird. Like he was in a Dracula costume or something, but it didn't look like a costume. I didn't really stick around to find out. I bolted out of there as fast as I could go, and came here.”
She could hear the reluctance in my voice, and tentatively asked, “There's more?”
“There's more.”
She grimaced, then nodded for me to continue.
“The two guys in the far corner showed up a while after that. I've never seen them before, but I get the same vibe from them as the guy in the house. They're weird. Like they don't belong, somehow.”
I glanced at the table with the two strangers, and saw Reba turn to look as well. The redhead was looking out the window, like his companion, and saying something that I couldn't hear. He stopped talking as he glanced in my direction and saw both me and Reba looking at him. His companion turned to look at us too. I looked away immediately after the redhead saw us, already feeling my face start to burn. Reba kept looking. She was more unyielding than I was. After a few moments, she turned back and stared at her tree. “Huh.”
At this very moment of awkwardness, the door opened again and another familiar face appeared. “STOP THE PRESSES!” Kennedy, the newcomer, proclaimed loudly. Several sets of eyes around the shop shifted to look at her. “I am here.” She strode toward us, her hips swaying as though she were on the catwalk, and most of the people who had been distracted turned back to their own things.
“Hey Kenny,” I greeted her with a grin.
Kennedy Jackson was a striking contrast to both me and Reba. Her style was similar to mine, but had been translated from hot gothic rocker chick to Rainbow Brite. Today she was wearing a purple fishnet undershirt beneath an acid green python tank top. This was paired with a denim mini-skirt trimmed with sunshine yellow ruffles. A teasing amount of bare thigh skin was exposed before giving way to white school-girl knee high socks with pink and white tennis shoes. Matching her outfit (which was exactly the sort of thing she wore every day), she had a thick mane of bleach blonde hair, accented by streaks of bubblegum pink. Right now she wore it in a ponytail type style that mimicked the shape of of a mohawk. Naturally, it all looked gorgeous with her healthy tinted skin, heart shaped face, pouty lips, and big, round brown eyes.
Kennedy waited a moment for a hello from Reba, but it never came. “Don't I even get a hi?”
“Hi,” Reba muttered, engrossed in her work.
“Ugh. Your coolness points just dropped ten points.”
“Considering the last time we discussed my 'coolness points' they went up 'a gazillion', I think I'm okay.”
Kennedy's lips puckered to one side of her face, like she was sucking on something sour. “Yeah, but when I said ten, I mean ten gazillion. It's like when they say one and really mean one million.”
Reba furrowed her brow and looked up at Kennedy. “When does that-”
“Shh!” Kennedy suddenly interrupted Reba.
“What?”
“... Embrace the silence.”
We all sat still for a moment before cracking grins. Classic Kennedy moment.
My friends stayed with me for several hours, keeping me company when business was slow. At some point during this time (though I was a little disappointed, I pretended to be proud of myself that I didn't notice) the two suits abandoned their table and left the shop. A while after I noticed, Kennedy and Reba decided to leave, since the sun was getting low in the sky and they had things to do. Finally, at seven o'clock, my shift was over. I handed the shop down to Kara, one of my co-workers, exchanged my apron for my purse, and went to collect my tips for the day. A lot of it was change, but there were a few one dollar bills in there. I straightened out the crumpled ones and slipped them into my wallet, and almost passed out when I found a fifty in the pile.
Suddenly my mind flashed back to when the redhead had collected their drinks from me, and how he had slipped a bill into the tip jar. It had to have been him. None of our other patrons looked nearly rich enough to be giving out those kinds of tips at coffee shops. I was astounded that no one had tried to pocket it out of the tip jar, but maybe people weren't as bad as I gave them credit for.
Shaking my head, I stuffed the rest of the tips into my wallet and headed out the door, ready for the twenty minute walk home.
“Chilly night,” someone said as I rubbed my arms that were bare save the fishnet undershirt. I was waiting for the light to change so that I could cross the street. Mildly curious about the speaker, I turned and my heart jumped through hoops as my brain registered that it was the redhead from earlier.
“Uh... yeah,” I answered lamely.
He shrugged gracefully out of his jacket and offered it to me. The rational part of my brain told me not to take it, but I was really cold, so I slipped my arms into the sleeves. “Thanks.”
“No problem. You always walk home alone?”
The light changed and the signal to walk flashed across the street, so I started on my way. He followed. I glanced back toward the shop, but there was no sign of his companion from earlier today.
“No. I mean, sometimes my friends come with me.”
He smiled as we meandered across the street, swinging his silver topped cane. “The friends who visited you earlier today.”
“Yeah.”
“Interesting friends.”
I didn't reply to that, because the looks of them was only the beginning. After a beat of silence he realized I wasn't going to answer, and he changed the subject. “My name is Dante.”
“That's a funny name.”
“Yeah, it is. Let's compare.”
I smiled a little and thought about it. Really, he was a stranger who was probably pretty wealthy and powerful and I shouldn't get involved. But I liked him, so I figured that counted for double points on the side of getting involved. “My name's Cleo.”
“Cleo,” he repeated. “I like it.”
I shrugged, not sure how to respond. We turned into my neighborhood. There were several more minutes of silence, then we were at my house. I paused at the front walk, then continued to the door. He stuck with me the whole time. There was more awkward silence as I paused at the door, then I suddenly remembered his coat and took it off. He took it from me and draped it over his arm, not bothering to put it back on.
“So, um... goodnight, I guess,” I said quietly, turning toward the door.
I felt his hand warm on my arm as he pulled me back toward him, then before I knew it he had backed me up against the wall of my porch, his body only inches from mine.
I opened my mouth to protest, but couldn't find the words as I stared into his burning eyes. Then he kissed me, and before I knew what was happening, my lips parted to let him in. A gush of warmth flooded across my body, and I felt him press himself against me, sandwiching me with the wall. His hand that wasn't preoccupied with the cane and jacket gently slid around my waist to rest at the small of my back. Though I didn't register the mental command, somehow my arms were around his shoulders, cupping his head.
Then that pesky little strand of rationalization popped into my head. Here I was, making out with a stranger whose name I had only learned a few minutes ago? Come on. I was better than that. Trying to convince myself I was angry and offended, I pushed him off of me and once again retreated to the door. “I... uh... have a boyfriend,” was the only thing I gave him before going inside. My last view of Dante was him standing there, not quite sure what had happened. As if he had never been rejected by a girl before. Not surprising.
I had a boyfriend? Stupid. Stupid stupid STUPID. He would see through that in a moment, and now I was stuck wondering how I was ever going to back up that little fib.