Page 24 of Secrets in Love
What?
“No way!” I dropped the collection of cup bits from my hand and let it return to the floor. “Dat coffee was too hot. I’m not cweaning anything.” After trying to stand and slipping on the foamy latte-covered floor, I decided it was safer to stay low and just crawl to the door. “Wet’s go, Cwistian.”
After stuttering, he eventually placed the broken shards on the table and followed. “I am really sorry for the mess, guys.” I felt, rather than saw, his embarrassment, and it wasn’t surprising. He’d brought me to his favorite coffee shop. One he’d been coming to for years. Heck, it was likely I was still in school when he first found it.
Humble apologies were coming but paused on my lips when he continued. “Here, take this.” I watched over my shoulder as he slipped the manager a twenty. “And please, don’t be offended. She’s from Australia.”
She’s from Australia? Like it’s a disease?
The manager may not have been offended, but I bloody was. He deserved a mouthful. I wanted to give him that mouthful, but my mouth was full of blisters—oh, and he was my boss…my not so HotBoss.
The jingling little brass bell hanging above the door, the one I found so quaint when we arrived, annoyed the shit out of me as I departed. I stormed down Sixth Avenue, and an entire city block passed before anything other than a grunt or tut passed between us. It was Christian who broke the silence, and I really preferred he hadn’t.
“Why did you have to make a scene, Evie? We should have cleaned up the mess. You were kind of rude.”
“Wude? I was dwying to clean and would have if da guy—”
“Todd,” Christian declared. “His name is Todd.”
“Well, I would have if Dodd had apowogized. Listen do me, Cwistian! Dis is cuwte on Iwis, but nod on me. Da coffee was doo hawt. Whad? Did dey brew it on da sun?”
Another half block passed in silence. “Anyway, why did you give him money, apowogize, and say I was Austrawiawn, like it’s a condition I need to be vwaccinated forw?
“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just you may be slightly less cultured than us—no, not cultured. Wrong choice of words. I mean, less sophisticated—shit, no. I mean—”
“Don’d wowwy, Cwistian. I know exactwy what you mean.”
I may have been a good foot shorter than Not-So-HotBoss, but I outpaced him for the rest of the way to the studio, and after exchanging grunted farewells, he slammed his way into his office, and I marched my still-soggy, latte-covered ass back into my classroom for what turned out to be a very long forty-five-minute class.
It was my first-time teaching in a foul mood, and it was pretty remarkable how those little faces and voices that had been so cute and sweet last time were now hideous and shrill…at least for the first half, anyway. By the time the teething gel one of the moms gave me kicked in, we’d had some fun with hula hoops, practiced putting on our slippers, and sang “I’m a Little Teapot,” and my mood had shifted significantly. So much so that I began to wonder if I owed Christian an apology.
Mum always stressed the importance of never leaving things on a sour note, and here, we were firmly in sour-grape territory. I couldn’t leave things the way they were.
As the last song played, I was ready to beg for forgiveness. He was still in class though. So, I ducked into his office, left him a sappy note, and headed off.
Since the lower half of my body reeked of coffee, and I had an hour or two to kill before picking up Iris, I decided a bath was in order…and maybe a sneaky glass of wine. As bubbles percolated around my boobs and my bath bomb dissolved ininterestingplaces, I perused the Gram andaccidentallylanded on Christian’s profile.
As expected, it was devastatingly beautiful. HotBoss—yes, wine had elevated him back to pre-coffee-drama status—was one of those people that had a motif, a vibe. Whatever the wanky word was for it, he had it. Shot after shot of glamorous people, poses, and parties burned into my retinas as I swiped. Half-dressed former dance partners, with legs longer than me, draped around and, in more cases than I would like to have seen, kissed him.
What the hell did this guy want with me? An uncultured Aussie shortass with as much glamour as Oscar the Grouch, but with less sex appeal. Christian could have his pick of these chicks and, by the looks of it, had.
Before my inferiority complex had me sinking to the bottom of the bath, I decided to scroll a little closer to home.
Finn’s profile took all of two seconds to cover. Much like me, the guy was a social media geriatric and hadn’t posted anything in months. As I read his Christmas greeting three years ago, a new story popped up on the profile I’d been pretending not to see—Nate’s. Since I didn’t care for him at all, I clicked immediately, and my eyes nearly popped from my head. Someone had taken his photo as he tossed a freshly shorn fleece onto the sorting table.
His arms were above his head, and his possibly once-white, now murky-brown t-shirt was sitting high, exposing his bare, airbrushed-looking stomach.
Damn, had the water temp spontaneously surged?
“Evie, darling. Are you home?”
Shit! Water splashed onto the floor as I quickly tried to right myself. “In the bath, Jocie!”
The door opened enough for my aunt to stick her nose in—literally and figuratively.
“How was the coffee date?”
“It wasn’t a date. And it was awful. Hence the bath and wine. How was your day?”
