Page 32 of Mother Parker
He raised an eyebrow and a hint of a smirk before he spoke again.
“That ice is going to melt and ruin your drink. So…hurry up, Mr. Dorothy.”
First, he calls me princess, and now he keeps calling me Dorothy? Who the hell did he think he was?
I started shaking the drink, and naturally, since I was trying to prove a point, the whole thing exploded on me.
“For fuck’s sake!” I shouted, and was it my imagination, or did Hwan jump at my outburst?
“It’s okay. That’s fine. It happens to everyone their first time.”
And there he was with his virgin hints again.
Was hetryingto get a rise out of me?
Well, if he was, I was just serving it to him on a platter.
“Start again,” he said.
I did. And this time, I did everything myself. I didn’t want him thinking I was a complete moron.
So what if my extremely tight T-shirt was soaking in green tea and mango? I wasn’t going to stop now.
I shook the drink, put a mixture of the popping boba in a cup, poured the tea in, used a nifty little machine that sealed the cup, stabbed a thick straw through, and triumphantly raised the drink in the air.
“Good job. Now give it a try and tell me what you think,” he said.
I did.
And the burst of flavor in my mouth almost made me dribble, but before I could make a further fool of myself, I stopped, breathed, and chewed the last of the popping boba.
“What do you think?” he asked with a huge grin that I wanted to wipe off his face for some strange reason.
It was like he was taunting me, daring me to do something to him to show him how much I disliked him. How much he annoyed me. How much he caused a reaction inside me.
But I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure.
“It’s fine, I guess,” I said.
Although the truth was, it was more than fine. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted.
EIGHT
PARKER
“You will need: one hundred and eighty milliliters of black tea, two heaping spoons of creamer bubble tea powder, two heaping spoons of mango bubble tea powder, and one heaping spoon of fructose powder or fifteen milliliters of fructose syrup…” the lady in the video said, and I scribbled on my notepad.
It was the fifth, or maybe the sixth, video I had watched, and by this point, I was sick of hearing the words bubble, tea, powder, and spoons.
But at least it was helping me get the basics of the process without further embarrassing myself in front of Hwan.
He had been…intense. But it was obvious he loved his job. And I was so out of my depth.
My routine used to be something like this: get up at six in the morning, do five laps around the camp, run the obstacle course before breakfast or coffee. Then I’d be back training with my teammates until lunch.
I was used to hard work and nonstop physical exertion. I wasn’t used to standing around a shop and serving people fruity drinks.
But I couldn’t complain after having volunteered for the job. Not that I wanted to complain. Especially after barely a day doing it.
