Spur of the moment, I lifted my eyes, pretending like the way he looked at me didn’t make me feel like running and keeping still at the same time. Even a little of that went a long way, so I turned then, preparing to walk away.
I stopped after two steps, turning back. “Who needs your crappy restaurant anyway?” I shouted. “The steak is probably not even worth the kidney!” Then I sent them both an aggressive chin flick.
At first the man’s dark eyebrows drew down, but then...was that a grin tugging at his lips? It was hard to tell. It seemed foreign. Like he hadn’t used the muscles in a while. It didn’t matter. I disappeared into the bustling crowd before I could get another look. I was just another body in the midst of millions.
3
Mariposa
“Come on, Caspar! Give me another chance! Cut me some slack.”
“You’re late again. Fired. Fired. Fired.”
“You don’t mean that! You really don’t.”
“I do. And if you’d like me to lend you my dictionary so you can truly understand the meaning behind the word, I have one in my office for days like this one.”
“Today is the wrong day to fire me! I have my shit together. I really do this time. I made some changes. Thought some things out. It won’t happen again!”
He slapped the rag he was using to polish the counter down. “You want me to cut you some slack?”
I nodded, eager, biting my bottom lip. Shit! Why did I spend so much time contemplating trading kidneys for steaks and staring at a man who was probably a trust-fund baby? His biggest worry was probably what car he should drive to match his tie.
And what about those eyes? He hadn’t even revealed those mysterious eyes… A multitude of colors played across my mind—green, hazel, brown, blue? Light like the ocean in Greece when the sun hits the surface, or dark like the sea during a reckless storm? I mentally tried them on his face, one after another.
“Listen carefully to the word of the day, Mari.”
I blinked, bringing Caspar back to central focus.
“Are you listening, Mariposa?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, trying not to be snarky but hating it whenever anyone called me by my full name. Caspar was privy to that information because he had hired me. “Ya—Yeah, I am.”
“Fired. Definition: dismiss (an employee) from a job. Let me use it in a sentence. Mariposa Flores is fired.” He said fired like FI-YERED. “Got it?”
“How is that cutting me some slack, Caspar?”
“You didn’t have to walk to my office to get the dictionary.”
“Oh, come on! Really?”
“Really. You walked right into that one. When you signed on to work here, that was one of my rules. You get fired. You read the word from the dictionary out loud. It might save you from making the same mistake twice.” He paused. “Maybe you should read it out loud.”
The backpack in my hand dropped to the floor, and I fell into a chair with a dramatic “umph!” As soon as my ass hit the wood, I slumped over and hid my face under my arms, my hair fanning out, my forehead pressed against a wrinkled newspaper. “This is so effed up, Caspar,” I mumbled, my voice muffled. “So effed up. I thought we had something good going here.” I motioned between the two of us.
Even though I had screwed up a couple of times, I really enjoyed working at Home Run. It was a baseball-themed shop that specialized in rare baseball memorabilia, and it also catered to those who wanted personalized items made. After the baseball business took off, Caspar and his wife, Arev, opened up a small coffee shop inside the establishment.
It wasn’t big, but it brought in enough customers who enjoyed being surrounded by twenty-four/seven baseball games (or sports channels) and news. All walks of life came in, but our loyal clientele were over forty-five, and most of them came in for a good cup of coffee and a newspaper.
Retract. Caspar’s clientele. He’d fucking sacked me.
I knew more of Caspar’s verbal lashing was coming since I sat down and didn’t leave, but before he could really get started, the chime on the door alerted us that a customer had entered. Even without the chime, the scents that drifted in would have alerted me. Rose and…lavender. Both of them were subtle but distinct.
Peeking through my self-made solitude, I watched Caspar greet two women from behind the counter. One of them had auburn hair and the other blonde. Both of them declined his offer for coffee before the woman with the darker hair gave her name.
“Scarlett Fausti. I called a couple of months ago about having a framed jersey and hat done for my husband. My friend here has been keeping tabs on things. Violet.” Scarlett nodded to the blonde. “We were told it was ready.”
I was positive she, Scarlett, was the one who smelled like rose petals and the other one, Violet, lavender. For whatever reason—maybe it was Scarlett’s auburn hair and fair skin, or how gracious she seemed—but it was hard not to smell roses and think of someone like her.
Caspar struggled to remember the order, but what struck me as odd was, at the mention of her last name, Caspar’s demeanor seemed to change. I had seen him deal with celebrities before, or someone he felt was important, and he stood taller, pride evident in his stance.
I lifted my face, blowing straggling pieces of hair out of my eyes. “I took the order,” I said. “It’s in the backroom. It came out really nice. Your husband will love it.”
Scarlett had ordered her husband’s baseball jersey and matching hat to be framed. Apparently he had played high-school ball.
As Caspar limped into the back to retrieve the frame, the two women turned to me.
“Did I speak to you?” Scarlett asked.
I nodded. “When you first placed the order.”
“Mari, right?”
“That’s me,” I said.
She nodded but didn’t say anything else. Instead, she seemed to stare into my soul. Her eyes were a piercing green, and they seemed to know too much. And after what had happened to me earlier—the fuck I gave when the guy in the suit scrutinized me—I didn’t feel like being judged again. Though I couldn’t completely confirm that was what she was doing to me. It was like she was feeling me out.
“Scarlett.” Violet nudged her.
“Hmm?”
Scarlett seemed lost in space. Violet nudged her again when Caspar came from the back room holding the frame. Scarlett turned at the sound of his voice, but she seemed reluctant to.
What was going on in the world today? Was it “judge Mari” day? The entire world, except for a couple of people, had no clue that I even existed, and one of them had just cut me loose. Then all of a sudden I was the central focus, like a bug on a platter.
I let my head fall to the newspaper again as the three in the background chattered on.
Scarlett: “Oh, my husband is going to love this! He played in high school and was granted scholarships. The big league wanted him, but he decided to join the Coast Guard instead.”
Violet: “Brando Fausti will smile when he sees this, and somewhere in the world a woman will get her wings.”
Caspar made small talk with them while he wrapped Scarlett’s frame in brown paper. After he was done, another chime came at the door, and when I turned my head to look, it was a man in a suit. He had come to retrieve the package for the two women. Scarlett called him Guido. He spoke to her in Italian. Dark hair. Dark eyes. If he had a theme, it would’ve been dark. Honestly, beside the man in the suit from earlier, I’d never seen a man so attractive. He was built, too. His muscles filled out his expensive suit perfectly.