Colin Levesque is at loose ends. He's finished university, but has no career; he adores romance novels, but he's crap at relationships; and his prickliness is a detriment at the cafe where he's making ends meet. He also has a crush on his regular Da...
In the cold light of day, my head unclouded by pain-meds, it's a stupid idea. Hadi disagrees.
"I'll take his free labor," she says over speakerphone. I haven't told her about the part where Dav thinks he could roast with his breath, just the java-slinging. "How long will you be armless?"
"I haven't lost a limb." I'm laying in the bathtub, puncture wounds and gauze wrapped in cellophane. My phone is on the closed toilet seat, and I've tied my sling to the towel rack so my arm is supported. "I just can't do any heavy lifting or stretching, anything that'll rip the stitches."
Hadi makes a grump noise that reminds me, sharply, of Dav's annoyed growl-purr. That gets me thinking of Dav's smile, Dav's mouth, the light dusting of ginger beard that had appeared on his cheeks at the end of the day...
Not a date!
"How long will that be?" The way Hadi says it makes it clear she's repeating herself.
I blink back down to Earth. "Uh, two weeks? Probably?"
She grumbles again and I stare at the cracked seafoam-blue tiles to keep my mind on the conversation. There's a prescription for pills balled up in my jeans pocket. I should fill it. Ugh, but that means putting on clothes and shuffling to the pharmacy, and that's all the way on the other side of downtown, and ugh.
"I guess that's not so bad. We can't open until it's been cleaned, and we've been inspected by the city. The rest of the kitchen is fine, but that whole wall needs to be taken back to the studs."
I wince. I haven't admitted it's my fault the scones got scorched in the first place. Maybe in this situation it's best not to fess up. The real damage came from what happened after, anyway.
"How long will that take?" No Beanevolence means no pay cheque.
"Not as long as it could have," Hadi says, and I detect a note of grudging respect. "Your boy must be as rich as they say dragons are, 'cause I've never had contractors hop to it so fast."
"He's not mine."
"Ten bucks says he'd like to be."
Not you too. First I'm being bullied by my own hopeless romantic tendencies, and now my boss.
"How long?" I growl.
"About a week for everything but the bean roaster. That could be a few months."
"Months with the old manual?" I blow out a breath. "Gross."
"A few months of being cooped up in the kitchen with your dragon," Hadi says, warming up to the fantasy of some sort of clandestine affair between us.
"Stoppit," I grump. "I have learned my lesson."
"Oh? And what lessons are those?"
"Numbers One, Two, and Three of Hadi's Seven-Step Rules for Colin's Happily Ever After," I recite. Christ, I can't believe she made me memorize these. "Right now those are the only ones that apply."
"Good boy," Hadi says, smug. "Doesn't change the fact that he likes you. If you are gonna work beside him for a while, I want you to keep them in mind. Especially Rule One."
Right, I think. Don't get carried away.
"Fine. Thanks, mom-friend."
"Mom-friend? Clearly not. I am the wine-aunt friend if nothing."
"You don't drink."
"I can still be a wine-aunt."
The truth is, Hadi is more like some weird amalgamation of an older sister, mentor, and best friend than a boss. She's only two years older than me, and we'd been in the Environmental Tourism program at Brock University at more-or-less the same time. She'd gone on to open Beanevolence immediately after graduation, with some serious grants from the city. They'd been impressed by her as-local-as-possible plans. Pretty much everything except the growing of the raw beans themselves happens within a few kilometers of the place: milling, roasting, fruit growing, dairy and milk-alternative production, all of it.
I'd been there from day one, her first eager little barista.
And it's been great. Okay, I didn't dream about being a barista when I was a kid. Who did? But it pays better than minimum wage, Hadi lets me pick my hours, I'm practically managing the place myself, and all the nooblings have to obey me. It's worth holding on to. At least until I've found a real grown-up job.
Like the kind that Hadi made. Like the kind it seems that literally every other person I graduated with already has. The kind that would mean I haven't wasted the last five years and the chunk of the money I'd inherited from Dad on tuition.
Ugh.
Adulting sucks.
It sucks even more when it seems like you had all this possibility and potential and then, like... nothing.
Of course, it wouldn't have been actually for nothing if Rebekah and I had... Well, Hadi had been there for me then, too. For every horrific dating disaster I'd been through for the last five years, really. Thus, The Rules.
"Hey. Colin?" Hadi asks, uncertain in a way she rarely is.
"Yeah?"
"Are you okay? I mean really, are you okay?"
My breath catches in my throat, eyes suddenly burning. "Yeah," I choke out. My voice is scratchy from the smoke inhalation. At least, that's what I'm blaming it on. "I'm fine. Really."
"I was scared," Hadi confesses. "I was so worried you'd been burned... and then when I saw all the blood... I'm coming over."
"I have no pants on."
"That has literally never stopped me before."
I groan and roll my head back against the bath pillow. "Okay, fine. But give me an hour, okay? No, actually two. I gotta figure out how to wash my hair." I turn to look at the bottles jumbled along the edge of the tub. It pulls on the wounds. "Shit."
"Have you taken your meds?"
"Forgot to get 'em," I admit. No point in lying to Hadi. She'd know.
"Your dragon didn't insist you stop at the pharmacy in the hospital before you left?"
"He's not mine."
"Sure. I'll swing by, grab your prescription, and pick 'em up for you. I've got medical EI leave forms for you to fill out anyway, and I'm buying you enough take-out to pack the freezer so you don't have to cook for a week."
Another hot surge of emotion crawls up my throat and I swallow it down roughly. I hate being treated like an idiot little brother who can't do things for himself. I hate being babied. But you know, sometimes someone just steps up because they care.
It's not that I subscribe to toxic masculinity bullshit about how dudes can't express their feelings. Nah. It's just that I hate to ask for help and she knows it. So she maneuvers me so I don't have to.
Thoughtful bitch.
I love her.
"Don't you have shit to manage at the café?" I ask, instead of blubbering.
"It's all over the phone at this point. I can do that from your horrifying sofa."
I chuckle. It is pretty awful. My first roommate and I had saved it from the curb, and it looks like the '70s had vomited all over it. "Pfft, see? I was right."
"About what?"
I swish the water around, stirring up the glitter from my bath bomb.
"You're totally the mom-friend."
"Lies and slander," Hadi says, and hangs up.
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