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Jewel
I carry an iced white chocolate mocha, iced coconut latte, a pumpkin spiced latte, and a cappuccino toward the table of boys my age at the coffee shop where I work.
Just as the saucer carrying the cappuccino makes contact with the worn-out wooden table, one of the boys is whipping out his phone and taking pictures of the teddy bear I made in the foam. “It’s so cute!” he says, clasping his hands together in the lap of his mustard-colored khakis before taking more pictures from every angle possible, and with every filter known to man. “I can’t wait to show my girlfriend.”
And I can’t wait for the oversized clock on the wall to show ten so this double shift, consisting of standing for sixteen hours straight, will end. I just want to go home and take a bubble bath and have a soothing sugary drink of my own. The only problem is I don’t have a bath, a tiny closet converted into a shower the only bathroom in my studio apartment, and I can’t even afford the drinks I serve up where I work. Where do people who are just out of high school find the money to buy eight dollar drinks…daily?
But that kinda money is not going to find its way into my low three-figure bank account anytime soon, and even if I could afford to buy a sugary caffeine concoction I wouldn’t. I’d use the money to buy more dog food for the stray who lives out back. Thankfully just giving the poor Labrador I’ve nicknamed Ramsay, after the name of the man who voiced the Labrador retriever in One Hundred and One Dalmatians, the scraps from the uneaten ham or chicken sandwiches here at work has helped him put on a solid ten pounds since I first started working here.
Speaking of pounds, I need to put on a few myself, usually choosing to skip lunch all together in order to work the extra forty-five minutes to increase my tips. And more importantly not to miss my favorite customer of the day.
Like clockwork, the front door comes flying open so abruptly it practically makes contact with the big windows we have lining the front of the shop. I turn on a heel and despite the aircon blasting just overhead I feel a surge of heat rush through me, a bead of sweat trickling down my spine and a whole lot more suddenly dotting the small amount of cleavage that I do have. Freezing in my tracks it’s like his gaze grabs a hold of me and refuses to let me go. Every. Single. Day.
Stepping over the threshold in his Steve McQueen style desert boots and throwing his massive leg up and over the back of a chair before sliding down into it is Jake Stone. He doesn’t even take the time to properly pull out his chair, nor does he come to the counter to order his drink. We both already know what he wants, although from the way he’s been looking at me since the first day he ever came in here I’d swear he’s more interested in something that’s not on the menu.
Me.
Not for my lack of want though. It’s just that considering how inexperienced I am, completely inexperienced in fact, I have no idea what the man who wants for nothing, could want from me. Half of the women in town are doing everything they can to get his attention and the other half seem to be taking a break, after spending their whole lives trying…unsuccessfully.
Despite being a jeweler with clients flying in from as far as New York and Hollywood just for his unique designs and extreme attention to detail, it seems that he hasn’t been caught paying attention to any of the women around here. And this being a small town, rumors would spread fast if he had.
His hands grab the sides of the table, the expanse of his shoulders equally as wide as the table for four where he’s sitting. My eyes move from his boots up and across his worn-in jeans and the snug T-shirt which stretches to its limits as his thick chest inhales to take in the scent of the freshly ground coffee that I prepare each and every day just before he arrives.
His head cocks to the side and he eyes me curiously, his grip on the table tightening as the corded ropes he calls forearms tighten, his biceps flexing as well.
I extend my neck, swallowing hard but my mouth is completely dry, my tongue thick, as I imagine those protective arms wrapped around me, providing me with the kind of safety my life has never known, my absentee father having left town the minute he found out my mom was pregnant. Never having that older man, that father figure in my life, is all I’ve known over the course of my eighteen years.
The strange thing is despite never having that paternal role model in my life, and never caring about it for a single second, the sight of Jake makes me want that more than anything. There’s just something about him that screams ‘safety, possessiveness, protection.’ It sure doesn’t hurt that he’s somewhere in the neighborhood of six and a half feet tall with muscles as hard as the wooden chair he’s sitting on.
I’m not the only one who notices it either. The boys my age who were updating their social media with their collective forty dollars in drinks, edge their seats further away from him, the sounds of their chairs sliding across the floor making it obvious they want no part of the alpha lion who’s come to claim the watering hole as his.
Just like animals recognize who the biggest, baddest member of their species is, and search him out for mating, humans do the same. We just do it in a little more civilized manner, until a man comes into our lives who’s so feral, so everything which other men aren’t, that we can’t help but resort to our most primal of ways.
“Coffee black,” the barista, Ella, whom I’ve nicknamed Cruella de Vil for her lack of empathy for Ramsay, says as she winks toward Jake who doesn’t even look in her direction, let alone give her the time of day in any way shape or form.
I take a step toward the counter, nearly tripping over my own two legs as I feel my pulse quicken, a vein throbbing in my neck and my breath becoming ragged as I imagine the sure-handed Jake doing things with those big hands of his to me.
I reach for the most basic drink we offer, one that’s not even technically on the menu, almost knocking it over with the back of my hand before my other hand shoot
s up just in the nick of time and I wrap both hands around his piping hot mug containing what coffee professionals would call an Americano.
Although he’s an American all right, using the term All-American would be the last way I’d ever think to describe him. He’s not clean-cut, instead sporting a five o’clock shadow along his chin. He’s not pretty by any stretch of the imagination, looking more like he’s short on sleep and long on his desire to squeeze the table in half if he doesn’t get his way soon.
Oh, I’d like to give him his way all right. As in let him have his way with me. All. Night. Long.
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