As he gazed at her picture, he found himself wondering what she looked like without all that clothing, even if he was fond of her style. It would be the easiest thing in the world, to just keep his glamour up and sweep into her life and off her feet.
A delightful thought, he decided, but not one that would help him get back to the Summerland Court where he belonged. There would be time for trysts with humans later, if he so chose. However, the lack of information his aunt had provided him gave him the perfect excuse to get to know Jasmine a little better in person, he realized.
As the plane prepared to land in Newark, Duada smiled broadly and leaned back in his chair, stowing his dossier before finishing off his drink. It was about time he got to know his new playmate in person.
Two
“Uh, yeah, could I just get a white chocolate mocha Frappuccino?” asked a guy with a thick mustache and newsboy cap in front of the counter. Jasmine blinked dubiously at him, fighting the ever-present urge to roll her eyes, or worse, reach over the counter and slap the guy. He’d been into the cafe at least three times in the past week or so, and yet he still liked to try and order items not found on the menu. At this point, Jasmine wasn’t sure whether he was just doggedly devoted to his running gag or if he genuinely could not figure out that this was not a Starbucks.
Suppressing a sigh, Jasmine forced herself to give him a half-smile and tilt her head ever so slightly to the side in mock apology. “Oh, so sorry, but we don’t offer Frappuccinos. You see, this is not a Starbucks. But we can make you a blended iced coffee with whipped cream, if you’d like,” she suggested, crossing her fingers under the counter out of sight. God, she hoped he would just nod and say “yes, please” like a normal person.
But nope. No such luck.
“So, is that like a Frappuccino, then?” he continued, his blank stare boring a hole in Jasmine’s forehead. She felt her eye twitch.
“Sure. Yes. Pretty much,” she conceded with an overly enthusiastic shrug. She wanted to scream, “NO, IT’S A BLENDED ICED COFFEE WITH WHIPPED CREAM, AS DESCRIBED ON OUR MENU, AND WRITTEN IN PLAIN ENGLISH RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE.” But instead she resisted, knowing that her manager was probably hovering somewhere behind her, just waiting to swoop in at any moment and write her up for displaying subpar customer service skills. It had only happened once before, which was really quite a tremendous feat considering the stupidity and ridiculousness of some of Jasmine’s customers. In her ma
nager Cynthia’s eyes, Jasmine was a sweet girl who sometimes let her emotions take charge of situations.
But for Jasmine, this job meant tolerating some of the dumbest questions she’d ever heard uttered in her life. And the stupid questions were nothing compared to the weird, too forward, sometimes straight-up creepy advances she received from male customers.
The fateful incident for which she had been written up for misbehavior was one such example. It was a typical Sunday, the after-church crowd comprised of well-dressed families and Bible-toting seniors was just starting to file out back toward home. The morning had passed with surprising regularity. That should have been her first clue. Not a single day at this cafe went by without some altercation or foolishness of some kind or another. So when the drunk guy in cargo shorts and a tank top came stumbling in smelling like cheap vodka and cow manure, she knew that she really, really should have gone on break. She should have ducked out. Hid in the bathroom. Something.
But no, she just had to be working the cafe counter when he tripped into her life looking like a raving, homeless Yosemite Sam. Jasmine, in a rare bright mood as a result of her smooth morning, had greeted him with a big smile. And he stopped in his tracks for a long moment, swaying on his flip-flopped feet while he gawked at her.
And that’s when the little voice in Jasmine’s head whispered oh no.
The man proceeded to stumble over, all but collapsing on the newly-polished wooden counter, and fling his arms out to grab at her breasts. Stunned, Jasmine let out a shriek and fell backward, knocking into her coworker Enzo, who happened to be holding a tea kettle of boiling water. In a split second, the tea kettle went flying, sending a spray of boiling water sizzling down the aisle that was thankfully empty of customers; the kettle itself soared through the air and crashed against the drive-thru window; and then the drunk man vomited all over the glass pastry case. The other customers in the cafe immediately ran out in disgust.
To top it all off, when the guy finished ruining the entire display case, he stood up with his hands on his hips and slurred, “Hoo boy, that apron sure looks good on you, but I bet it’d look way better on my bedroom floor!”
Before she even got a chance to really, truly assess the damage already caused by this whole outrageous scene and get a grip on her emotions, Jasmine bellowed back at him, “SCREW YOU, DICKWAD!”
Now, everyone else at the scene believed Jasmine to be fully entitled to that unsavory outburst. Her coworkers, especially the ones who had narrowly missed being hit with boiling water, backed her up at the following employee meeting. Even the drunk appeared to sober up a little bit at her outburst, turning around and ashamedly dragging himself back out of the cafe without another word.
But there was one customer, one middle-aged blonde woman with an asymmetrical haircut, carrying a knock-off designer bag, who complained to the manager that Jasmine had “indulged in obscenities which offended her deeply” and that the woman “would not be returning to this establishment ever again” as a result.
So, Cynthia did what she had to do, she wrote Jasmine up for telling off the drunken creep who tried to grope her over the cafe counter.
Ever since then, Jasmine had been extra careful about her interactions with patrons, trying to restrain the annoyance constantly simmering just under her smiling surface. It wasn’t even that she was a particularly angry person by nature—it was just the stress of having a degrading, dead-end job and no better prospects that worked her over.
Today, with this dingus staring blankly at her, unable to comprehend the fact that the Java Joy Cafe didn’t sell Frappuccino’s, Jasmine had to bite her tongue. She merely wrote his name on a paper cup and set it aside, took his money and called the next customer in line.
Soon, it was time for her union-sanctioned fifteen minute break, so she untied her apron and folded it under the counter before grabbing a borderline-stale croissant and a thermos of iced green tea. She waggled her fingers at Enzo, who gave her a roguish wink as she flounced back into the tiny break room. He was yet another guy who hit on her pretty regularly, but at least with him it was fairly innocuous. Enzo was cute, she had to admit, but it didn’t take long to catch onto the fact that he was a ladies’ man, and proud of it. On numerous occasions Jasmine had caught him making out with a customer behind the coffee shop, only minutes after they first met. He just had this easy charm about him that made girls drop whatever they were doing and just… do him instead. But it didn’t work on Jasmine. After all, he was a little too much of a player for her liking, and besides, after they had spent so many long hours working together she considered him as more of a big brother or a good friend than a potential romantic interest.
In fact, Jasmine hadn’t really come across any legitimate love interests in a long time. Not since college, and even then, it hadn’t worked out so well. Sure, she’d dated around a little bit since then, but nobody really great had come along. Her college boyfriend joined the Peace Corps and shipped out to Columbia, leaving her here in New Jersey, citing a need to “expand his horizons” and “help those in need.” As it turned out, his methods for doing so actually involved having casual sex with every hot local girl who gave him so much as a passing glance while Jasmine waited dutifully for his return. Needless to say, he didn’t come back to Jersey.
Most recently, Jasmine had found a decent-looking guy on some dating app that Enzo set up a profile on for her. The guy was nice enough at first, bringing flowers to their first date, lending an ear to her vented frustrations about work. But it was weird— he never let her go over to his house. He only ever came over to Jasmine’s apartment.
She found out not much later that it was because he was living in his grandmother’s basement, refusing to get a job while he waited for his band to make it big despite the fact that they hadn’t even gotten together for a jam session in months.
As soon as she found out the truth, Jasmine had dumped him.. But that was months ago, and Jasmine was starting to wonder if maybe it was for the best. She had a tendency to attract the very worst sorts of guys, from garden-variety losers to the straight-up villainous types.
“It’s like I have a homing device implanted in my ass or something,” she once lamented to her friend Lily over drinks at the bar down the street. “Losers and jerks from all over the world somehow manage to track me down every time. You know what? I should start offering my services as a good-guy-tester. Got a new boy-toy but you wanna see what he’s really made of? Bring him around me and see how he responds. If he shows any interest in me, he’s definitely a douchebag.”
“You just haven’t met the right one yet,” Lily had reassured her, with her typical Zen-level calmness. “He’s out there, Jaz, you just gotta be patient. And don’t give up hope.”
Sitting quietly in the break room, Jasmine heaved a sigh and took an unenthusiastic bite of her croissant. She was getting awfully tired of eating leftover cafe items and fending off attentions of the wrong sort from the wrong guys. She had wanted so much more out of life than this, but college hadn’t done much beyond saddling her with a hefty pile of student loans to deal with. Not to mention the feelings of failure and disappointment for dropping out before graduation. She’d only been a semester shy of getting her English degree when her money problems took over. Her parents were fairly well-off, but they refused to help her—in fact, they were too busy sailing around the world living the retired life to even bother to keep in touch. They’d been in their late forties when Jasmine was born very much by accident, and they were already too tired to throw themselves full-force into raising a child. She knew that they loved her, but it was obvious that she’d never really been a priority in their lives.