Until Cece (Happily Ever Alpha World)

If someone had asked me earlier today if I believed in love at first sight, I would’ve rudely barked out a laugh in their face. There were rumors in our town, ones about my friends, the Maysons, and their family… curse? Blessing? Something they call the “boom”—where they knew the moment their soul met their other half. I always rolled my eyes and called bullshit, one of the assholes who always razzed them for believing in that crap.

But as my heart pounds rapidly behind my ribcage each time she comes into the kitchen to pick up another tray of food for my customers, I’m starting to sing a different tune. There is something about Cece that calls to my very soul, a connection unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my forty years on this earth. As I continue to run on autopilot, cooking then plating people’s dinner without actually thinking about what I’m doing, since all my braincells are focused on the woman currently out in my restaurant on her first shift as my employee, I try desperately to remember what Steph told me about her earlier this afternoon.

Had I known I would be meeting the woman of my dreams mere hours later, I would’ve paid much closer attention to the details.

No experience as a waitress… why? What was the “sob story” Steph couldn’t resist?

Mom.

She’s a single mom. Recently separated because… her husband cheated on her. The fucking bastard.

I cut the extra fat off a steak a little more aggressively than necessary, but if the thought had made me shake my head in disgust before, then it royally pisses me the fuck off now at the thought of anyone hurting Cece in any way.

But I remind myself Steph asked me to forget she said anything about that detail.

What else? What else had she mentioned?

She’d been… a stay-at-home mom, a homemaker up until recently, and this would be her first job since she was a teenager.

I smile at that. She’s already doing a bomb-ass job if Steph gave her a table on her own. My manager may be sweet and funny and super friendly, but she’s a bulldog when it comes to professionalism and making sure the restaurant’s image and reputation are held to the highest standard. Which means she wouldn’t let Cece do anything on her own if she thought there was even a slight chance a customer might have a less than stellar experience and leave without rating us a full five stars on Yelp.

By the end of the night, I’ve got the kitchen cleaned up and ready for tomorrow and am just opening the dishwasher to pull out the last of the silverware, when I hear Steph enter while chattering. And without looking up, I know she’s talking to Cece. Not because she’s still training her and it’s time to teach her about closing duties, but because this odd sense of calm comes over me the way it has every time Cece entered my domain. Before I would even know of her presence, I would somehow feel her closeness, almost like a buzzing static along the hairs covering my body.

I look up as they come around the other end of the workstation, and I pull out the silverware rack to place it on the countertop. Steph stops at the dryer and pulls open the door, reaching in to pull out an armload of fabric napkins.

I try to look busy, re-wiping down the cooktop as I listen in and stealthily observe Cece following Steph’s instructions on how to wrap up the silverware with the napkins and placing each set into one of the clear plastic bins we then store in the bar. She catches on quickly, wrapping them up with precision and speed like she’s been doing it for years. And sooner than I hoped, since I could continue doing fake busy work all night in order to just keep watching the beauty that is Cecilia Willimson—yes, like some fiend, I’d taken a break at one point in the evening and read over her resume in Steph’s office—she finishes the last set and places it in the bin.

“And then we just scoot them right through here,” Steph says, sliding all the bins under the range, “and we go store them in the bar, except for one, which we put up by the hostess stand for her to grab sets out of as customers come in.”

“Got it,” I hear Cece chirp, although I can no longer see anything but her chin to her waist—not unless I stoop low as I’d done each time she came into my kitchen to get her table’s orders, unable to resist looking at her when I could.

While the timing is absolutely off…

And while we have barely spoken even one conversation’s worth of words to each other…