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“Mr. Hamilton, good to see you again. I was beginning to think you’d escaped out the back door and left me standing here waiting for you like a loser.” If there was a back door, I would have.
“What makes you say that?” I feigned surprise.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that you’ve been actively dodging me for the past week, and now I’m guessing you’re the last guy out of the showers—the last one before you left ages ago. I can see now why you have a reputation on the field, if your avoidance skills off it are anything to go by.”
“First of all, like I said, I haven’t been avoiding shit, but yes, I do have a fucking life, and no, it doesn’t revolve around making myself available to you for some stupid interview I didn’t even sign up for. I have no idea why the Dean and Coach want this so badly, but I’m one hundred percent not down.”
“Really? Well you haven’t made that abundantly clear at every possible moment, or anything. I had no idea.”
“Whatever. Let’s just get this shit over and done with so we can both get on with our lives.” I scowled down at her, and tried not to notice how fine she was close up. Fail.
“Okay, thanks. Is there somewhere quiet and comfortable around here we can sit so that I can ask you some questions?”
“Not really. Besides, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it in actual comfort, not squatting outside the locker room. Do you drink coffee?”
“Is that a trick question? I’m a journalist. You know we mainline the stuff, right? Besides which, I’m actually also a part-time barista, so coffee is pretty much life at this point.”
“That so? Well that’s at least one thing we can agree on. It really is life-giving. Where do you work?”
“Where You Bean.”
“Shut the fuck up. You do not.”
“I do.”
“You can’t. I’m there all the time, and I’ve never seen you there.” I had literally never seen her before the first time coach introduced us. Her face wasn’t even vaguely familiar.
“Well I am. Often. So maybe it’s case of looking, but not seeing.”
“Whatever. Let’s bounce. I need caffeine. Stat.”
Once we got to the cafe, it was obvious that she was both familiar and infinitely comfortable there. We couldn’t walk two paces without being greeted by a staff member, or a customer. Then, just as we were about to claim a comfy couch near the window, we were approached by the guy I knew to be the manager, and possibly the owner, of the place.
“Oh hey, Honey, what’s up? You love the place so much you can’t stay away, huh?”
“Hey, Mack. Nah, nothing like that. It wasn’t my choice this time, believe it or not. You can blame my company for that.” She motioned to me, which had Mack looking my way, too, as though noticing me for the first time—even though I felt like I filled the space twice over, both in height and width.
“Hmmm... seems to be a trend with you at the moment. And you certainly have a type.”
Honey looked confused for a moment, but the awareness soon bloomed in her hazel eyes.
“Oh, you mean Beau? Hahaha! No, coming here actually was my choice that time. This time, not so much, and in neither case was it what you’re thinking. Side note, you should probably be more discreet. What if I was doing a little something on the DL? You would have just hung me out to dry.”
Mack laughed hard. “First of all, of all the people on the entire planet, you’re probably the last one I’d ever say would do what you just described. But if, by some weird chance, you were doing something like that, I trust that you’d have the good sense God gave an earthworm not to bring two guys, A, to your place of work, and B, to the same place period. You’re a lot shrewder than that.”
“Got that right. I am. No flies on you. This is strictly business.” She shot me a look that suggested that I wasn’t business that she wanted to deal with on a regular basis, or at all, in fact. Business like cleaning toilets or taking out the trash. Okay then. “But Beau’s all pleasure.” She winked at Mack. I didn’t know who Beau was, and I didn’t care, but I knew I didn’t like him.
“That was obvious when I saw the two of you together.”
I cleared my throat awkwardly, and was rewarded with two pairs of eyes focused on me.
“Sorry to interrupt, but...” I brought my wrist up and tapped on it with the index finger of my other hand, to signify that time and tide waited for no man. More to the point, I wasn’t going to hang around for her to gush about this Beau person while I stood there like a spare clit at a wedding.
“Oh, yeah, sure. Sorry.” She at least had the grace to look genuinely apologetic.
“No problem.”
She turned to Mack, looking equally sorry. “Excuse me, I gotta...” She shrugged, leaving him to finish her sentence, no doubt both of them filling in the blanks somewhere along the lines of, “Interview this pain in the ass.”
