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* * *

“Good morning,” Tenley said when she arrived at the coffee shop the next morning to work. She looked a whole lot better than she had when I’d seen her last. Her eyes were brighter, and she didn’t look like she’d spent hours crying.

“I brought you something,” she said, pushing a paperback across the counter toward me. I looked at the cover and the author’s name rang a bell.

“Lexi Starr. Isn’t she the one you asked me about?” I asked.

“This is an advanced copy I got for her next book. She’s a friend, so she sent it to me. Obviously it’s not completely edited, so if you see any typos, please ignore them,” she said.

“Wow, thanks. I’ve never read a book before it came out before,” I said. I wanted to read the blurb on the back, but I had to actually do my job.

“What can I get for you?” I asked, setting the book aside on a shelf.

“Croissant and an iced honey lavender macchiato. Large. Very large. I have a ton of work that I’m behind on,” she said. I punched in the order.

“You got it,” I said.

“Thanks, fake ex-girlfriend,” she said, skipping off to her table. I shook my head and tried not to smile too much.

* * *

“Okay, you have to let me read this, it sounds hot as fuck,” Lark said in a low voice as she checked out the book that Tenley had lent me.

“Yeah, it sounds seriously sexy. I looked up the author on my break and it’s fully erotic romance,” I said. I’d also read an excerpt from one of the author’s other series and I’d been blushing ever since. Hot AF.

“Damn,” Lark said, fanning herself with the book.

“Give me that,” I said, taking it from her. “Tenley will murder me if I let anything happen to this.” I headed to the back and put the book in my bag so it didn’t get coffee or anything else spilled all over it.

When I came back out, Lark was taking Karissa’s order.

“Hey,” she said to me as I worked on some dishes in the sink. If there was one thing I could change about my job, other than some of the entitled customers, it was the amount of dishes I had to do in a given day.

“Hey,” I said back to her. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, you know, work,” she said, gesturing to her business casual outfit that she wore as a bank teller.

“Same,” I said, laughing.

“Hopefully yours has been better than mine. We had to ask a guy to leave because we can’t stop the government from garnishing his wages for back child support he owes. I don’t know why he expected to find sympathy from us,” she said, shaking her head.

“Some people have a lot of audacity,” I said, which was a much more polite thing than what I wanted to say.

Karissa smiled. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Lark finished her drink and handed it over to her. “Thanks so much. I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Hope the rest of your day is better.”

Karissa rolled her eyes. “Here’s hoping.”

She left and I watched her cross the parking lot and head back into the bank.

“Well,” Lark said, leaning on the counter and looking at me. “She’s cute.”

“I guess,” I said. Karissa absolutely was cute, but that wasn’t what Lark was implying.

“You know she was flirting with you, right?” Lark said, taking a sip of water.