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By the time we made it through Lucia’s kitchen to The Surf Club proper, it became clear why Tex hustled us in.
First, Byron, a daily regular, was standing at the bar, looking frenzied.
Byron drank dirty chais, and Tex didn’t make tea even if that tea also had a shot of espresso in it.
Thus, Tex needed us in there to deal with Byron, when Tex could have dealt with him if he didn’t have his strange aversion to tea.
More to the point, Dream was there with her newborn, Harmony, strapped to her chest.
“Oh shit,” Shanti whispered upon spying Dream.
“Oh boy,” Willow whispered upon doing the same.
“Fuck,” Jessie didn’t whisper.
I slapped on a bright smile and called, “Hi, Dream!”
Dream looked at me and did a kind of side eye/eye roll that wasn’t very nice because it was wholly dismissive.
It was also oh-so-totally Dream.
She then fixed in on Luna because Luna was her sister, and for some reason, Dream made a habit of coming by SC to give Luna grief and be mean, even though Luna was my sister too (not of the blood, still), and she was the bomb at being a great sister.
No one understood what Dream’s damage was, but the results of it were that Raye and Jessie couldn’t stand her. Shanti was right then sticking close to Luna so she could take her back. And Willow grabbed two pitchers of water and said, “I got all the tables,” which freed up Luna to focus on the always onerous effort of dealing with Dream.
On his way back to the coffee cubby, Tex gave Dream such a wide berth, I was shocked.
It said he was either scared of her (impossible, though Dream was just that much of a pill, maybe not) or he didn’t want to get too close to her if she did something ugly to Luna so he wouldn’t feel the need to knock her into next week.
I did my bit by ignoring the side eye/eye roll and walking right up to her.
“Do you want a coffee or something?” I offered cheerily.
“I’m breastfeeding,” she snapped. “I can’t have coffee.”
She wasn’t only mean to Luna.
Just saying.
“Oh,” I mumbled.
Luna sidled up to me asking her sister, “Everything okay?”
“Can we talk privately?” Dream requested.
“No!” Tex boomed from the coffee cubby (yeesh, he had good ears). “Servers serve!”
Dream glared toward the coffee cubby then turned back to Luna. “Or, you know, can we, uh…meet after work or something?”
“Is everything okay?” Luna repeated.
“Fine, I just…” She turned to look at Tito sitting in his corner table “office.”
Tito was bent over, scribbling something in a notebook.
Dream returned her attention to Luna, leaned in and said quietly, “I’m in a bind and I was hoping maybe you could get me some shifts here so I can make some tips.”
“No!” Tex boomed again (wowzers, he really had good ears). “Servers serve and they do it nice!”