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“He’s right! I can!” Tex shouted. “And you’re not!”
Dream made a bigger face.
I beat back a smile.
“I’ll get your dirty chai, Byron,” I offered, moving to the espresso machine. “You can go back to your table. I’ll bring it.”
“And I’ll talk to Tex and Tito, Dream,” Luna said (man, she was such a pushover, but then again, that was part of being a fab sister). “But just so you know, Tito has all the patience in the world, though on that spectrum, Tex is the exact opposite. If they let you take some shifts, you’ve got to be cool.”
Dream assumed a wildly offended expression. “I have mouths to feed, of course I can be cool.”
“I’m not convinced!” Tex boomed.
Dream grimaced.
I shot some hot water onto the tea bags.
“Let me work on it, and maybe go out the back so Tito can do his thing out front?” Luna suggested.
Dream hesitated a beat.
We all hesitated with her, for my part, hoping she’d express some gratitude to her sister for being so nice.
But then she just said, “Whatever. I’ll go out the back. Later.”
Then she and the dozing Harmony swanned toward the doors to the kitchen.
Luna sighed.
I dumped the shot of espresso into the tea and started to steam milk.
Tito silently shuffled back to his corner “office,” but he did this looking at Luna, shaking his head, and waving his hand palm down. I didn’t know what that meant, but I assumed it meant that Tex was still a no on Dream. But Tito was going to work on him.
Since she was asking for weekends, and I didn’t work weekends, and Luna seemed unscathed by Dream’s most recent visit to The Surf Club, I finished up Byron’s dirty chai and walked it to him.
“Thanks,” he muttered, nabbed the mug from the saucer and drank a quarter of it.
I flinched in camaraderie with his mouth, which he had to have just burned to all heck.
Then he put the cup back into the saucer and declared, “You’re kind of like my little sister too.”
“Thanks, Byron, that’s sweet.”
“Do you have a bitchy older sister?” he asked.
“No, I have a golden boy older brother,” I told him. “You?”
“None to speak of,” he said evasively.
What a weird answer.
Then again, none of us knew what Byron did. Like he said, he came in every day. He drank multiple dirty chais every day as well, so I suspected he got about .425 hours of sleep a night. And he just threw down for Luna.
Other than that, we knew nothing about him.
Raye thought he was an international hacker wanted by Interpol, and he was on his computer when he wasn’t sucking back caffeine, so she might be right.
The rest of us had no clue.