Page 40 of Resonance
I was pretty sure he didn’t mean that to sound like innuendo, but my brain totally caught fire over the demand in his voice.
Once Dan was gone, Ru stretched halfway over the table, narrowing his eyes. “If you could do that shit on stage, you’d have everyone eating out of the palm of your hand.”
“Do what?” I glanced over my shoulder where Joey was haggling with one of his friends over their tab.
“Flirting. It’s a solid stage tactic—not the only one, but a good one. You just scale it up so instead of flirting with Dan and Mr. Skeered, you’re flirting with the entire audience.”
My mouth dropped open. “I wasn’t flirting with Dan.” Iwasflirting with Joey. Or trying.
Ru set his lips primly and fluttered his lashes at me. “Okay, whatever you say, Sunshine.”
Chapter 14
“Ineed a caffeine IV. Come with me,” Ivy said as she emerged from dropping her stuff off in the storage room and headed toward the front counter where I was already languishing under the slow drip of customers. It was a quiet day, and usually I’d take that opportunity to go rummage around the Hoard, but I was in some kind of residual trance state after using up every ounce of adrenaline in my body during last night’s show.
“Please?” Ivy tightened her pink-and-blue ponytail and twitched her nose at me.
I dragged myself upright from my lean and glanced at my phone. “I still have fifteen minutes left in my shift.”
“Ru!Can Owen go get coffee with me?” Ivy shouted, and I jerked, clapping my hands against my ears. I was wrong: turned out I still had a tiny bit of adrenaline left in me.
“Jesus, warning next time, please.”
Ru appeared in the hallway that led back to the office and storage room. “Grab me a mocha. And next time walk your ass back here and ask me, hellion. Some of us are civilized around here.”
Ivy shot him a wicked grin, and we started to head out before she remembered something she’d forgotten and disappeared back inside, returning with a folded piece of paper.
“What’s that?” I nodded toward it as we strolled down the sidewalk. Jolt was two blocks away and usually where we got our caffeine fix. When Ivy’s boyfriend was working, we got it at a discount, which was nice, even if I was on the fence about him as a human being, partially due to the fauxhawk he insisted on.
“Application for Jolt.”
I swiveled a look toward her, letting my jaw drop dramatically. “Are you quitting Grim’s?”
She made an expression I couldn’t quite read, then frowned obliquely. “No, but one of my roommates is behind on rent and we’re having trouble getting him evicted, so I need some more hours and Dan said no.”
“Dan said no?” I blinked.
“Is there an echo out here?” she teased. “I mean, I get it, there aren’t really any extra hours to have between the three of us and I didn’t want to push it because I was afraid he’d just go ahead and let me go.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
Ivy pursed her lips, then shrugged. “He might.”
I squinted at her. “What do you know that you’re not saying?”
She grimaced. “I mean, you know he closed the Knoxville store, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“I overheard him talking to Ru and it sounded like it’s not just Knoxville that was failing. But, like, all the shops are in dire straits.” She huffed her bangs off her forehead. “I dunno. Just kinda feels like the writing is on the wall. So I figured I’d try to stay one step ahead.”
“Why am I always the last to know everything? Shit,” I muttered, and she nodded as she tugged me through the entrance of the coffee shop.
“I really don’t want a cubicle job,” she whined, then brightened as Zane muscled one of the other baristas out of the way and leaned over the counter to brush a quick kiss over her lips before we placed our orders.
He’d frosted the tips of his fauxhawk since I’d last seen him. Which was also a mistake. There was something else about him that annoyed me too, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“What’s up, Sprout?” That was one of them, for sure. He’d given me the nickname within two seconds of meeting me a couple of months ago.