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She’s there, every Tuesday, Friday and every other Saturday. With a waterfall of chestnut hair just skimming her shoulders and a glint in her eyes that is only matched in radiance by her smile when he walks up to the counter.
He doesn’t exactly believe in soulmates. He thinks most of that stuff is a crock of shit, the lies you find embedded in the souls of children’s fairy tales, but she makes him question that. He has a lot of questions, albeit some repetitive -- like why she’s working here. Why she threw her life away (he’s seen the college photos, he knows what she’s left behind) and why she’s so damn happy about it, but he’s never racked up the nerve to ask.
The door chimes with a quiet bell as he pushes it open, enveloping himself in a murmur of unpleasant voices. Too high, too deep, too squeaky, too mellow, he can’t stand any of them. Except hers.
She’s loud enough to be heard over the rest of the company when she hollers a name. Black coffee for Darcy, and he can’t help but scowl because Darcy could’ve fucking made that at home instead of coming here and taking more of her time away from him. He sneers at the girl -- presumably Darcy -- that comes up to collect it, muttering some insult under his breath about her face.
Darcy clears out of the way and he steps forward. When he sees her, he feels his heart palpitate.
Veronica, Ronnie, he thinks.
“A slushy again?” she says, recognising him, (it was a great day the first time she recognized him and knew his order), already grabbing a cup and moving towards the machine in the corner, which they probably only keep for the kids who refuse to drink anything fancier. The kids and him, he likes slushies, and she doesn’t seem to mind.
He nods, “Strawberry please.” He likes the color, a rich red, lighter and more vibrant than blood but exactly the shade of the lipstick she puts on after her Saturday shift when he comes to pick her up, in his stupid fancy black car.
She laughs, she always does, it’s a beautiful sound, not in the traditional way, it sounds nothing like the chiming of bells or anything sung by an angel, but it is cheery, with a hint of rough, it speaks of mischief, and he wants to hear it after he has whispered something dirty into her ear. “I swear you are the only reason this machine and its awful drinks still make a profit.”
He shrugs, “Got to do my duty to society.”
He isn’t, of course, funding large coffee chains is unquestionably destroying the Earth, dodging tax, burning down the rainforest, funding child slavery, the works, but he’s prepared to sacrifice the planet for her. There are always other places to go, space travel is really coming along nowadays.
She smiles again anyway, and he feels the tug of his heart. Wordly destruction is worth it if he gets to see her smile. At him, of course. Only him.
“Careful with your sugar intake, hun,” She tells him, and god , world destruction seems like nothing compared to what he wants to do for her. What he wants to do to her.
“Okay, one slushy coming right up,” she says, carefully writing Jason on the side of the cup. She writes it the same way every time, he likes the gentle curls of her penmanship, almost childlike in its neatness, the other barristers scribble names down, making a J, I or L almost indistinguishable from each other, but not her, she puts so much care into it. He wouldn’t let anyone else call him Jason, that was what his mother called him, but her - she can call him anything she wants, it would be a shame to restrict her to only writing two initials for him.
He traces over the letters with his fingers, as if he doesn’t know the way she writes his name by heart, as he picks the cup up and sits at his table. It’s free today, the one with a perfect view. It’s in the corner, slightly hidden by a pot plant, so it’s harder to see that he’s staring, but not enough to block his view of her face as she serves her customers nor the curve of her ass when she turns around to pour a drink.
Though, every good thing has its downfall. He has a good view of her — and the others. He has to watch her co-workers stumble around, mutter insults to each other, bitch about the customers. He doesn’t mind all of them. Some are okay, manageable because they know how to keep their mouths shut, and then there’s Heather.
Or Heathers, really, as there’s a few of them. Three, and they’re all equally nuisances.
Heather M, as it says on her badge in block capitals, is at least mostly harmless. She’s just the stupidest fucking person that he has ever met, once, on an awful day when he got his timings wrong and Veronica was busy serving someone else she gave him a raspberry slushy as if she couldn’t even tell the difference between red and blue. It’s not an isolated incident either, whenever he sees Heather M behind the counter (most Tuesdays, every third Friday) he knows to expect a full queue of customers coming back up to return their incorrect orders. Poor Ronnie is always run off her feet apologizing for her, though she’s never shown such incompetence. In fact, every order he’s seen her make she’s done so perfectly, which figures, perfect people are like that.
There’s the one he knows as Duke. A red head, much quieter than the other two. Meek, almost mousy, though without question still an unlit candle when presented next to his Ronnie. And, when she feels like she has the others on her side, God she can bitch just as well as the next useless entity.
Neither are usually isn’t the star of his violent thoughts though. That award goes to the head bitch -- Heather C, he’s heard them call her. A brainless blonde with a sneer permanently etched onto her expression. Fuck this job, fuck you, fuck this customer, whatever she says, it’s always something foul. And for a while he could ignore her, he doesn’t think working for a big, soul-sucking company is the dream, and then she stepped over the line.
Eventually, her fuck you’s were turned to Ronnie, and her death became the thing he lulled himself to sleep to, anticipating the day he finally gets his hands around her throat. He’s just waiting for the right timing. It can’t be long now, things are seeming particularly tense today, not half an hour ago Ronnie asked Heather C to serve a customer while she was apparently too busy flirting from one of the meatheads from the gym across the road - that had earnt Ronnie a very exaggerated eye roll and the poor customer some very bitchy service. Heather has been stomping around ever since, grabbing cups with such vigor he’s surprised she’s hasn’t...
There’s a sudden crash, and the entire cafe looks up to take in the scene. And what a scene, Heather C has knocked right into Ronnie, spilling hot brown coffee all over her uniform.
“Oooops,” Heather mutters, not even bothering to sound sorry.
The wet uniform is clinging to Ronnie in all the right places, but he’s so angry he can barely take it in. Instead, her shocked shriek reverberates in his ears and she looks down, closes her eyes for a moment, trying to hide her tears. His first instinct is to get up right there and then, push the blonde bitch against the wall and strangle her with his bare hands, see how she likes it when she is hurt without remorse, when no amount of begging will stop him in his goal. But that would be foolish, someone might call the police before he even managed to finish her off and, while he’s sure Ronnie would understand, he’s not sure the judge would be bright enough to comprehend that he was doing the world a favor. Instead, he grabs a nearby napkin, tearing it to shreds under the table, imagining it’s Heather’s stupid body, thinking about the screams she would utter as he pulled the hair out of her scalp, before he found a knife and reached for her neck…
The slamming of the door to the staffroom, as Ronnie dashes to change, pulls him out of his violent thoughts and focuses his mind on doing something to resolve the situation at hand. He stares at the door, waiting for Veronica to return, but she does not. She must have been sent home and left via the staff entrance out the back.
He never heard her car go. He scowls, deep and angry. He never slacks this much. Stupid fucking store restrictions. He should have been allowed to help her.
So instead he spends his time staring down a much less appealing target. Heather C, the bitch she is, shows no remorse for her actions, in fact if anything she seems like she’s in a better mood than usual, her fake smile is that much wider as she greets her businessman customers, simpering for tips, and her bitchy comments are reserved for every third customer rather than every second.
Well, he’s got to do something to kill that good mood before she thinks she’s got away with it. The hours go on, and the babble of the customers fade as they slowly dwindle in numbers, until he is the only one left. He watches as the other Heathers pack up and leave, and soon it’s just Heather C and the overly friendly, but absent minded, Martha. The clock hits six, and he nurses his fourth slushy (still strawberry it helps him think) but with Heather M’s childish scribbled JD rather than the writing on the day’s first cup, which he’s carefully stowed in his bag, to add to his collection.
The lights go out all at once, as Heather brutally switches them off with a typically snippy, “We’re closed, time to go.”
He doesn’t bother gracing her with his attention, he’ll be giving her far more than such a cockroach deserves in a minute. Instead he smiles at Martha, gentle, disarming, “I’m nearly done, can I stay another five minutes? I promise I won’t be any trouble.”
Martha’s answer is instantaneous, “Oh of course! If you don’t mind me cleaning up around you.”
Heather scowls, and for a second he thinks she’s going to throw another tantrum like the infant she is, but instead she just turns on her heel and heads through the staff door, “Whatever, you’re locking up.”
And then it’s just the two of them. Martha distracted with the cleaning, and Heather the only one in the back of the shop.
Perfecto.
He only has to wait a minute or two until Martha goes to clean the restrooms. Then he gets up and goes through the staff doors, there’s a code to get through, but he’s spent enough time memorising her every movement to not hesitate for a second.
If you like a girl, you have to show her you like her, he hears his mother’s voice in his head. He doesn’t think flowers will suffice. Not in this case. He’s tried flowers before with the other girls. He’s tried every trick in the book and it’s always just what are you doing in my house and not a booming declaration of love.
Not that they matter anymore. None of them were anything compared to Ronnie.
He doesn’t rush to the back. He doesn’t view Martha as a threat. He’s watched her lumber around, trip over her own feet. He tried to follow her once, see if she had anything pertaining to Ronnie. She’s more boring than boring, and honestly, not very smart.
Heather is just as quiet as she is intelligent, and he finds her in almost no time, she’s packing stuff in the walk in freezer, listening to her walkman and paying as much attention to her surroundings as she does to other people’s feelings. His execution is flawless, though he never expects anything better from himself. He slams the freezer door shut, and gives the trolley a simple shove, jamming the bar under the handle. He’s done before Heather has even noticed.
Martha is still cleaning the cafe, he can tell because she’s still singing along loudly to I Will Survive (he titters), so he probably has a few more minutes, he turns his attention to the lockers in the corner of the staffroom, or one of them in particular.
He’s had enough experience picking locks, especially cheap ones like this one, that it takes no time to swing it open. He is immediately assaulted with an awful sight. The photo on the back of the door is of her and him, his arm around her shoulders, his lips on her neck - she’s laughing, looking at him with adoration. He pulls it off, on instinct, and he’s moments from ripping it up into tiny pieces, so he never has to even think about something so horrible again (though maybe he should keep the bit with her face and adoring eyes), but then he remembers that the less evidence he leaves the better and, using all his strength, he bravely places it back.
Instead he delves in further. Her locker is a mess, not that he blames her, after the chaos earlier she probably just grabbed her clothes and left. He looks at what she haphazardly left behind, it’s mostly just books, snacks and shopping lists but near the back, like it slipped out of her bag, is something out, a thick leather notebook, filled with that lovely handwriting that he knows so well. A diary.
He grabs it feeling like he’s won the lottery (he basically has, her words are more valuable than gold), shoving it into his trench coat pocket, relocks the locker and makes a hasty exit, hoping the muffled screams that have started coming from the freezer are too quiet for Martha to notice. Today has definitely improved.
xxx
He’s shivering with anticipation by the time he makes it home. The moment he’s off his bike he dashes inside and gets the diary out, lying on his bed, carefully reading every word she has penned from her heart. It’s like a treasure trove, a series of moments where he can see her very soul, no one can ever, no one will ever be, as close to her as he is right now.
He learns about her, learns that she doesn’t actually like coffee, and that she has a colorful mouth when it comes to talking about her boss. She hates when the popular girls she went to school with come into order, and she’ll do anything to get around doing it for them. He adds them to his list. There’s so much he can do to make her life better.
She rambles sometimes, writes out pages about how she read Du Maurier's Rebecca at the bookclub she goes to every month with her best friend Betty and loved it (but hated Great Expectations , which they’d read the month before). He hasn’t read it, but resolves to go to a bookshop tomorrow to make sure he has by the end of the week.
And then, there’s the not-so-nice things. It confirms all his suspicions, proves to him what he already knew, that he was right in getting rid of Heather for her. There are pages and pages of entries complaining about her, about the Heathers in general, about their petty bullying and goading her into doing things she didn’t want to, about how they take her to bars and parties get her drunk before expecting her to fend for herself.
He had known that, seen it on a few occasions, but it doesn’t make him any less angry.
Other bits he likes less, the stupid boyfriend keeps popping up and he’s as arrogant and shallow as he’s always known he would be, a stuck up college rich boy who spends his time wowwing her with dinners in fancy restaurants, giving her frivolous jewelery rather than presents from the heart. He’s never even once given her her secret dream date, a picnic at the park, where they chill and talk about books and eat ice cream. She’d be better off without him, it’s obvious from every word, but she refuses to see it, instead spending her time going on and on about how she’s sure he’s ‘the one’.
The sexual fantasies are even hotter than he expected though, his Ronnie is a dirty girl, even if they are with a guy who can obviously not satisfy her (he folds over those pages for later use).
And then.
Then.
The entry two weeks and four days ago:
May 8th 1992
Dear Diary
Urgh, I don’t know why this should be a surprise to you by this point but Heather Chandler was being a megabitch again.
It all started okay, got into work, served my regulars, Fred and his overindulgence of cream on his hot chocolate, Lily who has to have exactly 3 shots of espresso and half a shot of milk, Jason, the cute guy who likes slushies a bit too much...
He’s not the squealing type, but the sound he emits reading that can’t be described as anything else.
He doesn’t bother reading any more that night, just tears the page out, clasps it in his hands as he goes to sleep. He knew it, he always knew it. And, with one of their enemies slowly turning into ice as he lies here, he knows it won’t be long before they will be together forever.
xxx
He doesn’t get to see the result of his effort, of course, hanging around a backroom that he has no permission to be in, when he knows a corpse is going to be discovered is probably not the best move, but it makes the papers the next week, complete with a gory picture an over-keen journalist took of her body. Heather C’s never looked better, though he must say, blue looks a lot worse on her than it does on his Ronnie.
He doesn’t think it’s all that bad for being his first kill. He could have had a little more fun, but it’s enough to fool the cops, and that’s good enough for him. Heather never deserved anything better, much less more of his time.
Veronica is shocked, upset, even, and he can’t really piece together why because really, he did her a favor. Heather was more of a nuisance than anything. She didn’t even like working with her, but it doesn’t stop the guilt he feels when he watches her cry in her car, head in her hands.
He almost cries with her, not mourning Heather, but feeling the pain he’s caused her. He never meant to put her in this position.
But it doesn’t matter, does it? He’s already done his damage, Heather is already out of the picture. The best he can do now is try and fix it as discreetly as possible. It’s not like she knows he did it...right?
He watches her with extra intent the next time he goes in, seeing her glance towards him, wondering just how much she knows. Nobody suspects anything. He’s innocent, Heather had an accident. Nobody in the store besides Veronica even knows his name. He can’t be faulted.
He places his forehead in his palm, screwing his eyes shut, wonders why, why, why, why’d he go this far, how he went this wrong. He doesn’t regret killing Heather -- he’d be a damn fool to. He just…
He just doesn't know.
He doesn’t know and the resentment he feels for it is disgusting. He’s almost never doubted himself on this, on her. He was so perfect the other times, she never even noticed when he went snooping around. This time shouldn’t have been any different.
So, when he kills her boyfriend, he’s better.
He already knows her handwriting off by heart, so it’s easy to write a note and slip it through idiot boyfriend’s door to get him to meet him at the dead of night somewhere where he won’t get caught.
He stabs him as soon as he approaches, lets all the hate that has been brewing for fucking months take over, tastes his blood on his teeth; spits it out and gags. It feels fucking amazing. He’s meticulous this time around, makes sure to clean up his mess and burn his note so there’s nothing left behind.
They can’t find the body. He doesn’t want a repeat of her tears after Heather’s death, no matter how much he’d enjoy sitting at the back of his funeral and watching as those fools pretend there was anything good to say about him. He’ll make that sacrifice, for her. He’ll just need to explain away his disappearance in way that makes her good heart feel less pity this time.
It’s easy to mimic her boyfriend’s handwriting. He plucks it from some sign up sheet on the coffee store bulletboard, spends his time tracing over it. He’s loath to spend so much time imitating such a lowlife, but he reminds himself that this isn’t for him, this is for her. This is for them.
He writes two letters in the idiot's hand, one to his parents, so they don’t raise any alarms, and one to her. He makes hers as harsh as possible, like the jerk he’s always known he was, tells her he’s going to find himself by travelling around the world, to not wait for him, as he needs to be free for all the girls in Thailand and Peru. Tells her that he never really loved her much anyway, just wanted an easy lay.
They’re horrible words, things she should never have read and suffer through, but it’s for the greater good, and anyway he’ll make it better soon, so soon. Soon she’ll realize how much of a dick he always was, how good she can have it, how perfect their lives will be once they are together.
He’s not perfect by any means, but he can be perfect for her.
xxx
Her schedule’s slightly different now. She’s had to pick up some shifts to cover Heather, and there were several days where they were closed for the health and safety inspection (they concluded it was just an unfortunate accident, but Heather’s parents were baying for blood so Martha was fired for negligence anyway). But it’s better this way, there are more days to see her, more opportunities to find the perfect time to make his move.
There’s a new type of joy in his step. Hope, the kind that doesn’t feel stupid. She’ll have to pay attention to him now.
But, just for extra measure, he’s planned for this.
He holds the book under his arm, purposely positioning it so the title and author are obvious (he spent at least half an hour perfecting the angle in the mirror this morning).
It’s a joy to see that she’s watching out for him, too.
“Oooh, is that Rebecca ?”
The excitement in her voice is infectious and his grin would have been genuine even if he hadn’t practised this moment many times before, “Yes, I’m nearly at the end now.” A white lie, he finished it the night after he read her diary, but he decided this would be a better way to start a conversation.
“You’ll have to let me know when you get to the twist, it’s so good! It changes everything you think you know about the story so far.”
And here it is, finally, finally after all those months of planning, here is his chance, “There might be quite a lot to talk about, how about we meet up in the park or something, I could bring a picnic…” he leaves the question hanging, but he can tell from the slight hitch in her breath and her rapid blinking (she does that a lot when she’s nervous) that she hasn’t mistaken his intentions, nor is she disinclined.
She looks down, “I’m not sure I’m very good company at the moment, I’ve had a tough few weeks.”
He knows, and he’s sorry for that, but she’ll understand one day that he did it all for her, and their future will be so vibrant, so perfect, that she’ll forget this pain, “Sounds like something to take your mind off things would do you good then.”
She only hesitates a couple of seconds longer, but then she gives him a small smile, not her usual radiant one, but that will come soon now she is finally his, “You’re right, that sounds nice. You’d better buy me something better than one of those god-awful slushies though.”
He can’t argue with her, they are pretty bad. Nothing but sugar that makes his teeth rot.
“Of course,” He says, though he doesn’t think that even begins to cover it.
He has and would do anything for his Ronnie.