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“Jess, please,” Leia, her manager, says.
“Absolutely not,” Jess repeats. “I can't go around telling people my manager is setting me up on blind date, I really can't.”
“I'm not asking you to tell people,” Leia replies, “I'm just asking you to give my niece a chance. She's nice, she's smart, she's pretty–”
“No!”
“–and you, my dear, desperately single,” Leia finishes. “I know for an absolute fact that you're not doing anything Friday night, because you complain about it constantly. Poe and I are sick to death of listening to you, so either meet her for dinner at Takodana this Friday, or stop whining!”
Jess frowns; opens her mouth, closes it again. She considers her options.
“Fine,” she agrees begrudgingly, “I'll meet your niece, but it's only to get you off my back.”
“That's all I needed to know,” Leia says cheerfully, and then disappears back into the kitchen.
The truth is, Jess thinks as she wipes down the counter, that Leia has a point. She hasn't had a serious relationship in over a year, and she hasn't been on so much as a date in three or four months. She's been so focused on balancing work and her engineering classes that she's basically given up all pretense at any sort of social life. And she's fine with that, really, but she can see how Leia might think she needs to get out a little more.
“Hi,” a soft voice interrupts her internal monologue, and Jess’ head snaps up and she flashes a grin at the customer standing in front of the counter.
“Hi, what can I get you?” she chirps in her best customer-service voice. Jess can’t help but notice that, even though there’s a streak of what looks like motor oil across one cheekbone and her hair is escaping in wisps from her elaborate braids, the girl is startlingly beautiful.
“Red eye, please,” she says.
“Long day?” Jess asks sympathetically.
“The longest,” the girl agrees, and Jess smiles.
“I feel you there,” she says, and goes to pull the espresso shot. The machine, of course, completely fails to cooperate and instead chooses to rattle alarmingly. “Oh, fuck,” Jess says loudly.
“Everything okay?” the girl asks.
“Not really,” Jess says, frustrated, “this machine can be so damn temperamental sometimes.”
“Let me take a look,” she offers, “I’m pretty good with machines, I work at Solo Auto across the street.”
Jess sighs and steps back. “I guess it can’t hurt, at this point,” she says. “Thank you.”
“I’m Rey,” the girl says, and ducks behind the counter. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Jess says, and absolutely doesn’t notice the way Rey’s biceps shift as she leans over and starts fiddling with the espresso machine.
“So,” Jess says, casting around for a topic of conversation, “have you worked at Solo long? I haven’t run into you before, and I know most of the employees there.”
“Just started last week,” Rey says. “It’s really different from what I’m used to, but I like it a lot.”
“That’s good,” Jess says, “I–”
There’s a loud clanging noise, and the espresso machine shudders back to life. “There we go,” Rey says, stepping back and wiping her hands off on her tight, worn jeans. “Should be good as new!”
“Thank you so much,” Jess says, heartfelt. “Really. There are no words to express the true depths of my gratefulness.”
Rey blushes then, a deep red flooding from the neck of her t-shirt all the way up to her hairline. “Really,” she says, awkwardly stepping back to the customer side of the counter, “not a big deal.”
“I beg to differ,” Jess says, grabbing a fresh cup of dark roast and restarting the espresso shot. She beams widely across the counter when the dark liquid streams into the paper coffee cup with no issues.
“You’re a hero among men, Rey,” she says sincerely as she hands over the cup. “One red-eye, on the house.”
“Oh,” Rey says, flustered, “I–I couldn’t possibly, it was barely any trouble–anyone could’ve done it–”
“Maybe it wasn’t a big deal for you, but you saved me, for real,” Jess says. “If we’d had to call the repair guy, it would have been a whole afternoon lost, and a huge repair bill, to boot. Trust me,” she finishes with a wink, “you’ve earned way more than a free drink.”
“Well,” Rey stammers, her fingers brushing Jess’ as she takes the cup, “that’s–uh–you’re welcome?”
“Come back soon,” Jess says, and smiles at her the whole way out of the shop.
A few days later, it’s nearing the end of her shift on Friday, and Jess is wiping down the counter during a slow moment, waiting for the clock to hit 6:00 so she can run home and change for her date that night. She’s not really looking forward to it, exactly; she’s never been much of a fan of blind dates. In her experience, they’re more awkward than enjoyable. Still, it’s nice to actually have Friday night plans beyond eating leftover Thai food on the couch and watching Gilmore Girls in her sweatpants.
There’s the tell-tale jingle of, and Jess looks up to see Rey from a few days ago bursting in. If she’d looked startlingly attractive covered in motor oil with her hair a mess, then she was absolutely breathtaking right now, her hair loose around her shoulders and her t-shirt and jeans replaced by a tight green dress.
“You look nice,” Jess starts to say, but Rey speaks at the same time, cutting her off.
“I need help,” Rey says, eyes huge, biting her lip in nervousness.
Jess blinks. “Yeah, okay,” she says, “what’s the problem? Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Rey says,”it’s just that I’ve got a date tonight–”
Jess takes half a second to be disappointed that Rey’s seeing someone, even though she barely knows the girl, and in fact has a date of herself tonight, but then she realizes that she’s still talking and tunes back in.
“I just–I got changed in the bathroom before I left and then forgot and helped Han out with one last car and–well–”
She takes a step back and turns to the side slightly, and Jess now notices what she hadn’t before, too distracted by how beautiful Rey looked: that there’s a huge black splotch of engine grease across the whole front of her dress. Jess winces.
“Yikes,” is all she can come up with, and Rey groans.
“I know,” she says, “it’s so bad. Usually I would just go home and change, but my date’s in an hour and my apartment’s all the way on the other side of town, plus I have to stop in at my friend’s place and check in on his boyfriend’s cat because they’re away this week, and this is my favorite dress–”
“Hey,” Jess says, “it’ll be okay. I got this.”
“Really?” Jess says, relief tingeing his voice. “I’m so sorry to bother you with this, I really am, I just didn’t know where else to go.”
“Not a problem,” Jess says, “and besides, I still owe you one.”
“Thank you,” Rey says, “really.”
Jess smiles at her and then grabs some corn starch and dish soap out of the back. “Now, I’m not claiming to be an expert at stain removal, but I’ve saved some shirts from some engineering lab accidents in my time,” she says, trying to be reassuring. “And it hasn’t set yet, which should help.”
She motions Rey to follow her around behind the counter, and then hands her a roll of paper towels. “Try to get as much off as you can,” she advises. “This next part is going to get weird.”
Rey nods, and dabs at her dress for a few minutes. “That’s as good as I can get,” she says, and Jess grabs the corn starch.
“The idea,” she explains, “is that we absorb as much of the grease as possible with this, and then scrub the rest out with some dishwashing soap. Optimally we would be able to run it through the washer, or even actually get it dry cleaned, but on short notice this should do well enough.”
Rey stands there silently while Jess does her best to tend to the stain. It’s a little awkward, Jess’s hands on Rey’s waist as she scrubs at the fabric, and she can feel the tension between them building as the moment drags on, right at the border between uncomfortable and something else.
“Okay,” Jess says finally, and steps back, “that’s as good as I can do for now. You should probably still get it dry cleaned later, but you can barely see it.”
“Thank you,” Rey says, “really, thank you so much.”
“Like I said,” Jess says, “I owed you one.”
Rey smiles at her, and then winces, checking the time on her phone. “Oh God, sorry to beg help off you and run, but I’m seriously running late–”
“Go,” Jess says, “have fun tonight!”
“Thanks,” Rey calls on her way out the door, “you too!”
Jess smiles to herself for half a moment, and then swears loudly as she realizes she’s running late too, and the girl who’s supposed to be covering the closing shift today isn’t here yet.
“Leia,” she calls into the back room, “we have a problem!”
Jess rushes in to Takodana Sushi half an hour later, frantically trying to smooth her wind-blown hair down as she breathlessly greets the hostess. She’s only a few minutes late, which is shocking considering that she’d had to help Leia find someone to cover the closing shift, and then she’d still had to run home to change out of her coffee-scented work shirt and sensible shoes.
“Hi,” Jess pants to the hostess, trying to catch her breath, “sorry, I’m–I’m meeting someone–”
“Right over there,” the hostess says, clearly trying to smother an amused grin, and Jess nods her thanks and follows her gesturing into the dining room, at which point she stops dead because the only person sitting alone is Rey, wearing the stain-free green dress and looking every bit as gorgeous as she had earlier that day.
For one wild moment Jess thinks about turning on her heel and leaving the restaurant right then, blind panic and shock taking over from any sort of reason and logic.
But then Rey looks up and sees her, and the surprise and delight on her face are both clearly genuine, and Jess knows exactly what to do.
“Hi,” she says, slipping into the seat across from Rey, “I have to say, I was not expecting my blind date to be half as gorgeous as you are.”
Rey flushes bright red, just like she had earlier in the week, and smiles shyly up at her. “I wasn’t expecting you, either,” she admits, “but as far as surprises go, I have to say this is a pretty good one.”
Jess feels something warm and happy uncurl in the pit of her stomach at that, and all she can do is grin stupidly at Rey. As much as she does not want to admit that Leia may have been right, she has a really, really good feeling about this.