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“Chocolate caramel latte, who ordered, anyone?”
fWhip squinted at the illegible label. Curse her chicken scratch, she couldn’t read the name written on the cup. Hopefully someone would come claim their drink.
Dropping it on the counter, she turned around to start making another drink, her friend Pearl manning the register of the lovely little coffee shop they shared an afternoon shift at.
Her pale red skirt swished around her calves as she added a pump of espresso into the mocha she was making, half listening to the conversations at the counter for her missing chocolate caramel latte customer.
“How many espresso shots can I legally add to my order?”
fWhip looked up at that, turning to the register to see a very tall woman with pink hair standing in front of Pearl, face set in pure determination.
Ooo, a cryptid. She watched curiously, snickering to herself as the woman slid a couple of bills over the counter discreetly, trying to bribe Pearl into giving her fifteen shots of espresso.
“Jeez, just do drugs, what’s the difference,” the woman’s companion, a short man with a green stripe in his hair, said. She smiled at him fondly before turning back to the register to pay, Pearl shooting fWhip a look to make sure she had heard the order.
Coffee with fifteen espresso shots and six shots of liquid sugar, one chocolate pump. fWhip handed the coffee over to the lady, named Lizzie, and almost choked when she pulled a packet of small white powder (that was not sugar) out of a pocket and dumped it into the coffee. When she noticed fWhip watching, she gave her a cheeky wink and strode out of the cafe, the short green-haired man shooting fWhip a farewell eye roll as well.
Well, that was an encounter.
“Do you mind taking over the register for a moment, fWhippy?” Pearl asked her, stepping back during a lull in customers. “I wanna call my little brother real quick.”
fWhip nodded, moving to the register and whistling shortly to get Shrub, her friend and third coworker, to stop chatting up a black-haired customer in a flowy lavender dress and take fWhip’s former post at the machines.
Her first customer passed quickly, and so did the second and third. The fourth made time slow down, everything fading to a blur around her.
She was tall, maybe around six feet, with wavy chocolate brown locks tumbling around her hair and escaping loose braids decorated with sparkly beads. Warm skin filled her vision, a simple cream shirt with a crimson asymmetrical skirt and a soft orange scarf wrapped around her neck in a cute tie.
Sparkling blue eyes met her own paler blue, charming grin revealing dimples set into her cheeks. “Hi there!”
“Uh, hi,” fWhip stammered out, blush rushing up her cheeks. “Do you want me- I mean, what do you want?”
She mentally smacked herself, cursing in her head as the cute stranger giggled. “Long day, love?”
It was eleven in the morning. fWhip nodded desperately, trying to force the blush down and focus.
Okay. She could do this. “Sorry about that, welcome to the Empires Cafe. What can I get you?”
Nice. The stranger beamed at her, and fWhip pinched herself under the counter to make sure she was awake and this wasn’t some sort of fanfiction-esque dream.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said cheerfully, glancing up at the menu on the wall for a moment before focusing her gaze on fWhip. “Maybe something as sweet as you?”
Right. fWhip was going to die. She was going to die right there, and her gravestone would read “Rest In Peace, died like an idiot when flirted with by cute customer”.
“Aw, you think I’m cute?” Shit, did she say that out loud?
fWhip deadpanned, “No, you look like a goat,” and the customer burst into laughter, laughter like sunshine after a burst of rain, and was this what love at first sight meant because fWhip was absolutely gone.
Someone in the line grumbled, and fWhip shook herself out of her lovey-dovey stupor, reality returning. She had a job to do.
Her customer seemed to agree. “Can I get a cafe Cubano with extra sugar and cream, along with your number?”
fWhip couldn’t help but giggle at that. “Coming right up, can I get your name?”
Her customer smiled. “It’s Sausage.”
“Nice to meet you, Sausage,” she said softly. “I’m fWhip.”