Thank you for all the positive reviews! And to answer a few people's questions, I am trying to get on a regular update schedule, but it's been difficult. But my school might close soon, so I'll probably have more time to write.
Scarlet sighed as she pulled on the itchy waitress outfit of the Rieux Cafe, getting ready for her shift. This was admittedly not the best job she had ever worked, but she kept with it because she needed pocket money. Scarlet would much rather be zipping around town on her prized motorcycle, delivering their crops to businesses, but her grandmother refused to pay her for doing "errands." So she had applied for the waitress job, already expecting to hate it. But it paid well, and Scarlet wanted to prove to Grand-mere that she could make money by herself apart from the farm.
The main problem with the job? Having to interact with all the customers. When she waited on families with cute kids or elderly couples, it was no problem. But after school and in the evening, the cafe was swamped with fellow high schoolers - mostly the rich popular kids who had plentiful allowances they could spend on coffees and juices and sandwiches. Scarlet was not the kind of ditzy waitress who could flirt with all the boys and gossip and giggle with all the girls, like her friend Emilie. Instead, she waited on the tables stone-faced and silent, only talking when she was taking their orders. The cafe manager trained all of the waiters and waitresses to always have a smile and be polite, but Scarlet didn't care about manners when faced with the obnoxious football players and boy-crazy cheerleaders.
Halfway through her shift, Scarlet was taking a break from all the chaos of the busy cafe. She slowly refilled some customer's water glass before reluctantly retreating from the quiet of the back hallway.
"Scarling!" a voice cried. She looked up, startled, as her friend Emilie practically tripped over her own feet trying to reach her. Her fluffy blond curls cascaded around her face, shiny and bouncy. Scarlet had always slightly envied her friend. She was the kind of girl everyone wanted to be like, slim and blond and delicate. Whereas Scarlet had wild red hair not even the best hairdresser could tame and a thicker, stockier body. "Oh, darling, have you seen that new customer that just walked in?"
Scarlet looked over to where Emilie was pointing. It felt like someone had punched her in the gut when she saw the person sitting at the table by the window. Wolf. That face she had seen so many times in the dark alleys of the city, doing drugs and beating kids up and abducting Cinder. What on Earth was he doing here now?
"Doesn't he have the most beautiful green eyes?" Emilie crooned, apparently not knowing of Wolf's shady lifestyle. Scarlet looked up, taken aback that someone could call him beautiful.
She sighed, a headache pounding at her temples. Too often she was forced to steer her love-stricken friend away from someone who would not be good for her. "Em, you know he's a street fighter, right?"
"Don't be like that." Apparently the fact that he was a street fighter didn't seem to register with her. She waved away Scarlet's concerns. "He's sweet! And he was here yesterday and he sat in my section again today, which definitely means something, don't you think?" When Scarlet rolled her eyes, Emilie pressed on with adoration in her eyes. "He's always really quiet, not like Roland and his crowd. I think he's shy... and lonely." She offered a piece of gum to her friend.
"A street fighter who seems shy?" Scarlet waved the gum away. "Are you listening to yourself?"
"You have to see him to understand. He has the eyes that just..." She sighed, fanning her fingers over her eyes as though she simply couldn't take Wolf's hotness.
"Emilie!" Their boss, Gilles, appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. "Stop chatting and get in here. Table four wants you." He glared at Scarlet, as though she was the one who had initiated the conversation.
Scarlet and Emilie entered the kitchen to grab plates of food that were ready for customers. "Is table four him?" Scarlet asked.
"No, he's at nine," Emilie sighed, scooping up the plates and twirling out to the dining room. "See you later, darling!"
Scarlet idled in the kitchen for a minute, watching Gilles shove a stack of fries next to a ham sandwich. "Table nine," he mumbled, shoving the plate across the steel counter toward her and already turning toward the next job he had to do.
She flinched. Why she was uncomfortable with serving Wolf, she didn't know.
She would have recognized him easily even without Emilie pointing him out to her, due to all the scars and bruises on his sharp-jawed, olive-skinned face. His disheveled hair stuck out in every direction, somewhat similar to her own hair when she woke up on a Saturday morning. When he looked up at her, Scarlet startled in surprise. She realized that all the times she had screamed at him on the streets or rescued some poor kid from his gang, she had never really looked him in the eye.
Em had been right. There was something peculiar about those eyes. They were unnaturally green, like sour grapes still on the vine. More than that, there was a certain sparkle to them, as if he were amused. Something in her stomach tightened. He has these eyes...
Shaking her head to clear it, she deposited the sandwich on the table. Scarlet was surprised to see that there were already three empty plates scattered across the table, every bit of food gobbled up except for a few pieces of wilted lettuce and the juicy red tomato slices that were served on every plate. Who had that kind of appetite?
She fidgeted a little, half expecting Wolf to lunge out of the booth and attack her. This quiet, shy boy was so different from the one she so often saw beating people up, for money or for fun. "Are you sure you don't want us to just bring you the whole pig?" she said, stacking the three empty plates to take back to the kitchen. "It would save the servers the trouble of running back and forth from the kitchen."
It had been a joke, but she saw his eyes widen and thought he was about to ask if that was an option. Wolf held her gaze for a moment, then looked back down at the sandwich. "This food is good."
Scarlet shrugged. She didn't know why she was still talking to him. After all, she hated him. Hadn't she screamed at him and held him at gunpoint a few days ago when he had attacked Cinder? "Fighting must work up quite an appetite," she said sharply.
He didn't respond. Scarlet noticed that his fingers were fidgeting with his straw and his fork, and both of his legs were jogging under the table. She could relate to having boundless energy. Grand-mere said that Scarlet had been running around the farm with all the animals since she was little.
"Well. Um. Enjoy your food," she said, turning to go. At the last second, she stopped and turned back. "Are you sure you don't want the tomatoes? They're the best part, and they were grown in my own garden. The lettuce too, actually, but it wasn't wilted like this when I harvested it. Never mind, you don't want the lettuce. But the tomatoes?" She cringed at her nervous blabbering.
The fighter looked surprised. "I've never tried them."
Scarlet was shocked. She knew that not everyone liked vegetables, but as someone who had grown up eating fresh farm-grown foods, not ever trying tomatoes was unthinkable. They were her and her grand-mere's favorite vegetable. "Your mom never made you eat your vegetables, did she."
He hesitated, before picking up the slices of tomato and shoveling them into his mouth. Scarlet watched with a little bit of satisfaction. They were the best farm near Commonwealth City, and she loved seeing the vegetables go from the dirt patch outside her bedroom to someone's mouth in the city.
He froze mid-chew. In a slow, pondering way, he gave the verdict. "Not what I expected. But not horrible. I'll order some more of those, if I could?"
Scarlet thought for a moment. "Well, you can't order just tomatoes. But go pay your bill, and I'll grab some from the kitchen and slip them to you."
Staring at her, Wolf swallowed. "Thank you," he said gruffly. She felt a strange sort of kinship with him for a moment. They were both outsiders in this cafe full of popular jocks and silly girls. Ever since grade school, she had been the weird girl with a crazy grandma who lived on a farm and always got into fights with boys. And he was the Alpha Leader of the feared Wolf Pack.
Why they were here, together, having a conversation, she couldn't fathom.
Turning away, Scarlet slipped back into the kitchen. But as soon as she stepped foot in there, Gilles started barking orders at her. She had to bring plates to three different tables before the stream of commands stopped. And as soon as there were no more tables to wait, the dishwasher had to go to the bathroom and she asked Scarlet to take her spot. It was nearly twenty minutes before she had a spare minute to sneak into the back storeroom and grab a few tomatoes. She felt bad for making Wolf wait, then wondered why she felt bad. It wasn't like they were friends. She was just doing him a favor.
Emilie caught her before she exited through the side door. Scarlet tried to hide the tomatoes behind her back, but her friend saw them. Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Scarling, what are you doing?"
She sighed. There was no use in lying. "Your handsome street fighter asked me to bring him some tomatoes."
Emilie gaped. "Wha - what? He asked you and not me?"
Scarlet rolled her eyes and held out the tomatoes. "Fine, you take them to him."
But a quirky smile was growing on her friend's face. Em backed away. "No, you can. Have fun with him."
Raising an eyebrow, Scarlet turned her back. Right before she let the door swing shut between them, she turned around and saw her friend smirking at her.
"Oh, shut up," she growled. "That's never going to happen. I hate Wolf, remember?" She closed the door with a huff.
But hours later, lying in her bed at the farmhouse, Scarlet couldn't quite shake the memory of Wolf's vivid green eyes.