Title: Coffeeshop, Ch. 2
Disclaimer: I don't own any of them. Except Mike and the coffeeshop girl, of course. :)
Spoilers: Not unless you were unaware of Gibbs' coffee addiction.
A/N: And now we get to meet Kate...read and enjoy!! (Reviews are nice, too.)
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I didn't meet the woman for another two weeks.
She came rushing through the doors one morning at about 10:00 AM, looking like something with claws and a tail was chasing her. She was panting, out of breath, and the wind had whipped her hair into a curly mess around her shoulders. Her cheeks were flushed and she had that frantic look on her face that you get when you know you're late and you can't do a thing about it.
Nevertheless, she was absolutely gorgeous. I mean, I think I'm fairly good-looking myself. I know I'm not supermodel material or anything, but I look pretty decent on a daily basis—especially on the rare mornings when I actually get up early enough to fix my hair. But this woman—well, wow. She was medium height edging on short, with delicate bones and tough muscles. Her hair hung a little past her shoulders, a dark, rich brown with a silky shine. She had on a red coat with a texture that I wanted to wallow in for a day or two and a cream-colored scarf that looked even softer. And her heels…well, if I ever quit working in a coffeeshop for a living, I'm going to get myself a pair of heels like that. After which I will resign myself to starvation for a couple of years.
She screeched to a sudden stop at the counter and grabbed onto it with both hands like she was holding onto a life preserver or something. With a huge sigh, she blew a strand of hair out of her eyes, plopped her purse on the counter, and gave me this sort of sheepish smile that showed off really straight white teeth. Behind me, I practically heard Mike the busboy's eyes pop out of his head.
"What can I get you?" I asked her before Mike could shoulder his way to the counter.
She didn't even flick a glance at the menu board behind my head, just rattled off the order automatically.
"I need two coffees—first one black, no cream, no sugar, strongest brew you've got." I froze for a minute, wondering if I'd heard right. Surely there couldn't be two of the exact same coffee drinkers within the same five-block radius. This was insane.
"Second one, I'd like your best Colombian bean, milk, two sugars, no foam." She stopped for a breath and smiled again, this time with a little relief mixed in. Mike shuffled a little closer to the counter.
I started mixing the coffees and elbowed Mike to help me out. I wasn't sure it was sanitary for him to handle food products with that much drool running down his chin, but we were shorthanded and I didn't intend to do all the work myself.
The woman leaned an elbow on the counter and looked around the coffeeshop casually, big brown eyes wandering over people and tables and chairs. She didn't seem to notice the admiring glances from just about every guy in the room; I guess if you get ogled often enough, you get used to it after a while. I noticed she wasn't wearing any rings. I liked her earrings, though; they were small but elegant, little gold hoops that glittered in the morning sunlight. And when she shifted a little, I noticed a gold crucifix around her neck, almost hidden by her scarf.
I finished up the coffees, handed them to her, and deliberately stepped on Mike's foot in the process. She had pulled out her wallet and was fishing around in it with neatly manicured nails.
"That'll be $8.93," I told her as I opened up the register. She handed me a ten and smiled broadly.
"Keep the change," she said, and then got this oh-I-just-remembered-something look on her face. "By the way, do you have a marker or something?"
A little surprised, I handed her the black marker we used to tick off the preference boxes on the cups. She pulled off the top and scrawled a big "G" on the lid of the straight black brew, finishing the tail with a flourish before she handed the marker back to me. Then she looked at her watch and got that panicked look on her face again.
"Got to run—my boss is waiting for this," she said in a rush, and then she was out the door and charging down the sidewalk before I could say another word. Slightly stunned, I stood there and took stock for a minute before I was jolted out of it by a long, slow sigh from Mike.
"Wow," he said reverently, the dishcloth he'd been wiping the counter with hanging forgotten from one hand. He had this look in his eyes that reminded me simultaneously of somebody looking at a stained-glass window and a 15-year-old boy with his first copy of Playboy. It was mildly disturbing, to say the least.
"What?" I snapped, all of a sudden feeling the urge to empty the coffee grounds from the filter I was cleaning over his head. He hardly even noticed me, just kept staring out the window in the direction the woman had gone.
"Man, her boss is one lucky guy," he said, right before he noticed the glare I was leveling at him out of the corner of my eye. He jumped a little and started wiping down the counter at record speed.
"Yeah," I said shortly, "now get to work." I didn't really know why I was so snappish; she seemed like a nice woman, even if she did seem to automatically lower the IQ level of every guy she encountered. Maybe it was just the fact that I was actually thinking about a customer's personal life instead of contemplating that long, soothing foot massage that I was going to give myself as soon as I got home.
But all the same, even as I wiped down tables and filled out orders and dreamed longingly of my foot massage, I kept wondering if she really did work for the guy that came in at 7:00 every morning, and what she was doing picking up his coffee. I had no clue that pretty soon I was going to be wondering about a whole lot more.