i.
Cardan wasn't sure how low he could sink before he hit rock bottom, because every time he put his hands on his hips, looked around, and naively thought, Well, at least it couldn't get any worse!, something new and terrible happened. He should know that things could always get worse.
Presently, he was ignoring the long line of customers at the Greenbriar's Beans on the ground level of Elfhame's corporate headquarters where every family member and friend who worked for the company could come and witness his humiliation.
"Cardan, what are you doing?" said the manager waspishly. She ran the coffee shop like it was the fucking Navy, and within thirty seconds of meeting her, he could tell their personalities were simply incompatible. This work environment, he thought, might prove to be even more disastrous than the one he shared with Jude. Minus the (one-sided) sexual tension. He didn't really fancy a roll in the hay with this coworker.
Cardan turned his bored gaze toward his new manager. "I'm deciding which syrup to add to my Redbull. There's so many more flavors here than at the Burbank location."
There was murder in the woman's eyes as she managed to bite out, "Did you even pay for that?"
Cardan snorted before selecting the passion fruit flavor and pumping it straight into the can. Before he could stir the syrup up with a straw, the new manager snatched the can out of his hand.
"You can drink this on your ten-minute break. And the price is coming out of your tips."
Cardan didn't smile that uncomfortable smile, but it was a near thing. Instead, he turned to face the customers.
"Welcome to Greenbriar Beans. How can I flick your bean?" It was juvenile and he knew it. It felt stupid coming out of his mouth. Yet he was meanly pleased at the noise of outrage his new manager made from behind him. If he was to play the part of the annoying, idiotic younger brother kept in check by a part-time job at a shitty knock-off Starbucks, then he was damn well going to commit.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," said the voice on the other side of the counter.
All the blood drained from Cardan's face. Things could always, always get worse.
Jude glared at him, her hands on her hips. She was wearing a white button-up paired with a black pencil skirt, hair done up in a topknot. She reminded him of a hot teacher scolding him for talking out of turn. Or better yet, a sexy librarian ready to take him into the stacks and punish him for making too much noise.
Jesus. There was something really wrong with him, sexually speaking. Try as he might to prevent it, his eyes drifted to the swell of her chest, where the buttons of her blouse strained. There, he saw her intern badge. Like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over him, all thoughts of sex immediately left him.
Things could always get worse, indeed.
ii.
Jude had been waiting twenty minutes in line, her toes pinched into heels she was aching to take off and hold in her hands like a girl coming home from the bar, all while another intern sent increasingly frantic messages over Slack about how belligerent Elowyn was becoming due to a lack of caffeine. She knew the top Vivi had lent her when Jude panicked last night about not having any professional clothes was a size too small and if you looked at her from just the right angle, you could see the dumb, impractical, lacey bra she'd worn to give herself that extra boost of confidence on her first day.
If seeing Cardan's perfect, despicable face wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back, his lazy perusal over the top she was growing more and more self-conscious about by the minute was. Or, maybe he'd just been looking at where her employee badge hung by a lanyard, because he looked about as horrified as she felt. At any rate, she was certain that if she handed Elowyn Greenbriar a drink made by Cardan, Jude would be summarily fired for poisoning her boss.
"Fuck this," Jude muttered more to herself than to Cardan as she ducked under the counter.
"Oh, no," said a tall woman with olive-toned skin, attempting to grab Jude by the collar of her shirt. Her nametag read smallGRIMA MOG, MANAGER/small. "Absolutely not."
Jude dodged Grima Mog's outstretched arm, double-checking the long coffee order she'd tapped out in her notes app before riding the elevator all the way down to the ground level.
She grabbed several cups and a Sharpie, bobbing and weaving around the enraged manager who was still trying to forcibly remove Jude from behind the counter. With this level of dedication to her job, this woman might be able to bully Cardan into learning how to make a fucking latte.
The "Elowyn," Jude scrawled out on the 20oz paper cup looked more like "Elown_" since Jude wrote it attempting to measure ice and get an espresso shot ready at the same time, all avoiding the wrath of one very dedicated barista.
"Are you planning on taking my order any time soon?" a disgruntled man in an ill-fitting suit barked at Cardan. He had been waiting in line directly behind Jude and had apparently decided that, scene or not, he needed his damned coffee.
"Shh, I'm watching this," Cardan said. He sounded utterly delighted.
"Will-" Jude said, sidestepping Grima Mog yet again, "-you stop?"
"How-" Grima Mog answered, managing to get a hold of one of Jude's shirttails which had come untucked from her high waisted skirt in the scuffle, and giving it a tug, "do you know how to make a skinny pumpkin spice latte?"
"I used to work at one of these!" Jude said just as Grima Mog gave the shirt a second tug, at which point one of the overworked buttons came flying off, exposing the lacey, overly-sexy half-cup of Jude's bra and half her breast.
"Fuck, where did it go?" Jude said, looking in the direction she thought she'd heard it ping. She clutched her shirt closed and knelt down on the sticky tile, trying to find the button. She was glad for the sewing kit at the bottom of her purse. That she'd flashed a significant number of people, less so. But embarrassment was a feeling she'd been learning to live with.
"I have it," came Cardan's disinterested voice.
Jude's blood ran cold as she looked up at him. She knew Cardan was not going to make this easy. Still, she affected a tone just as disinterested when she said, "Give it here, then."
"What's it worth to you?" he asked, holding the white, plastic button up to the light.
She rose to her feet, finding herself face-to-face with him. In her heels, she was eye-level with the hollow of his throat. She hated that she had to look up at him. A blush stained his pale cheeks and his pupils were dilated. Was he drunk at work again?
She ran her fingers along the underside of the bottom of her skirt where the spare button is supposed to go and found nothing. Fuck. She couldn't walk away with her six coffees and a modicum of dignity.
It occurred to her that her sewing kit might have an extra, though it might not match. She reached into her purse and pulled it out, only to discover that the kit only contained three needles, three tiny spools of thread (white, gray, and black), and a tiny pair of scissors. She pressed her mouth into a hard line and dropped the kit back into her purse, but not before sliding the scissors out and holding them wrapped in her fingers.
"What do you want?" she asked, keeping her cool.
"Hmmm," Cardan said, a wicked curve to the corner of his mouth. She could tell he was enjoying this. "Get back on your knees and lick the floor."
"You have got to be out of your mind," she said, voice low. She took a step towards him, making them so close she could smell him over the coffee and steamed milk and sugar. He smelled of earth, and she was at once certain it wasn't some expensive cologne. It was just him.
"I think I might be," he said vaguely, eyes fixed on her.
She saw him brace as she got near and try to pretend he hadn't. So she intimidated him, then. That was gratifying to know. She reached her left hand up and placed it, palm-down, over his chest right where his heart would be. She let her touch linger for a moment before she grabbed a fistful of the material and pulled it to her. In her right hand, she wielded the scissors.
She had noticed when she stood up that he, too, wore a button-up. And though its buttons were dark and probably made of out wood or seashells or something not found at the outlet mall, it would do to keep her from showing her tits to all her new workers.
She snipped the button from the same spot on his shirt where she was missing one.
"I think I'll stay on my feet," she said.
iii.
The worst thing about what had happened with Jude that afternoon was that Grima Mog had went ahead and made all the drinks Jude had been trying to assemble while he had ransomed a button.
After Jude had gotten the better of him for the second time in as many weeks, she turned around to find all six drinks made and in a carrier and stayed to help Grima Mog clean up. Grima Mog made it painfully clear that she would always respect Jude for her ability to put Cardan in his place while also working ten times harder than he ever could.
"You can barely assemble a latte as it is. She did it in heels while fending me off," Grima Mog had said.
Actually, no. The worst thing was that someone had filmed the spectacle and sent it to Balekin, who, presumably delirious with schadenfreude, had sent it to the family's groupchat (of which Cardan was not a member), and everyone was apparently placing bets on how long it would take to Cardan to bait Jude into outright murdering him.
No, no. The worst thing was that Cardan had seen Jude's shirt torn open. Had seen her in front of him on her knees. That she's grabbed him by the shirt and he'd nearly lost what little propriety he had. Even when he'd seen the gleaming silver of the scissors in her hand, he was looking at the counter space, trying to figure out where he could set her to hike her skirt up around her hips and place his head between her thighs.
As with any encounter with Jude, her words echoed in his head: You have got to be out of your mind.