Hailey
“Can I get a large triple caf nonfat no sugar vanilla latte with a dollop of foam please?”
I glanced up from the register and my gaze collided with a beautiful pair of brown eyes. They were large, almond shaped, and bright, fringed with the longest, thickest eyelashes I’d ever seen in real life.
That was about all I could see though. The woman was wearing a knit hat and a scarf that was wrapped around the bottom half of her face, both of which perfectly matched the puffy jacket that looked like it had cost a hell of a lot more than the twenty-nine dollar version that I’d gotten on sale at Target.
It was strange. I mean sure, it was cold out, but this was Seattle. Cold for us was thirty-seven degrees. This woman was dressedlike she was taking a stroll in a blizzard in the wilds of Alaska. It was also weird given that it was pretty warm in the Morning Jolt coffee shop today. She had to be baking in that get-up.
“That’ll be seven twenty-nine,” I said.
The woman just stared at me. I stared right back. I saw the moment it dawned on her.
“Oh, you want me to pay?”
I cocked my head. “Um, yeah, that’s usually how this works. You give me money and I give you coffee.”
She frowned, or at least I think she frowned, it was hard to tell given I could only see her eyes and the top of her nose.
“Sorry, I’m not used to doing this for myself.”
Great, that’s what I needed today, a crazy customer. Normally I really liked my job here at Morning Jolt, but dealing with weirdos wasn’t my favorite part of the job. I’d worked here long enough to see all kinds of people, but this was a first.
She fumbled with her phone until she found the Apple Pay app. “Can I pay with this?”
“Yep.”
For some reason I had the impression that she was proud of herself for figuring out how to pay. Who was this woman? She didn’t have an accent, so I knew she wasn’t new to the country. And her fancy clothes didn’t seem to be something she’d have if she just left her Amish village or something. My mother basically lived on a commune and even she knew how to use Apple Pay.
I held the scanner up to the woman’s phone, the little beep confirming that payment was received.
“Wait, did that add a tip?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Can you add it separately?”
“No,” I said, “the system won’t do that. You either need to tell us to add it to the original total or tip in cash.”
She looked at me like cash was a foreign word. “I don’t have cash.”
I suppressed a sigh. “Don’t worry about it. Give me a minute to get your coffee.”
I could feel the strange woman staring at me the entire time I was making her frou-frou coffee order. Not in a ‘I want to make sure you make my coffee right’ way but almost in a ‘you’re hot I should ask for your number’ way.
Then I shook that idea right out of my head. Whoever this woman was, she was clearly rich. She was tall, with perfectly manicured nails, and despite her being dressed like it was the Arctic, I could see that she was slim.
High maintenance,I thought to myself. Not that someone like her would be interested in a curvy – okay, maybe a little plump – introvert barista who lived in a crappy one bedroom apartment and thought reading was fun.
I handed the woman her coffee and she slipped her scarf up just enough to take a sip. She hummed in pleasure, and the sound did funny things to my insides.
“What’s your name?”
My eyes caught hers and for a second I couldn’t remember. Looking at her, I had the strangest feeling, like maybe I’d known her in another life. Like I was somehow attracted to her even though I hadn’t even seen her face. Like I wanted the chance to get to know her.
“Hailey,” I finally answered.
“Like Hailey Beiber?”
