“Wait.” He gives Olive an oily look and licks his chapped lips. “Is that your sister?”
“You think I look like a swimsuit model?” Olive titters. “Oh my gosh.” She blushes happily.
I grind my teeth to keep from firing her on the spot. “No, that’s not my sister.”
“When is she coming? How late is she?” He pats the wisps of his comb-over down.
“She’s not coming.” I give him a syrupy smile. “You don’t really match up with what you put on your online profile, so she’s going to pass.”
“So you were lying to me?” he explodes.
“No.” I’m frosty. “I was going to buy you a coffee and let you hang out here until she showed up, but I just texted hernot to bother. She just got rid of a garbage man. She doesn’t need another. Now, get out of my café.”
The few office workers who stopped by for a pick-me-up before a late night at the office gape at the scene. I think one intern is live-streaming it.
“Too bad, so sad.” Carolina crosses her arms. “If you’d have been a little nicer and charming”—she nods to me—“she’d have sex with you.”
The cocktail weiner in his too-tight jeans gives a little twitch. “You will?”
“No, I won’t.”
“But I brought you flowers.”
“Did you…”
“Let’s at least have a coffee first. I hear it’s an aphrodisiac.” He makes a big dramatic show of pulling out a chair for me. “After you, milady.” One flubby hand rests on my lower back.
“Get your fucking hands off of my woman.”
Clive lets out a screech. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—” he babbles as he cranes his head back to look up at—
“Fitz?”
“So you came here to steal what’s mine, to take my girl?” He ignores me, focused predator-like on Clive.
“Just a misunderstanding.”
“S-s-s-sorry, sir. I was here for her sister. My profile says ‘no fatties.’”
In half a second, that imported shoe kicks out, and Clive’s flat on his ass on the floor of my café, feet waving in the air.
“What the fuck did you say?”
“Just, I—ah—”
The heel of Fitz’s dress shoe grinds into Clive’s wrist.
“Fitz!” I grab his arm, trying to haul him off. It’s granite under a velvet sleeve. I can’t budge him.
He’s not even trying to resist me, his attention focused on Clive, who’s a sweaty, begging puddle on my black-and-white-checkered floor.
“We seem to be having a miscommunication issue. What did you say?” Fitz’s eyes are scary dark.
“I, uh… no, uh… f—”
The boot grinds into his arm.
“Fitz, please. Someone’s going to call the police.”
