I was so used to the construction I hadn’t even noticed... the noise was gone.
Bryce kept his word.
A small smile touched my lips as I reached for a squishy little baby named Jack and held him to my chest. “We should have a couple hours,” I told Etta.
She seemed unsure, but I was right. The afternoon went smoother than usual, and I could tell the other workers were relieved too. We worked seamlessly through pickups, did our end-of-shift cleaning, and got the place ready for tomorrow.
I was feeling lighter than usual as I clocked out from the childcare center into the spacious lobby. With most people finished with work for the day, the area was quieter than it had been earlier at shift change. I could clearly hear my soft sneakers against the marble floors.
My friend, Rei, stuck out like a sore thumb without anyone around to block her yellow cleaning cart and light-blue uniform. She was on her hands and knees by the cart, scrubbing at something on the tile in front of the sticky-note wall.
The company had a wall where you could post how you’d made a difference in someone’s life that day. Anything from helping a user with a support query to helping a colleague on their day off was fair game.
As I got closer, I realized Rei was scraping away at a promotional MyHome sticker from the floor. Her silky black hair fell over her forehead, always slipping from her hair tie.
“Need a break?” I asked.
She let the razor blade she was using slide shut and looked up at me with exasperation in her wide-set, dark-brown eyes. “How about a dirty martini?”
Chuckling, I reached my hand out to help her up. “What about the finest dirty chai the café has to offer?”
She grabbed onto my hand, and once she was standing, she said, “Deal.”
We each got a couple pumps of hand sanitizer from her cart and then walked together toward the circular café in the middle of the lobby. Several people ate or drank at the bistro tables, grabbing a bite after their shifts or perhaps fueling up to work a late night.
While most MyHome employees clocked out at five, there were round-the-clock shifts for certain positions.
As we reached the counter, the barista, Dom, shot Rei a flirty look. He was cute in that bad-boy twenties kind of way—messy blond ponytail, tattoos on every spare bit of skin, and a twinkle in his eyes that begged for trouble. His nose was pierced, along with his right eyebrow. Even his name tag had little devil horns etched around his name. “What can I get you, mama?” he asked Rei. He didn’t seem as interested in me.
Rei leveled a no-nonsense look at him. “What’s the hardest thing you’ve got?”
Seeing his smirk, I quickly said, “How about two dirty chais. Double shots of espresso.” I knew it was bad to drink caffeine this late in the day, but I needed a pick-me-up, and it looked like Rei did too.
Rei sighed. “Guess that works too.”
“Two dirty chais for two dirty girls,” Dom said, tapping our order into the computer.
Rei rolled her eyes while I scanned my employee badge to “pay” for the items. Everything was free, but they wanted to make sure stuff was going to actual employees or contractors and not people wandering in off the streets.
We went to a table toward the window with a view of the small courtyard between this building and the next. A mom sat on a bench while her son hopped from one landscaping boulder to the next.
“Long day?” I asked Rei, needing a distraction.
Her nose scrunched up. “There was another sticky note stuck by the supply room today.”
My eyebrows rose. It was like something out of a movie—Rei got a new sticky note almost every day with a flirtatious message, always written in Sharpie, and always with the same neat handwriting.
She reached into her pocket and unfolded the plain yellow paper.
You’re doing a great job.
I looked up just in time to see her blow her bangs out of her face. “I don’t mind the compliments, but how generic can a person get?”
“What’s he supposed to say? ‘I love how you get the floors clean enough for me to see the reflection of your pretty eyes in them’?”
Rei bent over, snorting with laughter. “Okay, that would be worse. Way worse.”
“Maybe I’m not good at flirting with people,” I admitted, only half joking. It had been a long time since I’d had a real relationship, not just a one-night stand to blow off steam.
