If you asked her—which no one had and no one probably would—Summer would say that Chris was sorta losing it. She was still acting calm, certainly calmer than when she’d arrived back in October, all wound up. It had been fun watching her slowly relax over the next little while under the influence of Central California.
Then she’d discovered the Peace, Love and Joy Center and had made a typical newcomer mistake, thinking she had to totally submerge herself in their let-it-be philosophy, instead of just taking from it what worked for her. It was hard watching Chris’s constant struggle to battle her real nature. And also kind of funny, though it wasn’t very nice of Summer to think so.
But over the past few days, she’d noticed things starting to slide. Nothing huge, nothing that would interfere with business. Chris had forgotten to clean a portafilter on the espresso machine. She’d left sales paperwork out on the counter. Toilet paper hadn’t been reordered until they were nearly out. The type of mistakes Summer would have expected from flighty Eva, but until now Chris had run the shop impeccably.
Summer had a pretty good idea what had unsettled her temporary boss, but as she said, no one was likely to ask her. The benefit of looking like a stereotypical California girl was that people assumed she didn’t have a brain in her head and expected little. Which was handy when she wanted to be ignored, and annoying as hell the rest of the time.
She had big plans for her life, though she hadn’t told anyone about them. Telling invited scorn, doubt or ridicule. Or worse, polite encouragement that served as a front for total disbelief. Summer wanted to go to college—no, she was going to college. Full-time, not just taking one online class at a time the way she was doing now. And then she was going on to graduate school, in psychology. She’d be the first in her family to get an advanced degree. From there, Summer wanted to—was going to—become a therapist, to help kids who hadn’t grown up in a house with major identifiable drama for which there were already support networks in place, like alcoholism, drugs, physical abuse or mental illness. But for kids like herself, whose parents had just really sucked at child rearing.
But first...she had to be able to afford full-time college. She’d almost been there, had been planning to start in January, and then her car had died, and her flaky sister needed another loan to pay off credit-card debt, and Summer had had to use a chunk of her savings. A frustrating setback. She’d gotten a really nice scholarship from Cal Poly, and the administration had been great about helping her defer matriculation by a year, but she couldn’t keep putting it off.
Next fall, she’d make it there for sure.
The door opened. A kid came in, about her age, maybe a year or two older, wearing nearly round John Lennon sunglasses with smoky-gray frames. Very cool. A small shock of attraction hit her and she pushed the feeling away. Good-looking guys came into Slow Pour all the time. She should be used to it by now.
“Hey.” He ambled up to the counter, jeans and T-shirt hanging off his wiry frame. “Is Chris here?”
“Not until two.” She smiled pleasantly. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, um...” He took off his sunglasses to reveal blue eyes framed by long black lashes; a silver ring pierced his right eyebrow. Heart-stopping eyes. Big-trouble eyes, the kind that made her feel stupidly flustered. Eyes that, now she thought about it, seemed oddly familiar. “I was looking for Chris.”
Uh. Hadn’t she just explained that Chris wasn’t here? “She’ll be here at two. I’m taking the morning shift today.”
“Yeah, um...yeah, okay. You said that. Sorry.”
“Did you want to leave her a message?”
“No, no. No, that’s okay.” He laughed nervously. His mouth was full and very sexy. “I’m being a dork, aren’t I?”
Summer lifted an eyebrow, not sure how strongly to agree with him. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m Luke.” He held out his hand. “Usually I’m very together. Very smooth. Probably the coolest guy you’ll ever meet.”
She couldn’t help a half smile. “Cool Hand Luke?”