Blue Moon by J R Rain, now you can read online.
I don’t go into Starbucks very often, but when I do, I see him.
He sits in the far corner, his back to the wall, cowboy-like, as in, no one can sneak up on him. He’s your typical Starbucks geek. Laptop, headphones, wires everywhere. A too-big phone sitting next to him. Like most Starbuckians, he appears to be hard at work on something, tapping away furiously, only sometimes pausing to look off into the near distance. Or the far distance. Or perhaps he’s checking out an ass or two. How the hell would I know?
Either way, he seemed to work as hard or harder than most of the other Starbucks geeks. Typing, typing, typing. Fingers flying, keys being hit with vigor, energy and confidence.
He’s also a big guy. Not as big as Kingsley—few are—but certainly big enough. He might have been handsome if not for his slightly-too-big head. Also, I didn’t like his half-ass beard, somewhere between a real beard and something Don Johnson might have worn in the 80’s. Pick a beard or not, big guy. At least, that’s what I say.
Anyway, the only reason we’ve been hitting this Starbucks is that Tammy has developed a penchant for coffee. Go figure. The madness all started when a relative gave her a Starbucks card last Christmas. Who gives an eleven-year-old a Starbucks card? At any rate, her new favorite drink is a caramel macchiato, and so these days, when I’m in a particularly good mood (or if I’d recently cashed a client’s check, which is just as rare) she and I would hit up the local Starbucks.
A vampire at Starbucks. Why not?
Not often, granted. A nine dollar coffee filled with enough sugar to fuel a Smart Car wasn’t something I was very keen on. But...my daughter liked them. I suspected sitting in a Starbucks, drinking her flavored coffee, also made her feel like an adult.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but she seemed happy, and I liked when my kids were happy. So sue me.
Anyway, business must have been good this month because we’d been in nearly every week—and each time there he was:
The blond guy with the pseudo beard and big head, his back to the wall, was pounding away at his keyboard again. Who he was, I didn’t know. But I found myself drawn to him. I suppose he wasn’t hideous to look at, but he certainly wasn’t my type. I don’t generally go for blondes, and I most certainly don’t go for half-assed beards.
Still, there was something about him. I’d noticed it before but had mostly ignored it. After all, I had enough men in my life. Too many, some would say.
I was certain my interest in him wasn’t romantic. No, there was something else about him. Something intriguing...and familiar. I generally keep a low profile, and I’m certainly not one for catching up with old friends. Old friends asked a lot of questions.
Was he an old friend? I didn’t know, but I was sure I knew him from somewhere. And, as we ordered our drinks today—a carmel foo foo drink for Tammy and a bottle water for me—I found myself glancing over at him again and again.
And, yes, today I had cashed another client check. Wahoo! A nice-sized one, too, although my client, I suspected, had seriously considered not paying me.
Bad idea.
You see, I had been promised a bonus if I found something—a hidden treasure of all things—and I had. Except a crazy ghost had had other plans. Yes, a ghost...who very much didn’t want me to reveal the location of his treasure. So, instead of disclosing the location of the buried fortune, I had shown my client evidence of its existence. I had, after all, been hired to find the treasure, not reveal the location.
Yes, a loophole in my agreement. My client had not been pleased. That might cost me a bad review on Angie’s List, but that was a price I was willing to pay. In the end, a dead man got his wish, I got my bonus, and now here we were at Starbucks. Life goes on.
As Tammy placed her complicated order, sounding like a true Starbuckian, I glanced over at the blond guy writing in the corner. He wore one of those 1920’s paperboy caps. Sometimes called duck-billed caps. Nerdy, but kind of cute, too. He wore his at a slight angle. Jaunty.
As we waited for our drinks, Tammy launched into a rather elaborate and disturbingly well-thought-out plan to have Anthony, her younger brother, move in with their dad so that we girls could have the house alone. When she was done, I told her that a) that wasn’t going to happen and b) she would miss Anthony whether she wanted to admit it or not.
“I won’t miss his farting.”
“No one would miss his farting, Tammy.”
“Maybe he can live with dad half the time.”
“Or not.”
“But—”
“No buts. Not even Anthony’s stinky butt.”
Tammy giggled, and when our drinks were ready, I led Tammy over to a table and told her to sit and wait for me.
“You’re going to talk to that man,” she said. My daughter, you should know, is a world class mind reader.
“Yes,” I said, “and it’s not polite to read other people’s minds.”
“Well, you keep looking at him.”
“I know.”