is not okay. It’s even less okay now you’ve shoved your round, shiny, bowling-ball head into things. Why do you exist? Why do you selfishly breathe the precious oxygen that could be better used to sustain a local mischief of rats or perhaps an especially large ferret?
This was what Hannah thought. Angrily. She could be quite an angry person, at times. Even her depression manifested as anger, which was always fun. But she’d been managing her medication quite wonderfully for the last few months, so she didn’t think that was to blame for today’s mental fuming. No, this was just her baseline rage talking.
Luckily, Hannah had a lifetime’s experience in hiding her baseline rage. Which is how she managed not to fly across the counter and commit a murder when the blonde pouted like a child and said, “No, actually. Everything’s not okay. This person is being extremely rude to me.”
Well. Extremely was laying it on a bit thick.
Ant grimaced sympathetically at the customer, then glared at Hannah. “I’m so sorry to hear that. What seems to be the problem?”
“The lady would like to change her order,” Hannah said with as much sweetness as she could manage. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much.
“You got my order wrong,” the woman snapped.
I am Hannah fucking Kabbah. I go to the supermarket every week without a shopping list. I once memorised an entire psychology textbook the day before an exam after realising I’d been revising the wrong module for weeks. And guess what? I got an A. I spent the first few years of my professional life keeping multiple toddlers alive. Do you know how hard it is to keep toddlers alive, Ms. Chai Latte? It’s really fucking hard. And I was good at it. I do not get things wrong. I do not make mistakes. I do not fuck up FUCKING CHAI LATTES. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?
This was what Hannah thought. But what she said was…
Oh. Wait. Shit.
Judging by the looks of utter astonishment on the faces of Ant, the blonde, and the elderly couple sitting over by the window, what she’d said was…
Every single word that had just run through her head.
Out loud.
Oh dear.
“Hannah,” Ant choked out. He sounded like he was having a heart attack. She didn’t blame him. She should be feeling the same way. She should be drowning beneath a tidal wave of shock and panic and embarrassment, frantically grasping for ways to take all of that back and, you know, not lose her job.
But she wasn’t. Instead of terrified, Hannah felt peaceful—relieved, actually.
And elated. And free.
Once every few years, Hannah experienced what she privately referred to as a break. Whether one chose to interpret that as a pleasant, holiday sort of break, or the more negative oh-dear-I’ve-snapped sort of break was neither here nor there. It didn’t matter what she called it or why it occurred, because the outcome was always the same: Hannah’s tightly leashed temper broke out, she did something extremely ill-advised, and in the aftermath of her terrible behaviour, she experienced the sort of carefree, unconditional happiness that was usually out of her reach.
Her last break had arguably been the most extreme: she’d smashed a fancy vintage car to pieces with a cricket bat, been arrested, lost her career…. yeah. That one had come at a pretty high price.
But she didn’t regret it. Which meant, Hannah realised, that she probably wouldn’t regret this, either. And as long as she was riding high on a wave of euphoric adrenaline… might as well enjoy the ride.
Both Ant and the blonde’s mouths were hanging open so wide, she could see their fillings. Trying not to smile, Hannah reached beneath her apron and undid the button on her culottes.
Oh, that felt great.
Then she grabbed a little takeaway bag and unscrewed the jar of marshmallows sitting on the counter. They were good fucking marshmallows. She shoved as many into the bag as she could—which turned out to be a decent amount—and popped a few in her mouth, too.
“Hannah?” Ant’s smooth, round face was caught comically between astonishment and fury. His pale skin had turned a rather fascinating sort of raspberry colour. “What on earth are you doing?”
He sounded like a school teacher preparing to scold a naughty pupil. But Hannah had never been a naughty pupil, and she’d never been scolded at school. Maybe that was why she didn’t have the constitution to take it.
“Catch,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?!”
She tossed a marshmallow directly into his mouth. Impressive, if she did