Glancing over my shoulder, I gave her my most stern You better listen to me look and watched her burst out laughing.
“What?” I asked when she looked at me with a wobbly smile.
“You have green dots all over your face, and I’m not even gonna point out the state your t-shirt is in—or your hair, for that matter. I’ll only say this: you’re officially a work of art now.”
I could imagine the mess I’d made on my t-shirt, but my face was news to me. “Oddly, I’m gonna take that as a compliment, and…well, paint splatters,” I mumbled with a sigh as I wiped my forehead with my arm. “Even my face muscles are tired—how the hell did that happen?”
“Beats me. My face is fine, but my ass is pretty sore.”
“Well,” I started, making a face. “I’m not sure what you’ve been doing when my back is turned, but…” Before I could finish, I saw Sally’s expression and couldn’t hold back my laughter.
“God, that came out wrong!” she groaned, looking at the ceiling. “We sat on the floor for almost two straight hours, it was inevitable—”
“I know, I know. My ass is hurting, too, and it’s not just my ass—every inch of my body hurts. I’m just heading toward delirious, so I’m gonna laugh like a lunatic regardless of whether what you’re saying is funny or not. Get out of here so I can finish and get to my beloved shower and bed.”
Sally was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, always smiling twenty-one-year-old and had been the fifteenth applicant for the barista/everything-else-I’ll-need-you-to-do job. It had been a love-at-first-sight kind of thing. To save myself from the headache, I’d opted not to post about the job online, or anywhere, really. I’d only mentioned it to a few friends so they could ask around to see if someone they knew needed a job, and I’d also asked a few other people I’d worked with at my last job as the manager at Black Dots Coffee House before I had quit when I thought Gary was going to let me use the place. Word had gotten out, and I’d ended up talking to a lot more people than I’d anticipated I would. None of them had felt like the right person, though.
Sally, however, was a complete stranger who had just been walking to her apartment after a dreadful blind date and had seen me struggling to carry boxes from the curb into the shop. She had offered to help, and in return, at the end of the day I’d offered her the job. It didn’t hurt that we had bonded over our mutual love of and obsession with coffee mugs, puppies, and New York in winter. If those things didn’t prove we were a perfect fit, I didn’t know what else would.
If there was one thing I wanted the most for Around the Corner—my coffee shop!—it was for it to be inviting, warm, and happy. Popular wouldn’t hurt anyone either. Even though I was well aware I was going to be the boss, I didn’t want to work with people I couldn’t get along with just because their resumés were impressive. If we were happy and friendly, I believed it’d have a different kind of pull for the customers, and Sally’s personality and cheerfulness checked all the boxes for me.
“You got it, boss.” She wiggled her newly found phone at me in goodbye and backed away toward the door. “Oh, when do you want me to come in again?”
I put the paint roller down and groaned as I straightened back up with my hand on my waist and gazed at my almost finished work. “I think I’ll be fine on my own this week, but I’ll text you for next week if I have a lot of stuff going on. Would that work for you?”
“Are you sure you don’t need help with the painting this week?”
“Yeah, I can handle it.” I just waved her off without turning because I didn’t think my body was capable of doing anything that complex at the moment. “I’ll call you if anything changes.”
“Got it. You be sure to go home before you drop dead.” With her lovely parting words, she unlocked the door and opened it. Before I heard it click shut, she called my name and I glanced at her over my shoulder, which took some serious effort on my part.
“Only two weeks or so now,” Sally said, grinning. “I’m so excited,”