Xoraxorel

  1.

  In the short weeks that followed Amber’s disclosure of her history to Madaline, the now official besties entered a time where they increasingly enjoyed each other's company, but the real complications from just how much they enjoyed each other (and indeed just how much they wanted to enjoy each other) hadn’t kicked in yet.

  It was the period proceeding Madaline making a judgement call that desperate times meant desperate (some might say really fucking stupid) measures were in fact her best recourse for solving a growing issue.

  A judgement call that would in turn result in cracks beginning to make themselves evident in Amber’s precarious, albeit assiduously maintained, psychological facade.

  This stretch of time that came after Amber's backstory, but before the judgement call, could be thought of as the Grace Period and like any period of time, nothing happens without coffee.

  Therefore, in this bare bones romantic pornographic tragicomedy the two coffee shops of minor importance must be considered:

  The first is Zippy Brew, but that’s a little vague as Zippy Brew with its reported consolidated net income of five million dolrs per year has over eight hundred and forty locations.

  So to be specific, this psychosaucy tale is concerned with the one located on Oakmont Ave in South Providence, the one where Amber happened to be employed.

  The second coffee shop is the Wake Up Call Cafe which has only one location, (in Greenhaven, the historically queer zone of South Providence) and a considerably lower net income.

  Now, Wake Up Call’s coffee is slightly more expensive, but it’s also superior and their menu includes a greater variety of options. They’re employees are also better paid and the atmosphere is both more friendly and more interesting, meaning the Wake Up Call Cafe is just an all around better pce to get caffeinated. WUC Cafe even gets a 2x multiplier because Madaline is statistically more likely to see queer people there at any given time, which, if it must be said, Madaline invariably prefers being surrounded by members of her ilk, with only Valentine Ramero being a notable reported exception.

  Now pay attention, what follows is a little like a standardized test question:

  From Simon Lockmann’s residence, the Intergen Inc office Madaline must report into is a rough fifteen minute drive away, eight if Madaline is te for a meeting and she doesn’t have anything illegal in the car.

  If Madaline wants to stop for coffee on her way in, and she invariably does, the Wake Up Call Cafe is easily accessed on her route with no extra driving time.

  Comparatively the Zippy Brew on Oakmont is also roughly fifteen to eight minutes from the Lockmann domicile, but it is also in the exact opposite direction of Intergen Inc. Making for a travel time of roughly thirty to sixteen minutes, depending on what we should probably call Madaline Variables.

  So, with these factors in mind, what does the Oakmont Zippy Brew sometimes have that gets Madaline traveling out of her way to buy a worse cup of coffee from a worse business, during those grim afternoons where she has to drag her sorry ass down to the office?

  A better logo.A money undering scheme.Ridiculous reason #3.Amber Janus Orlet in a cute little barista outfit.

  2.

  El Zava stood, fresh made cappuccino in hand, talking to Amber about the surprise her husband had recently treated her to, while Amber meticulously cleaned and polished the espresso machine, nodding along diligently to El’s tale of the kind of marital bliss she would surely one day enjoy.

  “I can’t wrap my head around it, I really can’t,” El whispered, the steam from her drink curling up into the air, making a halo over her as though it had come from her ears. “él es un gilipols,” she said, sliding in and out of her first tongue around a sip of her drink.

  Before Madaline, El was the closest thing Amber had to a friend.

  When she and El had started working together, El had stumbled over Amber's pronouns, clearly uncertain which she should use, but when given a moment when she could talk to Amber without interruption, she'd just come out and asked her.

  It was a question which had given Amber a series of mixed feelings, but El had responded to the news that Amber was female with a warm smile and the accepting words, "Bueno, cro que sí...Yes, clearly you are, cuata. I thought so, but I wasn't a hundred percent."

  El's tendency towards bilingual gamboling was a trait Amber found enjoyably engaging even if the sudden switches into smatterings of Spanish were sometimes a bit jarring.

  No matter what mistakes Amber made, El had always treated her as a woman after that question had been answered and while being asked almost always set off a storm of dysphoria, she honestly preferred El's direct questioning to someone dancing around the topic. Not to mention, the one time their had been a continuing, constant, problem with a coworker, which had made Amber nearly rattle herself to pieces before and after every shift, he hadn't stuck around after the first couple weeks. El never said anything, but Amber believed El had something to do with the vacancy in the schedule.

  “I’m going to divorce him,” El decred.

  Amber looked over at her, unsure if this was like the st time El said she was going to divorce her husband or if the recent bout of foolishness with the family car was actually the executioner's ax.

  “I mean it,” El assured the younger woman.

  “Okay,” said Amber with a commiserate nod, “Um, you should definitely do what’s best for you, you know, I understand, that whole thing, two street lights, one after another, in one week, it sounds very frustrating and you have every right to be upset.”

  Amber waited.

  El nodded back, confirming that this had been the correct response on Amber’s part; allowing for a shared moment of feminine camaraderie and mutual understanding between coworkers.

  The Oakmont Zippy Brew had a high employee turnover rate; El had been there for five years, with Amber currently sitting in second pce.

  They'd developed a standardized and friendly flow with one another that spread from work operations to interpersonal interactions. The most basic structure was for El to talk to the customers and ring up the orders while Amber made the drinks, which Amber always preferred when possible to avoid inconveniencing either the customers or her coworkers with any untimely fre up of her anxiety.

  Amber would take on the register if it proved necessary and she would talk to customers as she performed other tasks, if they talked to her first.

  However, if direct customer interaction could be avoided, she avoided it. In fact Amber’s preferred tasks were the litany of maintenance duties that kept her far from the terror of the front line, though when it was just her and El she usually had to split her attention. Meanwhile, El took over the training and management of any new employees who came through.

  It's important to note that while it could cause her problems internally, Amber had never actually failed at the direct handling of their patrons, at worst she would stumble over her words, something which the further she waded into her transition, many of their customers found redeemably adorable.

  In the st year, she'd been flirted with multiple times and their had been an increased take in tips when Amber had to front, Amber herself had not yet connected the dots between those two things, because she herself was not certain that she had been flirted with in spite of a couple of occasions of teasing commentary from El.

  El liked Amber, while sometimes a little awkward and nervous, she was also hardworking, a quick study and a very good listener. Most importantly in El’s estimation though: Amber era sensata.

  Amber was reliable, steady, systematic.

  Twenty years Amber's senior, El did not agree overall with the older generation's estimation that those of Amber’s generation were all entitled and zy, Amber was certainly neither of those things, but she also wasn’t what El felt was a far more common trait among young people these days.

  To El, it seemed that many young people had a tendency not towards sloth, but towards an almost inherent emotional votility.

  Some people these days, when everything was so unstable, you just never knew what you were going to get. But not Amber, sure there were emotional changes, she was human, but they never affected her performance, Amber was reassuringly predictable, a coworker you could set a timetable by.

  When Amber was hired, El could never have anticipated she would feel that way about the small girl, nor that Amber would st as long as she had. In the beginning, while Amber never compined nor caused any problems and always accomplished any job she was assigned, the second there was a lull in incoming customers it became utterly apparent Amber was walking on a tight wire over a massive freak out and there were days where she would seem to wobble back and forth on that thin line.

  Though Amber had never failed at taking orders, El, out of simple concern for her, had quickly learned to keep her away from the lead position when possible.

  Amber had worn long sleeves into the summer back then, because she’d had a tendency to scratch at her arms when stressed, but by the time August had rolled around, she was not only still there, she’d also stabilized and quickly become one of the most competent and dependable members of the store's staff, trading the scratching in for deep breaths and rubbing discreetly at her wrists.

  Furthermore, El was a talker and Amber was a good listener, so they made for a good pair during the slower hours, though this had the result of El having a comparatively limited knowledge of the goings on in Amber’s life.

  There was a concussive rumble outside the windows, its source blocked by the decals until a bck sports car rolled up around front.

  “Is that us?” Amber asked absently, slotting the portafilter back in pce without looking up.

  “Looks like it, ” said El, leaning against the back counter.

  A moment ter, the door dinged and El looked up as a tall woman, adorned in bck leather entered.

  This was clearly a case in point of El’s opinion, this woman was around Amber’s age, but totally unlike her. El didn’t want to judge anyone based on appearances, but first impressions can be accurate for early warnings and this woman had votile contents written on her, literally, the words, Caution: Votile Contents was printed on her shirt in hazard yellow.

  The woman strutted nguidly forward, her boots knocking against the tiles.

  Expressly, her boots didn’t click, they knocked, like cloven hooves and she didn’t walk, she strutted, as though the world were her stage.

  Amber kept her head down, conscientiously working through the monotony, decked out in her pleasant little smile to hide her boredom with the task, while she wouldn’t admit it to herself much less anyone else: talking to El was the only part of this job that didn’t grind her down with its tedious routine.

  “Hello, Ms, welcome to Zippy Brew,” El said, waiting for the woman to come closer before closing the gap between her and the register.

  The woman waved at El, her face empty of any interest in seemingly much of anything at all, before stopping halfway to the counter, the merest of smirks rising on her face with just a little shake of the head that jolted to a stop halfway through. She inclined her ear towards the ceiling.

  Music was pying lightly from the speakers, the station left over from the morning shift.

  "311's Beautiful Disaster,” the woman drawled to the room, not looking at El. "Someone has good taste... Did you pick this?" She stopped. Waited. Started again," Cause, they have another song called-" she shook her head and began moving forward once more.

  The familiar voice finally cleared through Amber's focus and her head darted around the machine at the recognition.

  “What? You mean the music? That's who this is?” El asked, pointing to the ceiling, trying to fill the empty space in the conversation, while picking up her foot to meet the woman at the counter, but as she did a blur blew past her, cutting her off from her destination.

  “Don’t worry El, I've got her.” The rag that had been in Amber’s hand flew back through the air and El had to catch it to keep it off the floor. Qué? El thought, Wow, where was the meep meep, going that fast she should have said meep meep?

  The tall woman leaned her hip into the counter, in a kind of feminine response to James Dean, topped off by her sliding her shades from her face.

  “Hey princess,” Madaline said with a smirk.

  Princesa? El’s brain echoed.

  “Hey Madaline. Sorry, um, I didn’t notice you at first.” Amber grinned at Madaline like she was the only person on Earth.

  “That’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Down by her hip, the fingers on Madaline's right hand were closing in sequence, one after another, pinky first, index st, each starting their motion a fraction of a second apart, not curling to make a fist, but each falling lightly to the lower palm, after which her hand would spring back open and it would begin again. If Amber wasn't stuck on Madaline's eyes she might have found the motion familiar.

  “Um, what are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

  Madaline gave her right hand a little shake, the repeating motion stopped. “Uh-huh, everything’s fine as far as I know, just need some coffee.”

  “Alright, are you on your way to the office?” Amber asked, leaning towards Madaline from the other side of the counter.

  To El’s eyes they looked like a pair of magnets trying to snap together from the opposite sides of a piece of sheet metal.

  “Yeah,” said Madaline, her eyes flickering left and right over the menu, before snapping to Amber, looking her up and down, then back to the menu and repeating in a cycle every few seconds.

  In El’s opinion, she didn’t look much like she wanted coffee. With the way her, admittedly gorgeous green eyes, kept looking at her coworker, it seemed more likely she was interested in swallowing Amber whole and her coworker seemed liable to be into it.

  Madaline cracked a knuckle and knocked her fist on the counter. “One of our programmers left a security hole big enough in the recent software update to drive a tanker through, I have to go prove to the money people that if we don’t get it fixed, it's going to cost them more in the long run, than to just put things on hold while I fix it.. So, what’s good for that?”

  “Um well, sounds like you’ll definitely want a lot of espresso,” said Amber, twirling a strand of her hair in thought,

  It was a gesture El couldn’t remember ever seeing Amber perform before; Amber who was an over thinker by anyone's estimation.

  “You’re craving something sugary right?”

  “That’s what I’m always in the mood for.”

  “Hot or cold?”

  “Hot, definitely hot. It's too cold for cold. ”

  “Kay,” Amber smiled, striking buttons on the terminal. “I’ll give you my employee discount.”

  “Very sweet of you, thanks. Oh, run me for a blueberry scone too,” said Madaline, peeling a twenty off the fold of cash she'd extracted from her leather jacket.

  Amber worked the till and produced change, handing it and the receipt over to Madaline.

  Madaline folded the bills to the bottom of her stack, as Amber bagged a scone and passed it over.

  “Hey, Amber, what am I getting started for her?” El asked, stepping forward, watching the pair curiously.

  While not a necessity when they were this slow, the system was to pass the ticket along to the next team member in the set up, but Amber hadn’t, she was still holding the ticket in her hand.

  “I’ve got her, El,” Amber repeated, going to work making the drink from scratch, moving down the line, a little slower than she usually would, taking her time. After a slight dey, Madaline made like a satellite, following along Amber’s path.

  Amber didn’t catch what Madaline did when she stepped away to set up the espresso shots, but El clocked it on the spot.

  “So, I wanted to say, I’m ah, sorry about the awkwardness when I came down this morning.” Madaline ran a hand up through the fountain that was her hair, tossing it over one side.

  “The awkwardness... is one way to put it,” Amber said, a smile curving her face, then breaking into giggles, “Oh my god that was so funny. You were so tired. Didn’t sleep well?”

  “Ah- st night I had this really… weird dream. You ever have one of those dreams where you sleep the whole night but just come out more tired than you should be?” Madaline said, tapping her vape pen on the top of her hand, the scone bag crinkling as it swung gently with the impacts.

  “Um, yeah. I think so. Bad dream?”

  “Yeah, well, no, no, not really, not bad, just, well, some of it was really good until- ah, you know what it doesn’t really matter. Just wore me out and woke me up early and by the time I got back to sleep it was time to get up.”

  “ Well, this should take care of you.” At the finish line, Amber slid the tall coffee over. The cup was marked: Madaline.

  Frankly, El was just flummoxed that the bel didn’t include a heart.

  Madaline drank, her eyes closed, savoring, "Mmmm, very yummy, it's perfect, thank you."

  “Good... And, you know, don’t worry about, the um, the awkwardness, it didn't bother me, it didn't cause any real trouble and it’s not like I haven’t, you know, seen…” Amber blushed, stroking at her wrist.

  “Right,” Madaline chuckled, reaching into the bag with the scone and tearing off an end, roughly ten percent of the pastry, then she set the bag on the counter. “That’s for you princess. I'd love to stay, but I have to go.”She turned on her heels and sauntered to the door, her shades coming down over her face, "Ciao," she said and out she went.

  “Bye,” Amber said, the single word mixed with a breathy sigh and a huge smile.

  El watched as Madaline climbed into her sports car, starting it up to a boom of music that made the walls tremble, before racing off out of the parking lot and down the road.

  When El turned back to Amber, the girl was leaning on the counter, staring out the window, her eyes almost dazed. It took her several minutes to start considering the gifted pastry.

  Her smile faded, she poked at it a little, an uncertain, uncomfortable expression on her face, she rubbed some more at her wrist.

  After a couple minutes of gazing at the scone like it was dangerous, she picked it up and began to pick at it, a little bit of the smile she'd worn when Madaline was still present returned, “Mmm, wow, this is actually really good,” she mumbled.

  “Sí?” said El, trying to put together a puzzle in her mind.

  "Mmmmhmm," Amber confirmed.

  El thought of the preceding weeks, the decrease in Amber's overall nervousness, an occasional increase in cheeriness, in fact now that she thought about it some days Amber came in acting an awful lot like she was acting now, as though some one had granted her the power to walk on air.

  Amber turned to El, “Oh, um, sorry,” she held out the bag, “Do you want some of this? It’s super good.”

  “Sí, gracias.” El accepted the bag, wondering if Amber had really never tried one of these before, Zippy Brew didn’t have a very wide range of snack options, but El didn't ask, because that wasn't the question she was actually interested in.

  Amber had only consumed around thirty percent of the scone, when El tried to surrender it back to her, Amber reassured her that she wasn’t very hungry and that El could have the rest.

  Then she drew herself up a cup of pin bck coffee and finished up detailing the machine. When she was done Amber crossed the task off the list on the clipboard and immediately half levitated out to wipe down tables.

  El crumpled the empty bag up and followed behind her to help out.

  Amber was still floating about, but had returned to her regur level of verbosity.

  “So… Who was that, cuata?”

  Amber stopped her sanitizing, her eyes went bright, “Oh that’s Madaline.” She nodded when the sentence concluded, as though those three words expined everything and possibly by all El had seen to Amber they did.

  Amber finished the table and retrieved a box of napkins, refilling the dispenser.

  “You and her… you live together?”

  “Mmmhmmm,” Amber nodded, grinning, nearly giddy at the reminder. “We're probably going to start watching Chainsaw Man tonight,” Amber informed her absently, putting the napkin box back and returning to cleaning tables. “She’s going to love the theme song, it's just so her.”

  El had no idea what Chainsaw Man was, but it was clear Amber was very excited about the prospect of watching it with Madaline.

  Let’s not mince words, if Madaline was a man, El would not be careful in her assumption in any way whatsoever, but after testing the waters, she felt confident in the only actual logical conclusion for Amber’s behavior, the only and extremely obvious picture that the puzzle could make up.

  “I’m really happy for you, Amber.”

  “Thanks, it’s really so nice, you know,” Amber beamed.

  “But I guess,” El said, carefully, “Perdona… I’m sorry…I… didn’t know, you didn’t say anything. I didn’t know.”

  Amber stopped and looked at her utterly puzzled. “What- I didn’t say anything about what? What are you apologizing for, El?”

  “I just didn’t know about your breakup, you and Simon, was it st month or maybe a little before, I knew you were down about something, i just didn’t realize it was so big. But you seem g-”

  Amber's mood seemed to plummet into the hard unforgiving earth, “Breakup?”

  “That's right, I just didn't know-”

  “ Did Simon say something about breaking up with me?” Amber asked. For a moment Amber’s face read as visibly panicked, until her little smile popped back up, not the walking on air smile, but her standard one. She cleaned a table, taking the top with quick sweeping circles.

  “What? No, cuata,” she said trying to reassure her, armed at Amber’s little fsh of distress. “Amber, I’ve never spoken to Simon. I’ve never met him. You’ve just mentioned him once and awhile.”

  Amber's little smile faltered into a frown of concern, her rag slowed, her circles shrinking down.

  “You two are still together? You and Simon?”

  “Yeah,” Amber nodded. “Yeah, absolutely, why would we…” She stopped, took a deep breath and held it for fifteen seconds, exhaled, and spoke slowly, “I’m so sorry, please excuse me, El, I… must have missed something, I must have misunderstood what you meant, I’m sorry, can you- How did we get here?”

  El thought over a number of ways she could expin how she had concluded that Amber was no longer seeing Simon and was instead dating someone very tall, with a votility warning written on her, but given Amber's response to the assumption, a shape popped into El’s brain and with that one shape El had more crity on Amber’s situation than the girl herself.

  Triángulo amoroso and she doesn’t even realize it. If that’s not what it is yet then it’s going to be.

  El is honest by temperament and for a moment she considered disclosing the nature of the situation her coworker had seemingly taken a blind fall into, but then she thought:

  Nope. Nopenopenope Noooooppppeee.

  “I’m not either, I think we’ve had some... miscommunication.”

  “Oh, okay.” Another deep breath, shorter this time, she nodded up and down. “Um, let me start over, that was Madaline.” Amber was a little less starry eyed for this expnation, but the way she said the name hadn't changed. “She moved in with Simon and I. Simon and I, we are, of course, still together, dating, I don’t even know- how you, what did I say to make you-” Amber ughed, “Yeah, miscommunication, um, she’s Simon’s sister.”

  “His sister, I see. You..." El reached to find some way to finish the sentence and used what she had, "never mentioned that Simon had a sister.”

  Amber jerked a little, she pointed a finger at El, “That’s just what I said,” Amber’s volume shot up momentarily and was capped off by a hectic little ugh, before rolling itself back to it’s former volume and pitch. “Anyway, um that’s Madaline, you know and-"

  Amber's next words blew a hole in El's brain.

  "She’s my best friend.”

  Tu amiga? Tu mejor amiga?

  “You and Madaline are best friends?”

  “Yes,” said Amber.

  El looked close to see if Amber would start fluttering her eyes.

  “Your best friend, who is your boyfriend’s sister, calls you… princess?”

  “Yeah, she gives people she likes nicknames, she said she calls me that because of my obvious royal pedigree.”

  “Okay… how nice, and... how long have you been best friends?”

  “Um, I feel like… I mean technically three weeks now, it’s just been so… so great. Madaline is, I mean, you know, you saw her, she’s not just my best friend, she’s just… she’s just the best.” Her walking on air smile slowly started to dawn on her face once more, teeth appearing as thoughts of a breakup with her boyfriend and most likely any thoughts about her boyfriend whatsoever, vanish.

  “That’s wonderful Amber, you seem really happy about this… arrangement and I feel like that really clears up my confusion.” El smiled at her and did what she could think of to do, “Tell me about her?”

  Amber’s eyes widened, she licked her lips.

  El had stumbled upon an essential truth of Amber’s nature that Madaline would discover soon after: sometimes all she needed was permission.

  She'd provided Amber an opportunity Amber hadn’t known she'd wanted, given that her primary socialization was either with Madaline herself or Simon. It was the opportunity to talk to someone about Madaline.

  And just like that the small girl was off. El was suddenly caught up in a whirlwind of information, it came slow at first, but then began to pick up, as Amber grew the least self conscious El had ever seen her.

  Between checking further jobs off the task list and making drinks for customers, Amber let El know about Madaline , sparing as little detail as possible:

  -Madaline is funny even though Amber doesn’t always understand her jokes.

  - Madaline is full of interesting stories.

  -Madaline has lived in Europe and makes a delicious drink that tastes like red suckers. (Amber apparently needs to talk to Madaline about adding the ingredients to the grocery list, because its like one of the best drinks ever)

  - Madaline is compassionate and understanding and reassuring.

  -Madaline isn’t a morning person except instead of being grumpy, she’s just really out of it, in fact that very morning Madaline had done something so silly and she hadn’t even realized it until Madaline took off her headphones and Simon expined the situation to her.

  -Madaline had studied martial arts and is protective of people; here Amber faltered, her face falling into perturbation before backing away from the subject, jumping topics.

  -Madaline watched anime with Amber 6 out of 7 nights a week, that’s how they’d started spending time together.

  -But Madaline had recently become much more of a presence in Amber’s daytime hours as well, occasionally, when Amber’s work schedule and Madaline’s workflow allowed, she’d been taking Amber on errands with her, just quick little trips to pick something up or to mail something out for work, just little rides in her car that swallowed Amber up with speed lines and pumping music and the smell of spearmint. (Not that Amber included that st detail, nor the detail that the experience of going anywhere in public with Madaline made her feel so good, like she was just a little drunk or like she was getting to wander around with a celebrity.)

  On Sundays she and Madaline usually stayed in, Madaline often catching up on work and Amber catching up on chores or her reading, but they usually got to hangout in the living room for a bit and watch a few episodes of something before it was time to get dinner ready for when Simon arrived back home.

  But on Saturdays when Madaline returned from her- Amber paused once more with a little frown:

  “Her Friday night meanderings,” is how Amber finally phrased it with a nervous little ugh.

  On Saturdays, when she returned from her Friday night meanderings, Madaline had been taking Amber on fun little outings.

  Amber fshed pastel pink nails, still shiny and fresh with enamel from the prior weekend. Madaline apparently preferred to get her nails done rather than do them herself.

  “She says she always manages to muck it up. But it’s fun getting to do that kind of thing, I’ve never gotten to go to a nail salon before and after that she took me to this music store where they sell all these old records and tapes and stuff and she bought a big stack. She says she really misses her stereo set up, cause most of her stuff is in storage.”

  That’s a running theme weaving through the other details, the fact that Madaline is positively mad for music. “She says the best band to ever exist was the Csh, but she loves so much music, so many different kinds of music.”

  Yes, it seemed that Amber’s best friend Madaline had songs for all seasons, tunes for all reasons, and now that they’re best friends Madaline had begun to use her speaker when Simon was at the office instead of always using her headphones and that meant even when they weren't hanging out, there was now often music in the background of Amber's life.

  Amber had never really realized just how much music exists, nor the comparative and constant silence she had endured before.

  By the time Amber was informing El of her revetion on this particur fact, it was very te, minutes away from closing and fittingly Amber was at st winding down.

  El now knew more about Madaline than she knew about Amber, but amidst all this knowledge one thing stuck in her brain, jammed up there, unwilling to go away: Her boyfriend seriously leaves them alone together?

  “Sorry,” Amber tittered, some of her usual self consciousness trickling back into her as she checked through the stocks, making a list of items to order. “Um, we’ll need more napkins by the end of the week… sorry to go on like that, you know.”

  “It’s fine, cuata, she sure sounds… interesting and you seem very happy that… you two are… friends.” It didn’t bother El, it was new, not bad, she’d just never heard Amber speak so much nor so openly.

  “I am,” Amber hugged the clipboard to her chest, “I really am, it’s just- between you and me- I can’t remember ever being so-” she shook her head and took a deep breath, letting it out. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had like, good company, outside of you and Simon, but you and I we don’t hang out and you know, a boyfriend, it just isn’t the same.” She finished counting the boxes of cups and scribbled a note on the clipboard, “It’s just different, you know.”

  “Sí, I understand.”

  For a moment, out of sheer fascination, just to see how she would respond, El thought about pressing Amber a little on the question of how exactly it was different, but instead she inquired about a bnk space Amber had left, one El had forgotten about, now as Amber's enthusiastic lecture ramped down the question returned to her mind; it had originally come to El all the way back when Madaline was in the shop. “Amber, what does she do?”

  “I mean, she does a lot of stuff… That’s um, kind of my whole point.”

  “No, I mean how does she make money?”

  “Um, she works as an IT consultant for some big company downtown. Why do you ask?” Amber pced the clipboard back on the hook, opening the register to begin counting down the drawer.

  El gnced at the tip bucket on the counter, “She just… she left you a really big tip.”

  Amber looked in the bucket, “Oh really? Oh. Well, you know, that’s just what I'm saying, she’s always, like, trying to look out for me or… she probably didn’t mean to leave that much. Um, you take your half, I’ll make sure she… I’ll offer it back to her, she paid for my nails anyway.” Amber smiled at the hand holding the bill.

  When Amber returned to counting the drawer, El opened her mouth, once more considering pointing out the obvious about Amber’s behavior and then once more she made a not totally unreasonable decision: Nope.

  She cared about Amber’s welfare and happiness, but El decided Amber herself would need to figure things out a little more before El would be willing to try sticking her hand in the potential hornets nest of what was going on in Amber's personal life.

  El would end up holding onto that policy, until she didn’t.

  One thing proved to be certain over the next few months, given that they split their tips, Madeline suddenly becoming a fan of Zippy Brew was good for El’s pocketbook.

  Xoraxorel