Sugar

51

chapter fifty one
florence thompson
song: love me now - john legend

Two days later I had the morning shift with Rico and Ben, as per usual, and Rico had pulled the story out of me. After telling him there wasn't much to it over and over again, and him continuing to hound me, over and over again, I just crumbled and told him the story of the night I had been blindly led straight to Vincent De Bellis, not before giving him hell for getting me into the situation in the first place.

He had apologized profusely after finding out what had gone down, to which I merely just glared at him. So, now we were all standing around the counter, waiting for new customers to come in since we'd cleaned the place spotless and refilled the donut container on the counter, and Rico was still hung up on what had gone down two days ago.

"Sebastian didn't know that you two were on the outs?" Rico asked, wiping down the already clean counter with his dish rag, glancing up at me where I was stood behind the counter, leaning back against the counter behind me and crossing my arms over my chest.

"No, there's no way he could've, to be honest. I think it was just an honest accident," I answered, shrugging.

Rico looked deep in thought, almost as if he didn't believe what I was saying.

"Did he find out about you two talking at the party?"

"No." I shook my head. "I went back out and ten minutes later he found me and asked if I was ready to leave, so we left. We didn't really talk much on the way back to my apartment other than how the party had been, but I didn't mention it."

"I don't know..." Rico lingered for a moment, shaking his head slowly. "It doesn't sound like this is just some coincidental thing. I mean, has he ever shown interest in asking you out before?" He asked, plopping himself down onto the barstool and tossing his towel onto the counter.

I shrugged, thinking about his question.

"To be fair, we haven't talked much. We've been in direct contact three times, when I met him on my way to Vincent's, when I ran into him at that coffee shop with Ben, and when he interviewed me. One time he was with another woman, the other we had just met, and the third was definitely not grounds for asking someone out while simultaneously asking why they'd make a good employee for you," I explained longwindedly, releasing a breath at the end of my rant.

"Fair enough...I guess," Rico mumbled, still looking lost in thought and as if he didn't buy it for a minute.

Ben sauntered our from the back, dishtowel thrown over his shoulder and his dark hair messily pushed back. He had his hands lazily resting on his hips as per usual as he came to stop near Rico and I.

"I just finished the dishes, still no customers?" He asked, brows furrowed as he looked around the empty diner.

I quirked my lips to the side, shaking my head as I looked around similarly as if new customers were going to pop up out of nowhere.

"For being a Friday, you'd think there'd be more traffic," Ben commented before shrugging as he released a sigh. "Anyway, what're we talking about?" He asked, leaning against the counter between Rico and us, his hip resting against it.

"Just stupid boys and stupid problems," I sighed, shaking my head.

"That's gotta be a Forever 21 shirt."