Mr. Babydoll and the journals of his inner blizzard [peterick]

VI

"I know that face. What went down?"
Joe was no one who could be fooled easily. He knew me a bit too well for that, even if he didn't know me completely. No one did.

"Ah, nothing much. A bunch of confusion maybe, but that's nothing new I guess."
Joe chuckled shortly, raising an eyebrow. "Confusion? What kind of confusion?"
I tried to think of a simpler explanation that still wouldn't reveal too much, but it didn't come to that. Someone walked into the café.

There was a little bell over the shop entrance that starts ringing when someone comes in. I always hated that thing. Its sound is really annoying and it makes me slightly anxious sometimes.

Like it did right now when someone entered the shop. It was the first costumer on this tiring Monday and I quickly walked out of the kitchen to take their order.

The fake smile I had put on died down as soon as I recognised who was standing in front of me.

There where two people, I didn't know the taller one, but the other person was unpleasantly known.

"Hey Pete, haven't seen you in a while!" Brendon greeted me, seeming very happy for some reason. The young man next to him just smiled shyly at me.

"Yeah, it seems like you have been very busy."

"Oh we where! We've been busy recording am I right Ryan?" he put an arm around the taller one and smiled happily at him.

That's Ryan? I imagined him differently.
He looked younger than he probably was and he his short brown hair was framing his face as a Beatles-bowl-cut. His hands were nervously fiddling with the black hat  he had taken off before entering the store. I remembered Patrick had a similar one.

"We were busy indeed." Ryan reckoned. "Guess we learned a lot about each other."

"Just the two of you or what?" I asked and I quickly realised that was a pretty risky question, but not that I felt any regret for it. An unintentional mischievous grin appeared on my face when I saw the bright pink confusion in Ryan's face and the even brighter frustration in Brendon's.

"N-No, we had some friends with us." Ryan was the first one who recollected.

It got quiet for a second until Brendon cleared his throat. "Well, we came here for a reason."
He faced Ryan. "How about you sit down over there while I order us something nice?"

Ryan first shrugged then nodded and made his way to a table near the window.
Brendon watched him until he sat down and then turned at me. Concern on his face.
"Are you angry at me? You seem like you're out for revenge."

"Oh, it's nothing." I assured.  "I just thought if you know so much about my love life, I could offer some of my knowledge as well."
Brendon watched me, furrowing his eyebrows like he was thinking about something. I could basically see the light bulb flashing on as his face lit up.

"It's about the giving-phone-number-to-attractive-stranger--and-me-basically-calling-you-a-high-school-slut, right ?For which,once again, I am really sorry for that second part, in case I hadn't made that clear enough." he rambled on in a whisper tone.
Which, by the way, was really unnecessary since no one else was here besides them and Ryan was sitting too far from us to hear this conversation.

My unamused glare seemed to be serving as an answer. He rested his elbow on the counter, his chin placed on his palm, so he overall looked like a kindergartener who listened to someone telling a story.

"Tell me all about it."

I tensed up. "There's nothing to tell you. He thinks I'm a creep."
I don't' know why I said that. Patrick never called me anything like that. In fact he treated me as if we've known each other for years. Which is how I genuinely felt towards him. I just didn't know why.

"I'm sure he doesn't." Brendon assured, although there was no way he could ever know. "Now stop acting like no one likes you and tell me what happened while I was gone."

Those words rang trough my head.
Stop acting like no one likes you.
So I started telling him how Patrick texted me the next evening and how nice he was. How I met Micheal and how they turned out to be friends. I also told him about the party and how I had offered Patrick to drive him home.
I didn't tell him about anything Patrick had said to me that night or how I felt after that.

"Sounds like you had quite an adventure while I was gone." Brendon said after I had finished.
"Thanks to you." I scoffed.
"You're very welcome."

I looked over to Ryan who was still sitting there, seeming surprisingly patient, while watching people passing by outside the café. My gaze went back to Brendon who was giving me a look as if he knew what I was thinking.
"Me and Ryan are friends." he insisted, although I hadn't claimed anything of the opposite. In fact I hadn't said anything at all.
He finally ordered something and sat down at their table.

Another day, Another migraine.
The bell over the door started ringing once again. I sighed to myself. I couldn't deal with too many costumers today.

A young woman walked into the store. That itself wasn't unusual, but what really got our attention was her bright orange hair.

"Good morning!" she greeted me, almost singing and it really felt more as if she was greeting the entire room.
I just stared back at her which irritated her a bit.

"I said 'good morning'." she repeated herself. "To my knowledge, there's a specific way how to respond to that."

"Morning." I replied perplexed.
I heard noises of someone working with dishes coming from the kitchen, followed by Joe's common way of complaining. A few minutes after he put his head trough the door. "Pete, you need to help me out for a second." he said before he noticed the woman standing in the middle of the café.
"Who are you taking to?" he asked me, eyeing her in suspicion.

The woman smiled again. "I'm glad we seemed to finally have reached the point of introduction. I had a lot of paperwork to do and when I was done I thought 'why not go out and see my future working place?" she rambled.

"Future working place?" Joe repeated confused.
She walked over to us and reached out her hand for us to shake it.

"I'm Hayley. Hayley Williams."
We both shook her hand. "Williams?" Joe asked, looking like he just realised something.
"Yep. My uncle is the boss of this place. He plans to focus more on his bigger companies, so I'm taking over this place."
She smiled at us again and looked really proud of herself.

Joe's jaw dropped. "You mean if you hadn't made the decision to take over this business, we would've lost our jobs??" the oncoming anger in his voice was impossible to overhear. Hayley took off her jacket, wiped of the snow and hung it over the back rest of a random chair.

"That's why I did it."

We both just stared at her. She was quiet for a minute, then smiled again.
"Hey, no big deal. Now, get me some coffee, I wanna see if your stuff is good. I'm gonna pay for it don't worry."

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