Billion Dollar Wedding | ✓

1. •Δ Arianna Δ•

"I wasn't done with him, Arianna. There is so much work left to do." Jenny shouted crossing her arms, tapping her foot impatiently as she continues to glare at the closed door where Clint had disappeared to.

"Yes, we were. We can lift these easily. We don't pay him that much to bear your verbal abuse." I try to reason with her, toning down my voice to sound calmer. Her brown eyes snapped to me in disbelief.

"Yes, we do..." she retorted. We don't "And he..." She pointed her finger angrily toward the door as if I wouldn't know who she was addressing. "...Came to us for a job. Not the other way around." She throws her hands in the air, her chest heaving in frustration.

"He needed a job experience-" I say slowly, with a smile on my face which did an adverse effect and Jenny exploded with anger, not allowing me to speak further.

"And we are giving him a 'real-life experience'. He needs to understand it won't be rainbows and unicorns in the real world out there. We are not one of those stupid restaurants where the wait staff spits on their mean customer's food. We smile like idiots even when they are rude. And HE needs to understand that, Arianna." Jenny was panting like she has done a lot of physical activity. I walk over and hand her a bottle of water. She snatched it from my hand, blowing the bangs perfectly resting on her forehead and she huffed one last time, nodding her head to indicate that she was done with her rant.

"You still hung over the past, Jenny." I say, stroking her hair in sympathy. Clint's elder brother, Preston, went to high school with Jenny. Preston bullied her like it was his full-time job, leaving no stone unturned to be mean to her. Clint is his polar opposite, but since Preston is away at college, Clint faces Jenny's verbal wrath every day with no complaints, bearing his brother's sins like they were his own.

"Maybe. And I don't want to hurt my delicate wrists by lifting heavy stuff." She gave me her back, returning to her work kneading a cookie dough.

I prop my chin on her shoulder and bump my temple with her.

"I have seen the magic of those delicate wrists on the latte art." I tease her before running out. She works wonders with baking, but the latte art is not a cup of her tea. She threw a tissue roll at me but I duck the hit at the last moment as I ran out to open the cafe's door.

Like every day, I close my eyes and pray to angels watching over me to give me strength as I begin another day of new adventures. Well, running a cafe is no less than an adventure. I have to interact with people of different personalities... some complain about the lack of choco chips in their cookies and some for less foam in their coffee, some others are just darlings that convince you to keep faith in humanity. In my cafe, visitors are a perfect blend of naughty and nice.

This one time, a kid, probably twelve, sitting with a group of guys came to me. Claiming that there was some tiny insect in his coffee and demanded a new cup. I believed in treating my customers like a god. So instead of leaning over to check If God is telling the truth, I took the cup from his hand and gave him a fresh one. The kid was perplexed. An hour later, he came back and apologized to me. Turned out, his friends had dared him to splash the coffee on my face when I would lean over. But his plan failed. I stopped listening to his apology after some time. Since I was focused on his one black eye, the bet must be on either splashing the coffee on my face or getting beaten up.

And once, there was this one guy who seemed different. I'm good at reading people, but I couldn't really get him. He was intimidating in every negative way possible. Something about him sent chills down my spine. He didn't say anything offensive, but his demeanour was strong enough to scare me. We didn't exchange anything other than a few necessary words. But I had feared for weeks that he would come back. It's been around 6 months, he never came around. Mr Finley, ex-captain of the precinct, has assured me he would take care of any problems that come my way. It has never come that far to consider asking for the police's help and he has his own issues anyway.