“Well, looks like lunch rush is over,” Harper calls over to me as she unties her apron. “Kaycee, we’re going on break,” she shouts over to our manager.
Kaycee doesn’t even look up from the table they’re cleaning and just waves their arms, telling us to go.
We hang up our aprons and make our way through the narrow back corridor. This corridor is the polar fucking opposite of the front of the coffee shop. The front is beautiful. Subway tiles line the bottom half of the walls, and obscure feminist art hangs proudly above. The large front windows let the bright morning light flow into the shop, the perfect setting for a morning cup of coffee. Monstera are everywhere, snaking up and over almost every surface and wall. They have a strict watering schedule to make sure they stay alive—I’ve definitely forgotten this an embarrassing number of times.
In comparison, this corridor looks like it’s straight out of a hoarder’s TV show. Kaycee refuses to throw anything away. What used to be our break room is now almost three feet high with boxes, flyers, and various other knick-knacks. An old refrigerator from the 50s sits in the far corner, which Kaycee plans to restore. It’s been gathering dust for the entire time I’ve been working here. For someone who’s so paranoid about their social media image, this den of sins is definitely too close to where customers eat and drink. I think they’re definitely fucking the health and safety officer too.
I grab the wall as my foot catches on an old wooden broom that definitely wasn’t there yesterday. I pick it up andgently rest it against the wall next to the four other almost-identical brooms.
Harper pushes open the back door, and the cool breeze washes over me, replacing the heat of the cursed espresso machine Kaycee refuses to replace.
“So… how did things go last night with Muscles Marinara?” I joke, gently shoving into Harper as we slump into our usual spots on the back porch stairs. The wood creaks under our weight. I don’t know how long it’s been since someone maintained these stairs. I found a small family of raccoons under here a few weeks ago.
“His name is Nathan,” she says as she rolls her eyes. “And it was… mind-blowing.”
She pauses, as if she’s reliving last night in her mind. I grin and wiggle my eyebrows, gesturing for her to continue.
“I came so hard I saw stars, Kat. Stars! I thought that was only something that happened in books.” She grins, but I don’t miss the blush creeping into her olive cheeks.
A pang of jealousy snakes through my stomach. I’m not jealous of Harper and her night. Fuck, if anyone needed a good railing, it was her. I’m jealous because I’ve never felt that with anyone. My entire life has been bad sex after bad sex. I have my trusty wand, which gets the job done, but I’ve never had an orgasm where I basically black out, even with a vibrator. I’ve faked more orgasms with men than I dare to count.
I push the thought down before it has a chance to fully form.
“I thought so too,” I shrug, forcing my mind to focus on my best friend in front of me.
“Kat, believe me when I tell you, he really knows his way around a woman’s body. The shapes he put in made me feel like I was doing Pilates. But in the best way, obviously,” she adds, and I can’t believe I missed the glow on her skin, it’s so obvious. She’s practically reflecting the mid-afternoon sunlight.
“Good for you, girl. At least one of us is getting some action.”
“Still no luck on the man front?” she asks, her eyes filling with the familiar look of sympathy.
“Put it this way—I think my virginity’s grown back.”
“You know some weirdos will pay for that?” she says, and the look in her eyes tells me she’s completely serious.
We laugh together as she grabs my arm and rests her head on my shoulder. I lean into her without thinking, my cheek brushing against her hair. No expectations, just the comfort that comes with two best friends. Our breathing evens out in sync as the sounds of the city fill the silence.
Times like this with Harper heal the little girl inside me. The little girl who never got invited to sleepovers because she didn’t like Barbie dolls. Or the little girl who was bullied at school for being chubby. Harper has always accepted me as I am with no expectations of anything else. She’s definitely the type of bitch who I would call if I ever needed to hide a body. She’d show up with a ready-made playlist and car snacks.
“Any word on the residency yet?” I ask, my voice suddenly sounding too loud.
“No,” she shakes her head pensively, leaning forward with her forearms resting on her knees. “I’ve been checking my phone as much as I can today, and there’s nothing yet. I wouldn’t worry though. We’ve done this kind of thing a few times before,and it’s at least a couple of days before we hear back usually. Good or bad.”
I’m the newest member of Tether, and therefore more naïve to this kind of thing.
It took three full weeks of living with Harper and a few too many whiskeys during one of our girly nights in for me to finally pluck up the courage to pick up the guitar that had been gathering dust in the corner of her living room. It had been a year since I’d last played, but my fingers moved over the fretboard by trained instinct alone.
Harper stopped me less than a minute later and told me I absolutely needed to join Tether. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. And the excitement in her eyes and voice made it fucking impossible to even think about rejecting the offer.
Tether had a guitarist who had been with them for two years prior, but he’d left to do some humanitarian work in Peru about a year ago. She told me they were desperate. They’d had auditions for weeks, but couldn’t find the right fit. Harper even told me one guy had shown up with a bass.
“What if they don’t vibe with me?” I’d asked, and Harper acted as though she hadn’t even heard me. The next thing I knew, I was at Tether’s practice space a few days later with the borrowed guitar. My hands were shaking so badly, I’d bummed almost every note of my first solo. But they saw something in me that day that I didn’t see in myself. And now? I’ve been there every Tuesday and Sunday night since.
“Hello?”
I snap out of my daydream to find Harper on her feet, her cell phone pressed to her ear.
“Who is it?” I mouth to her.
