Page 27 of Lethal in Pink

“That sounds disgusting,” I say.

He raises his brows.

“Excuse me?”

“Whatever you just ordered. It sounds disgusting.”

“It’s a black coffee.”

“Exactly. You drink coffee like a seventy-year-old man.”

He stares blankly at me.

The barista slides a paper cup across the counter toward me. Brown sugar vanilla latte, extra whip, the whipped cream already beginning its slow, delicious collapse into the surface of the drink. Steam rises from the small sipping hole in the lid. I wrap my hand around the cup and the heat seeps through the cardboard sleeve into my palm, immediate and satisfying.

Jae looks at my drink. Then at me. His mouth does something that isn’t quite a smile but lives somewhere in the same neighborhood.

“And it appears you drink coffee like a twelve-year-old,” he says.

I pick up my latte with complete, unhurried dignity, showing him that his opinion on the matter has the approximate value of a used tissue.

“At least my coffee has character.” I chide, taking an intentionally slow sip, allowing the sweetness to coat my tongue before I lower the cup and walk away.

The shop is, objectively, a disaster zone of occupied territory. Every table claimed. Chairs pulled from neighboring seats to accommodate groups that have exceeded their original seating allocation. Someone’s laptop bag occupies a full chair as a territorial marker, the owner nowhere in sight but the message clear: this is mine, I have placed an object here, and that object has more right to this chair than you do, so fuck off.

I scan the room once, my eyes landing on it at the same moment I sense his landing on it too—the one remaining table. A two-top near the window.

We arrive at it simultaneously. His hand reaches for the chair on one side. My tote bag hits the surface of the table on the other.

“No,” I say.

He stops, his hand hovering above the chair back. His expression shifts from determination to genuine confusion in the span of about half a second.

“No what?”

“No, you can’t sit here. Go find another table.”

He gestures at the room. A sweeping, all-encompassing motion that takes in the wall-to-wall density of bodies, the absent chairs, the laptop bag still holding its ground on that chair like a particularly committed squatter.

“There are no other tables.”

“That sounds like a personal problem.”

We stare at each other. Both of us refusing to stand down. The table sits between us like a neutral zone in a conflict neither of us started but both of us seem determined to win.

I sit down. He sits down. The chairs scrape against the floor in imperfect unison.

Silence descends. Not the comfortable kind. The unwelcoming kind.

Whatever, he’s about to see just how unbothered by him, I really am.

I pull my notes from my tote. Color-coded, tabbed, the edges of the pages worn soft from handling. My pink gel pen comes out next, then I set the latte down on the right side of me.

His long elegant fingers wrap around his coffee.

“Didn’t you order your disgusting coffee to go?” I recall, glancing up.

“Do you always eavesdrop on strangers orders?”