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Chapter Two
Be cool.Jasper’s caseworkers had always told him to think before he acted. They saidimpulsivelike it was a dirty word. Like it was some disease he had contracted.Jasper can’t control himself. Jasper can’t keep his mouth shut. Jasper is justtoo much. He could hear them in his head now, telling him to just let things lie and pour the damn coffee. But when he smiled at the mystery woman from the second floor, and her pretty face twisted into a look full of disgust before she hurried back in the other direction, he wanted to shout out, “Hey, what’s your problem?”
What did he ever do to her besides bring her coffee this morning andnotembarrass her about her porn perusing? Jasper set down the carafe he’d been holding and opened his mouth to call out to her, but she’d slipped into the stairwell before he could get the words out. He frowned and shook his head. “What the hell, man?”
“What’s that?” the dark-haired woman in front of him asked, looking up from her phone.Emily Vu. Vlogger-blogger. Intense vibe.He’d made his mental notes, determined to learn as many names and personalities as he could.
“Sorry,” he said, putting a lid on her coffee and setting it on the counter. “I just… I think I must’ve done something to annoy the woman who works at the end of the hall upstairs.” He cocked his head toward the stairwell. “She was heading this way and then bailed when she saw me working the counter. Maybe she doesn’t trust me with her coffee or something.”
Emily’s brows lifted, and she looked toward the stairwell. “Last office…the woman with the curly blond hair?”
“Yeah, you know her?”
Emily tucked her phone into the pocket of her suit jacket before taking her coffee. “Not really. I mean, I’ve passed her in the hall, but she keeps to herself. I think she’s a writer, maybe. Something that doesn’t require the video or podcasting rooms.”
“I wish I knew what I did to offend her or whatever.” He poured a cup of coffee for himself, replaying their earlier interaction in his head, trying to figure out where things had gone wrong. “Maybe she really loved the person who had this job before me, and now she’s mad that she’s gone.”
Emily choked a little on her coffee and then smirked at him. “I promise that’s definitely not it. No one loved Jackee.” She grabbed a napkin to dab her lips. “Jackee made sure of it. Maybe she’s just having a bad day and you were in the line of fire.”
“Maybe,” he said, unconvinced.
Maybe he just had that effect on women these days. They saw him and ran in the opposite direction.
Emily’s gaze flicked to the clock above the coffee bar. “Well, I have to get back to my desk. My coffee time slot is almost up, and I’m time-mapping this week. I have to stick to it to see if it works.” She lifted her drink as if toasting him. “Welcome to the WA, Jasper. Don’t let any of the techies talk you into investing in their app. And friends don’t ask friends to join their Patreon.”
He smirked and touched his paper coffee cup to hers. “Thanks for the tips. That bad, huh?”
“Nah, don’t worry. You’ll find most people here are pretty friendly, especially when you’re giving them coffee. Don’t stress about the outliers.” She shrugged. “Some people work on their own because they’re self-starters. Others only do it because they can’t manage to work with anyone else.”
“Right. Which one are you?”
“Probably both,” she said with a chagrined smile.
“And self-aware, too,” he teased.
“I have my moments.” Emily checked her smart watch and nodded as if she were marking the period at the end of her sentence, then headed off toward the stairs with a purposeful stride, her heels clicking against the polished concrete floor.
Jasper grabbed a rag to wipe down the counter and tried to shake off the feeling that the mystery woman had given him when she’d looked at him with such disdain, but he couldn’t get it off his mind. His sister, Gretchen, teased him that he had this need for everyone to like him—an actor’s cross to bear. Or maybe just his foster-kid self-preservation instinct. So maybe that was all this was. He’d wanted to make the woman laugh this morning. She’d had this lost look in her eyes that said she needed a little boost. He’d only been trying to make friends at this new job.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. He might have been attempting to flirt just a little. Those big green eyes and that mass of blond curls had made him think of the girl on that show Gretchen had watched obsessively when he’d first moved in with the Deares family—Felicity. He hadn’t joined in watching the show back then or on Gretchen’s annual binges since, but he’d always thought the lead actress was hot.
So fine, whatever. Mystery woman was easy to look at. But the flirting Jasper had done had been of the harmless variety. The last thing he needed right now was to get involved with someone he’d see every day. Or anyone at all, really. After what he’d gone through with Kenzie, he didn’t feel up for any kind of dating—casual or otherwise. He’d mostly been trying to break the ice with the woman upstairs. He figured if he could find some decent people to chat with, maybe it would make the fact that he was twenty-five and back to pouring coffee a little more bearable. Maybe.
But if Ms. Busy wasn’t interested in knowing him, then that was her issue and not his problem. So instead of doing what he really wanted to do—go upstairs and knock on her door again to see what the deal was—he put theBe back in fifteen minutessign on the counter, grabbed his coffee, and found an unoccupied table.
Working the coffee counter and offering in-house improv classes one night a week for WorkAround members would get him free hot-desk time, video room access, and rehearsal space for his group. The pay wasn’t great, but the perks made this a better option than anything else he could find right now. Plus, the office setting was the perfect place to gather material both for his improv show and for his newest TV series idea. He pulled out the little Moleskine notebook he kept in his back pocket and jotted down a few notes.
His improv group had a few shows coming up, and though there was no preparing for the actual content of the show, they’d asked him to be the monologist for the next three performances. He liked having as many stories as possible knocking around in his head for those monologues even if he couldn’t predict what audience suggestion he’d get. The request from the group had been the first signal that they were beginning to forgive him for bailing on them and chasing Kenzie to LA. When he’d left, his group had just landed a prime spot at the Lagniappe Comedy Theater doing a sketch and improv show, but they’d been dropped off the rotation when he and Kenzie had moved to LA.
He planned to make it up to the group by killing it onstage and getting them back to a better venue than the crappy dive bar they were performing in now. He turned the page and made a few more notes, the sound of the workspace around him fading away as he got lost in thought.
After a few minutes of writing, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he set his notebook aside. He groaned when he unlocked his screen. A Google alert on Kenzie. Why the hell hadn’t he turned these off already? He needed to delete this soul-destroying, low-key stalking bullshit. Instead, he found himself clicking on the box.
Newcomer Kenzie Lord to star in and cowrite a new Netflix original comedy sketch show,Aurora Boring.
Kenzie’s smiling headshot accompanied the article, along with a candid of her leaving a restaurant arm in arm with Ames Thoren, one of the hottest comedians on the stand-up circuit at the moment. Jasper’s ex-girlfriend and former improv partner looked so happy, so goddamned effervescent, that he had to squint from the glare of all that bliss coming off his phone.
The worst part was he couldn’t even hate her for it. The woman was talented as hell. She’d earned her spot.
