AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hi, Layana.” Dani loosened the grip on her drawstrings enough that I could see her eyes. “It’s me, Dani.”
“I know. You’re in here all the time.”
“I am, yes,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d recognize me in my red hoodie. Usually I wear my black one.”
“You’re…recognizable,” I said. “You want your usual?”
“Oh good.” She hunched her shoulders and shuffled toward the counter, clutching her papers to her chest. “Yes, please.”
I filled a plastic cup with half lemon raspberry sweet tea, half peach basil, and a squirt of goat’s milk. That’s how she asked for it, down to the wordsquirt.I’d replicated her order once to try it myself, and it wasn’t as gross as it sounded, though I wouldn’t drink it again on purpose, either.
I popped on the lid, set a straw on top, and placed the cup on the counter.
Dani assessed me with wide eyes, as if she was expecting something further from me.
“What?” I asked.
“Aren’t you going to write my name on it?”
“Seriously?” I gestured to the empty seating all around us. “It’s just you in here.”
She stared at me, clearly wanting exactly that.
I grabbed a marker, scrawled her name on the cup, nice and big, then cupped my hands together like a megaphone and called out. “Dani? Is there a Dani here?”
She smiled, laid down the cash, and pulled the cup to the edge of the counter. She put the straw through the lid, but she didn’t pick up the cup. Instead, she slid her pile of papers between us. “Even though you haven’t posted anything in a while, you’re stillthe bestblogger.”
“If I’m being generous, my most recent posts have been adequate and uninspired.” Plus there was the fact that I hadn’t actually written anything in forever.
“The. Best.”She sharpened her gaze at me. “Since you’re basically my idol, and you don’t have any other customers, I was hoping you could look at mine.”
“Your what?”
“My blog.” She tapped the papers and took a sip of her tea.
I glanced down. It appeared she had printed out her digital posts.
The wordidolrepeated in my brain, pinging around like my head was a pinball machine. Each ding and bounce struck both a new cord of guilt and acted as a warning. She’d mentioned her blog before, and I’d made the mistake of humoring her and asking a single follow-up question. She’d talked for hours after about model trains, and even tried to follow me home.
After that, I’d made up a brand spanking new life policy and laid it out plainly for her—I never mixed my work life with my outside of work life.
“I can’t read this,” I said.
“Of course you can. You have to.Please?”
Something about the way her face lined with concern paired with her unsettling half-smile made my conviction waver.
“One page.” I narrowed my eyes at her and sternly said, “Then you go take a table and we go about our separate nights, like strangers, with ne’er a word spoken between us again.”
She nodded emphatically. “Yes. Deal.”
From Sunny to Gordon
Choo choo, trainiacs! It's The Conductor of Chaos, jumping tracks with another tale of modeling madness. Today, we’ll derail from the usual and take a ludicrously lengthy ride!
After reading your letters begging for details, I promised a deeper look at my journey to turn my HO collection into the lively cast of characters from Sodor Island.
“Fan mail,”I said. “Sounds like you already have plenty of readers interested in your writing exactly the way it is. You don’t need my?—”
