It Happened at Cafe Nix

The Close

Hell day was kicking and screaming to its very end and Nix would be grateful to see the back of it. Her head thumped and her feet ached and no amount of reapplied lipstick made her feel brighter.

Maybe it was the fact that the cafe had turned into pregnancy central and virtually overflowed with waddling women and adoring men. It was lovely to pop champagne for Kate who used the bathroom to do a test, but it was oddly distressing to turn a deliberately blind eye to the expecting any minute now couple who had dessert and topped it off with loud sex in the empty ladies room.

Right through the day, she’d worn her job like a superhero outfit. She was Nix the Extraordinary, the Hostess with the Mostest, while she stood in the public areas of the cafe, capable of smiles and well wishes, banter with regulars like cheeky Dillon and his socially awkward friend, Mace. But she’d be Nix the Hysterical, a depressed limp noodle, once she made it home.

She couldn’t cry her eyes out over Linc until the lawyers packed it in, and their security detail cleared out, until the last stragglers making eyes at each other over coffee after the theatre or because they simply couldn’t bear to part for the night yet, took off. She couldn’t let her shoulders slump or her expression sour until the kitchen was cleaned and readied and the tables reset for breakfast again, until she was safely inside the front door of her rented flat.

With the click of that lock she’d become the anti-hero: Nix the Messed Up, Nix the Ambition Ruined My Romance, Nix the Worried About Dad. Nix the Will Regret Linc For The Rest of My Life.

To think a stray cat started them, and the catty backchat of some perky princess whose pussy Linc played with on the side had finished them. To think she’d thought he was a better man than that.

“Nix, phone.” Ramon waggled the cordless handset at her. If it was Linc, she didn’t want to speak to him. “It’s Steven.” She rushed across the room to take it. It was too late for Dad to be up.

“Dad, what’s wrong?”

“Nichole Sutherland, how many covers did you do today, quick, tell me.”

“Are you sick? Why are you ringing me?”

“Are you deaf? I feel a little better, less nauseous. But I can’t sleep. How many covers?”

She sighed. “You’re not supposed to be worried about covers or anything to do with the cafe. I told you I’ve got this.”

“Actually, Nix, Pumpkin, that’s what I’m worried about.”

At the doorway, the big burly plain-clothed cop gave her a wave. That meant all the lawyers were gone. Most of the night he’d had trouble keeping his eyes off his attractive partner. Or was she imagining it, seeing romance everywhere because she was abruptly without it? “You don’t trust me.”

“I trust you, but I don’t want you making the wrong decision.”

“And what’s the wrong decision, Dad?”

“The one that makes you unhappy.”

“I’m happy.”

“Nix.”

“I’m happy. I’d be happier if you weren’t sick, if we could be more certain about your recovery and you never called me Pumpkin again.”

Steven laughed. “I’ll second that. The cafe was my life, especially after your mum died, but we’re not the same people, you and me, and I only want for you whatever it is that will make you happiest.”

“This place makes me happy.”

At the door, Tamsin waved. She’d had an interesting day. She was leaving at the same time as Ramon and Wayan, but there was clearly a new man in her life, a very flamboyant, take charge man.