Wings

Chapter 2

Arella

The school day was finally over and that meant it was time for my shift at Lenard's, the local coffee shop, that was, lucky for me, right on my way home so it was really easy for me to walk there everyday after school. My life was not the most exciting at the moment, only leaving the house for either school or work, but I was okay with that. I appreciated it.

Excitement doesn't always mean good.

"Hi Ella." Anna said with a bright smile when I got to the dress room.

"Hi, Anna."

"How was your weekend?"

"You know... I... studied..."

"I was wondering, since you barely leave the house, why don't we go out one of these days?" She asked, a hopeful look on her face, which did not change when she saw my uneasy one and added "It's a chill place, I know you're not much of a crowd person."

"Can I promise to think about it?"

"Well, it sure is a start. Agreed." She grabbed my arm. "Come on, let's go."

Lenard's was usually not the most popular place, however, it seemed particularly full today, which was making Lenard himself pull his hair out since he was alone. Between us and the morning shift there was a 15-minute window which the man himself promised us with the biggest and brightest smile that he 'can manage it' and 'I mean, can't be that hard, right?'.

The minute his eyes landed on us, he raised his arms and looked up, pretending to be thanking God for our arrival. We both laughed at it.

"I know it's not quite the time yet but could you girls please help me out?" He cried.

We started preparing the requests one by one, bringing them to the costumers, watching as the pile of papers decreased. Apparently, according to Lenard, they had all arrived almost at the same time, giving him no time in between to prep the requests so he decided to take all orders at the same time and pray to 'whoever was up there' – his words – for us to arrive.

Lenard was a nice guy, but very clumsy, especially when he had a lot of costumers. His parents left the coffee shop – named after his father – for him to run after they died, but he was more of a math kind of guy. He would tell you in a heartbeat how much sugar we had left based on the number of clients we've had, but he would make a mess if he had more than three tables with costumers.

I loved working there, people were nice most of the time, so we got pretty lucky on the polite field. Lenard was also the best boss ever, always nice and worried about us. And I could work with Anna who easily became my friend, because we both started working on the same day and also because she's the kind of person you can't just not like. She taught me a lot about the job, giving me some tips and tricks, since she's older and had worked on other places before.

I was turning around to deliver the table 7's request when I bump into something, making me drop the latte I was carrying. I mean, I'm pretty sure it was someone, not something. I'm quite familiar with the coffee shop by now so I would know if Lenard had placed a pillar in the middle of the place.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't know you were- oh God, it's right all over you. Just- okay, I'm pretty sure I can find something-anything to fix it." I quickly grabbed a clean cloth and tried to clean to latte from the person's shirt, even though, in a normal situation when I'm in the full control of my brain, I know it wouldn't remove that stain.

"It's okay-"

"I will take it to dry clean it myself or... something like that..."

"Hey, it's f-"