Drowning in the Bad Boy

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Charlotte

"All I want is nothing more..."

"To hear you knocking at my door," I hummed to the melody of this familiar soft song that the shop was playing. It was a pretty peaceful scene with the strong smell of coffee in the air, if you ignore Alice's excess blabber, which was exactly what I'm doing right now.

It was a Thursday afternoon, so the shop was basically empty. Bill had gone to town to buy some ingredients, which left Alice and I to take care of the shop. I've been working in the Hideout for some time now. The shop owner, Bill, was my Dad's best friend. They met in high school and became best friends because of the mutual passion for rock music and stuff like that. They even had a rock band named "The Running Alligators", back then.

A small laugh slipped when I thought about how proud Dad was whenever he talked about his band. To be honest, I think the whole thing was hilarious and the name didn't even make sense. At least they could have made the words alliterate. I would shut my ears and pretend to be listening whenever Dad started reminiscing his glorious days, but now I don't have the chance anymore.

Bill helped us a lot at first when Dad died and mum was like ten thousand miles away.

"Char, are you listening to me?" Alice nudged me to pull my attention back to her, breaking my train of thoughts

"Yeah?"

"So what do you think? What should I wear tonight? Pink or Black?" she played with her probably dyed red hair and said.

"Um Pink?" I answered randomly because I had no idea what she was talking about.

"But do you think Gabriel would like pink though? Drew would definitely go for pink but just in case Gabriel showed up at the game tonight? I think he'd like black 'cause he's like the bad boy type..."

I didn't know why Alice was even here. She's just a complete waste of space. She didn't need this job at all, nor did she care about it. Her parents had hotels all over the world, which makes her a super rich hotel heiress. She just didn't want to look a useless rich spoiled kid who only asks her parents for money. As the school's head cheerleader and popular kid, she was busy with parties and cheerleading practices most of the days. That left Thursday, the only day she wasn't occupied, for work.

"But didn't you say they're on the swim team? Why would they go to a football game?"

"Did you listen to me? Ugh, you're being stupid again. Drew plays football too, and he's gonna play tonight. Gabriel doesn't show up most of the time, but just in case he did..."

Listening to Alice talking about what's going on at school is quite interesting sometimes, but right now I just want to focus on my crossword done.

Beast of Burden?

What's that? Like the song by the Rolling Stones?

I was trying to figure out this three-lettered word for some time now, but Alice is so distracting. One of the perks of working in a coffee shop is you can have unlimited newspaper supplies, which means abundant crossword puzzles, Sudoku, etc. I have a weird passion for puzzles, any kind of puzzles. It might sound weird and nerdy, but it's really good for keeping me busy and my mind off things.

While I was trying to figure the answer of this crossword, the bell of the front door chimed. I was a bit surprised. We don't usually have much customers on weekday afternoons.

"Good afternoon-" I greeted as usual behind the bar table.

Two tall boys in our school's uniform walked in. I couldn't recognize the blonde guy walking in the front, but I surely recognized the guy at the back. Gabriel Rodrigues. Fucking hell.