Devil's Food Cake [✓]

10 | ginger beer

As I set the pancakes in front of him, he stopped writing in his notepad.

He had a textbook in front of him, which surprised me because I hadn't taken him for the studious type, what with his bad boy reputation.

I guess I shouldn't have judged him, but everyone had preconceptions about individuals they saw.

'I made sure to add extra honey,' I said, smiling down at him.

'Oh.' He took a sip from his espresso and his eyes gleamed with humour as he processed what I'd just said. 'Could I expect anything less from Candy?'

I was willing to be civil to him because he was a familiar face. Nothing more, nothing less.

I made sure to laugh politely at his compliment. Maybe he was making an effort to be nice to me after what had happened earlier at the counter with Jonny and Boobgate.

'Thanks for saying so, Zachary. I appreciate it. I'm glad you think so well of my waitressing.'

Zachary grunted, without looking up from his textbook and I took the opportunity to glance at one of the pages he was on. It looked like he'd been staring at a complicated diagram of a plane and it had this weird science language which I couldn't make head or tail of.

'Has this got blueberries in it?' Zachary was picking apart the pancake with his cutlery.

'Of course.'

I'd followed his instructions to a Tee, making sure that all the fruit was inside the pancake along with drizzling it with milk chocolate sauce.

The honey seemed a bit too much for me, but whatever the customer wanted, he got.

He took a forkful of the pancake and ate it. I couldn't tell if he enjoyed it or not, because he was concentrating on reading the textbook.

'What course do you study?' I asked, curious to know. Just for research purposes, of course.

When I'd googled him, it hadn't mentioned what university he was currently attending. It felt like I was stalking him, but his dad was a billionaire so some information about his family was easy to come by online.

He didn't reply immediately, but set his cutlery down and took a sip from his ginger beer.

I'd been tempted to ask him if he wanted some Malone's, but that would have made it seem like I'd been interested enough to google him, and I didn't want to seem like some gold digger, when I didn't even like him in that way.

'Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial.'

My jaw dropped.

'Don't look so surprised.' He snorted. I could tell that he found my shock amusing.

'So you're a science geek,' I said, without thinking. 'I thought you said you hated school.'

'Doesn't mean that I wasn't good at some subjects.' Zachary began to pour some of the honey on his pancakes, the golden liquid oozed out, as though relieved that it was finally going to be sampled. There was chocolate on his chin and a small part of me wondered what he'd do if I decided to lick it off him.

Probably, he wouldn't care anyway... and return the favour.

'My science teacher was a cool guy. We smoked a few joints in his room and talked about soaps on TV,' he said, with a laugh. 'Good times for a fifteen year old.'

'What kind of a science teacher was he?' I was appalled. Dorothy was right about him being a wild child, all right, and whatever shit he'd got up to in his teenage years was bound to be outrageous.