✩ #17 in body positivity ✩
Holly needs a job. And some cash.
That's how she ends up at Cafe by the Sea, hired by the assistant manager, Oliver, who's cute, annoying, and totally unattainable. She's not really looking to fall in love though - it's...
Holly was trying to be nonchalant as she walked through the doors of Cafe by the Sea the next morning. Her greeting sounded more like she was Girl Scout selling cookies to a middle age prematurely balding golfer.
Oliver nodded and smiled, then promptly retreated to the back room.
She stocked the freezer with ice cream and hot dogs, rang up the few customers who came in the morning, and even wiped down the counter and the windows.
When she ran out of things she could mindlessly do, she finally ambled into the back room.
She'd written a short note and stuck on the window:
Be back in 10 minutes! :)
"I know what happened," she blurted out as soon as she was there.
Oliver looked up, forehead wrinkled. "What?"
His glasses were adorably askew, and Holly wanted to reach over and straighten it.
No, focus, Holly, focus. Could you be any creepier?
She had something she needed to say and she couldn't afford being distracted now. It was the
whole reason she couldn't sleep last night and had been so restless this morning.
"I know what happened to Sadie. She told me last night, by the beach. And I want to help her. I want to help you."
She was speaking so fast now that she thought she might get a speeding ticket.
Off came the glasses.
Oliver stood up, looking conflicted. He reached up to his face, hesitated, then ran a hand through his hair.
"What do you mean?" he finally said. It was cautious kind of question, and Holly didn't know why, but she felt a little disappointed.
She didn't know what she was expecting exactly. Maybe the two of them sitting together, scheming a plan to catch the bad guy?
As if.
She took a deep breath. "I know she's not your girlfriend, Oliver. And she's a stranger to me."
The word stranger tasted weird in her mouth. Was Sadie really a stranger after what they shared last night?
"She was a stranger to me," she amended. "But I want to help her now. You guys aren't alone in this. I want to...I want to catch the piece of shit who did this to her."
Holly usually never cursed. Really. But she felt a kind of vindication in calling the rapist a piece of shit.
Because that's what he is, she thought darkly.
Oliver looked at her, surprised. Or was that a slight smile?
Holly couldn't tell, so she barreled on, before she could think too much or too deeply about what she was going to say.
"And I have an idea of how to do it."
She took a deep breath. Then another.
"I'm going to be his next victim."
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