Unlikely ✓

Four: Smell the Lavender Tea

POV: Nathan Westmore

It was bright and sunny out when I drove to work.

Whenever it was sunny out I would be magically in a good mood.  It never seemed to fail to make my day a million times better.  However, it would be nice not to have the day spent working indoors.  It would be nice to go out and spend one of the rare good days outside.

Sure, it wasn't as rainy as most people from shows, books, or movies liked to make Washington out to be.  There actually were some beautifully warm and sunny days that made the rainy ones well worth putting up with.  Most of the time it was just gloomy.

I drove to work with most of my windows down and the classical music up.  Since I was a kid I really only listened to classical music or some indie singer I never heard of before.  There simply wasn't an in-between for me.

When I finally got to work I pulled into the car park outback and simply sat in my car for a moment.  Tea Cups' was a nice cafe out of town where you could sit down and live out a fairytale tea party.  There were pastries, a shop to buy the teas, and even coffee for those people.

It was a peaceful place to work.

Not really what I was expecting either, but Mandy knew the manager at the time and I was in need of a job.  So it just kind of worked out, plus I really liked tea.

I got out of my car making sure all the windows were up, the last thing I needed was a bird in my car and scaring me... again.

Inside I quickly clocked in on the tablet, put on my nametag, and the yellow apron—it wasn't my favorite shade of yellow but it complimented my skin tones well enough and I mean it was yellow so how could I hate it?

"Good morning, Lola!"  I shouted happily.

Lola was the owner and in most cases the one who opened the store.  She hated mornings and hated people who were cheerful in the morning even more.

She grumbled in response.

I grabbed my tablet off its charger and looked at the schedule.  I had a few deliveries to sign for, tea to reshelve, and a few reservations to get ready for.

The cafe was broken up into two places.

There was the tea room, the place where you sat down and had baked goods, tiny sandwiches that didn't really fill you up but tasted delicious, and lots of tea.

Then there was the shop.  It was smaller, but there was a gigantic wall of every tea under the sun.  You could also buy pastries to-go if you were in a rush.  Think of a coffee café but more aesthetically pleasing and a ton of tea.

I put on my earbuds and turned on my audiobook as I got to work.  My mom and I loved to read, unlike my dad and sister who would much rather be doing something else.

My mom was more of the high fantasy type where I read the 'boring stuff' apparently.  I wasn't sure why but biographies or nonfiction just interested me more than some fantasy world I didn't even know how to pronounce.

The only exception to my genres were classics.  Where everyone would groan and complain about reading something like The Great Gatsby I would be the only one excited about it.

Either way, I liked to listen to stories more than reading them.  For many reasons really.  I didn't have the best attention span to sit and read.  Every time I would sit down and start whatever book I wanted to read for fun and not for school I would simply feel like I was wasting time and had a million other things I had to do first.