It didn’t matter where Meghan had come from. All that mattered was she was here now and, despite the boss-employee relationship, functioned as the combo-platter sister, aunt, and fairy godmother Aubrey didn’t have.
Aubrey opened the door to the shop slowly and carefully so the chimes wouldn’t ring and interrupt the students studying. She needn’t have worried. She’d forgotten it was open mike night. There was a buzz in the air. The crowd was quite large, standing room only. Aubrey could see folks packed in cheek by jowl, all facing away from the door. Good. All the more opportunity for her to get lost in the shadows. Singers and slam poets spoke in the back corner of the shop, behind an incongruous wall divider stacked with coffee-stained, dog-eared books. A lending library of sorts. Meghan had put up the wall to separate the two areas of the store, dropped a few paperbacks on the shelves, and the students had done the rest. There was an honor system: if you took a book, you needed to replace it with another.
She heard a deep voice droning on behind the shelving—some poet or another reading from his work.
Meghan was standing against the far wall, arms crossed and one leg propped up behind her like a stork, one eye on the poet, another on the counter. She was somewhere in her midthirties, a few years older than Aubrey, her black hair in a pixie cut, the sprinkling of freckles across her nose echoing Aubrey’s own. She smiled -widely when she saw Aubrey, green eyes sparkling against her peaches--and-cream skin. She launched off the wall and went straight to Aubrey like a bullet, enveloped her in a rib-cracking hug. She motioned with her head toward the front of the store, where they could chat without disturbing the event.
“You’re not scheduled tonight. And after the day you’ve had, I didn’t think you’d be out and about. You look like hell.”
“Linda told you about the letter?”
“Yes. Are you okay?”
Aubrey shrugged. “I went for a run. I accidentally did sixteen miles.”
Meghan shook her head. “Who accidentally runs sixteen miles?”
“Me. I just lost track of time.”
“Sure. Did you eat? I have fresh muffins. And those spinach pinwheels you like.”
“That’s all right. I’m really not hungry. Who’s the poet?”
Meghan eyed her again but backed off. “Some guy. His stuff’s a little much for me, but what do I know? I just make the coffee.”
“And he turned out this big a crowd? Good for him.”
“Slam poetry junkies. Always looking for something to snap their fingers about. Besides, he is rather hot.”
She winked slowly, the black fringe of lashes surrounding her green eyes succeeding in making it look suggestive. Meghan, for all her attempts at androgyny, was a singularly sexual creature. And equal opportunity with her playmates, Aubrey knew. Not from firsthand experience, of course. Meghan liked to brag.
“So now your looks predicate how big your crowd is?”
“You know that’s not true. Just look at—” Before Meghan could finish, applause started. “Oh, I gotta go. Help yourself to something, sugar. You need to eat. You’re getting downright anorexic.”
Then she was gone. Aubrey watched her scoot to the back, her calf-high Doc Martens silent on the wooden floor. Meghan had a tiny tattoo centered on the nape of her neck, in an Asian language, but wouldn’t tell anyone what it meant. Rather, she had a new story for how and why she got the tattoo, and what it stood for, each and every day, but none of them were remotely factual.
Aubrey often wondered if she would have survived the past five years without Meghan cheering her on. She’d held her, commanded her, forced her, loved her, and simply carried her when she wasn’t able to carry herself. Aubrey had never had a friend like her, and something told her she would never find that combination of friend, confessor, and partner in anyone again, barring a husband.
Great. Now Meghan was the husband she’d never have.
At least she’d moved up to bipeds.
To appease her friend, Aubrey moved to the food table and selected a couple of savories. She choked down a spinach pinwheel. Despite the fact that they were incredibly tasty, Aubrey just wasn’t hungry. People began filtering from the back, and Aubrey saw an opportunity for distraction. She went to the register, logged in under her employee ID, and began to sling refills.
Forty-five minutes later, Meghan came to the front of the store with the evening’s star in tow. Aubrey was counting the till but could hear them coming, his deep voice contrasting nicely with Meghan’s contralto. There was a coquettishness to the conversation, and Aubrey realized Meghan was going to go home with the poet tonight. It was a foregone conclusion. What Meghan wanted, Meghan got. She was a stalking lioness when someone turned her crank. People fell under her hypnotic spell whether they wanted to or not.
Aubrey normally envied her that. Though honestly, tonight, she just didn’t want to watch the carnage.