Prose Scene 2

Eddie Gillespie likes to whistle while he works. It drives his coworkers crazy, but hey. He’s shift manager. They can deal with it.

And normally, he’d send one of his peons to do something so menial as wipe down the tables after the after-school rush was finished, but it’s Shawn and Joanna in with him today. Shawn has an annoying tendency to just brush crumbs onto the floor and never get around to sweeping, and Joanna is fifty and Eddie feels weird ordering her around.

So, magnanimous leader that he is, he takes on the task himself, whistling some song from the radio that’s stuck in his head at the moment. At the table by the window, he carefully lifts Zoe’s envelope and wipes underneath it, taking pains to dry the tabletop before setting the envelope back down. And then, because he’s there and it’s there, he opens the envelope and pokes through Zoe’s written responses, making sure she’s getting a decent number. If Andi was here, she would scold him — “I think the point of the experiment is to see how many people respond on their own, Eddie. You’re skewing her data by sending people to the envelope!” — But Andi isn’t here, so he’s fine. No one’s going to catch him.

“Are you poking around in my envelope again? I’m going to have to list “Eddie Gillespie’s Interference” as a qualifier on all my Cuppa Joe’s info, aren’t I?”

“Just checking your response rate,” Eddie assures Zoe as he replaces the envelope and moves on to the next table. Despite the scolding, she’s smiling at him, but then, Zoe is always smiling at everyone. “So, catch me up,” he says then. “How many more letters have you gotten?”

“Why are you so invested?” Zoe asks with a laugh, and Eddie shrugs.

“Can’t help it. I was a cultural anthropology major before I stopped being a college student. Things like this are right up my alley.”

“So why’d you drop out, if you love this sort of thing so much?”

“Eh.” Eddie leans back against the counter, throwing the rag over one shoulder and crossing his arms. “College was too . . . academic for me, you know? I prefer to learn as a student of life.” Also, his grades had been shit his first year and he couldn’t afford to pay for school anymore, but she doesn’t need to know that. “So. Letters? And your usual?”

“Yes, please,” she says, pulling her wallet out of her bag to pay. “And I got three more this week,” she tells him. “That’s actually why I’m here. I have a . . . strange favor to ask you.”

“A strange favor, huh?” he repeats as he measures amaretto and white chocolate syrup into a mug. “Well, lay it on me, Miss Sociologist.”

“Okay,” she says, grinning. “I got a letter from someone who didn’t give me a return address. They found my letter here, at Cuppa Joe’s, and challenged me to find a way to get them my reply. All I know is a name and a standing order. So I was hoping that –”

“That you could give me the letter and I would deliver it to the first person with that name to order whatever the drink is?” He smiles at her. “Sure.”

Andi would tell him that he really is too invested in the lives of high school students for comfort, but he can’t help it. Everything about this project is fascinating to him. The two Sociology classes he’d taken in college were the two classes he’d actually done well in. Zoe Ballard choosing Cuppa Joe’s as a platform for this project means he can live it vicariously, so if she’s actually asking him to help with something? Hell yeah, he’s gonna jump on that.

“Well, not quite,” Zoe corrects before he can get too excited. “Just on the off chance that there are two people named Alex in the city who like the same breakfast, I’m gonna give you a note to hand over. Alex will have to give you my name to actually retrieve the letter. Sound doable?”

Alex? Eddie thinks. Someone named Alex from Cuppa Joe’s wrote her a letter? There are only a handful of people that could be, and if it’s who he thinks it is . . .

“Totally,” he says, holding out his hand for the note and letter. “And I will make sure the rest of the crew knows, too, in case I’m not here. We’ve got a little shelf behind the counter we can store it on and everything.”

“You’re the best, Eddie.”

He flashes her a smile. “I try. Gimme the order?”

“An everything–”

“Everything bagel with butter, orange juice, and cappuccino?” Eddie finishes, a knowing twinkle in his eye. It is the Alex he’s thinking of. Oh, this could be fun.

Zoe stops, shuts her mouth, peers at him, then immediately says, “I don’t want to know anything. Don’t you dare give me unsolicited details, Eddie Gillespie. I am a woman of my word, and I swore I wouldn’t inquire. Don’t turn me into a liar.”

Eddie laughs. “Don’t worry, Zoe. I will make sure your Alex gets this.”

“Okay, but do the whole thing, would you?” Zoe insists. “Just because you have the unfair advantage of knowing who this person is doesn’t mean either of us should get to take advantage.”

Eddie laughs again. “Calm down, it probably won’t even be me. I don’t work tomorrow morning.” He lets that slip on purpose, wanting to see her reaction. She positively lights up.

“So this person comes in every morning for breakfast?” she asks. “They’re a regular?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know anything?” Eddie says, teasing. Zoe grimaces.

“I don’t,” she says through clenched teeth. “I don’t.” The second time is slightly more convincing. Slightly. Eddie does everything in his power to keep from laughing at her. “I’m leaving, before you make me give in to temptation.”

Now Eddie laughs out loud, clapping his hands once and rubbing them together in gleeful anticipation. “Oo, this is gonna be fun.”

“I hate you!” Zoe says over her shoulder. Eddie just grins.

“This is gonna be a crazy amount of fun,” he says to himself, watching her disappear out the door. Once she’s gone, he looks furtively around the small space to make sure the coast is clear of any authoritative watching eyes, and then pulls his phone out of his apron pocket and sends a tweet to Andi.

I have a mission for you…

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