Arielle rushed to bus the table and get all the coffee cups. It was in hour nine of her 12 hour shift and she was sick of the coffee house. She was tired of lame come ons from the college boys, the measly tips, and the unrelieved work.
She gave Axel a begging look and he nodded. He'd cover her tables for a break. She slipped out to the back alley, grabbing a Coke on the way. That was the real joke. She spent more than half her waking life in the damn coffeehouse but she hated the stuff.
After fifteen minutes, she forced herself to go back in, tossing her empty can in the trash. She gave Axel a mouthed thank you. He smiled at her.
'Damn, if he wasn't gayer than Ru Paul...' she thought with a sigh. She grabbed a towel and headed for her circuit, starting with table seven away from the door. She stopped dead in her tracks.
It started with skin-tight black leather pants that showed every sensual curve of a leg, ending in black leather boots with 4" stilleto heels. The pants led up to a trim model. The girl was looking at the coffee list so Valerie risked staring a few moments longer. The girl's hair was short, but sexy, natural black. She wore a sleeveless tee shirt. Valerie realized she was staring at the girl's noticeable breasts when the girl cleared her throat.
Her face burning red, Valerie mumbled, "Can I take your order?" The girl was looking up at her with an amused smile. For an instant, Valerie wondered if she'd seen her before.
"That depends, are you on the menu?"
Valerie stared for a few seconds before laughing slightly. "We're still serving lunch. I'm on the evening menu."
"Well, I'll take a plain old cup of joe and come back tonight," replied the woman with a grin. Valerie felt herself grinning back like a schoolgirl and then hustling away to get the coffee.
'What the hell was that?' she demanded of herself. 'A woman? A woman was getting her heart in a flutter and her panties wet? Since when? Does lesbianism just show up? Sure there'd been that girl in college for a wild weekend, but that was the drinking, right?'
She was annoyed that the same weak come-on she'd heard from a hundred guys had worked from this woman.
She was so flustered that she sent Axel to take the coffee to the woman. She couldn't tell what she would do if she went. The woman drank the cup fairly quickly and was gone. But Valerie was flustered the rest of the day, the faint aroma of leather seeming to linger among all the other strong smells of the coffeehouse.
6pm rolled around and her shift ended, but Valerie didn't leave. She took a table, had a sandwich, and nursed a newspaper for a few hours.
"Why don't you go home, girl?" asked Axel as he put on his own coat. "Need a ride?"
A voice came from behind him. "No, she's riding with me."