Chapter Text
No one ever beat Tyler Galpin to the store for the opening shift. And, truth be told, he liked it that way. He appreciated that quiet hum of white noise in the twenty minutes he was there before anyone else got there. There was something zen-like about being with only your own thoughts and the neat rows of books at the Prose & Cons Bookstore. If anything, it was much preferred over hearing his three roommates raucously play beer pong until two in the morning like they had last night.
Which meant that coffee was needed immediately. Tyler unlocked the front door before ambling over to the security pad to hammer in the code. When he got there, however, he noticed that no one had activated the security code the night before. He sighed, gritting his teeth, cursing lightly at the closing crew.
“I swear if I find out you two were making out instead of doing your damn jobs…” Tyler started, thinking of how he had caught his closing shift employees, Enid and Ajax, heavily petting in the supply closet versus actually attending to their responsibilities more times than he liked to count. He also knew that he wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it except maybe give them some shit about it.
Sighing, he flicked on one of the lamps that was littered throughout the bookstore, one adjacent to the store’s small barista station. Turning on the espresso machine, he listened to it rumble while it warmed up. In the machine’s shiny chrome, he caught a distorted reflection of his face and sighed: the lines under his eyes were bruise-dark and his curls were touseled to the point of almost being matted. He tried, unsuccessfully, to comb through them with his fingers but that only seemed to make more of a mess. And the dark circles? If only he could just get one good night’s sleep without Lucas, Jonah, and Carter holding another cacophonous party or his insomnia coming for him. But, at least now he had a few moments of quiet and an upcoming Americano to look forward to.
He made his drink quickly and then started a carafe of drip coffee so that when the opening crew - Bianca and Xavier - stumbled for their shifts they could use it to wake themselves up. And so that Xavier wouldn’t be such a fucking grouch and do something for once. Tyler swore if he caught him fiddling with his phone instead of doing his job one more time, he would actually consider firing him. Except he couldn’t fire him if he was being honest. With the holiday season approaching and the store already being short-staffed, he was just going to have to grin and bear Xavier Thorpe’s terrible attitude.
Tyler left most of the lights off while he walked to the back office and break room. Sipping lightly on his Americana, he let the bitter liquid almost scald his tongue. The pain was satisfying in an odd way, working with the caffeine to wake up what he had to admit was a very deep physical exhaustion. Night classes and the opening shift were a brutal combination but there wasn’t really an alternative.
Strolling into the back office, he turned on the overhead light, booted up the office laptop. He punched in the code for the safe and got out the tills, sighing when he saw a note on receipt paper: Cash out was $1.25 short for some reason. Sorry! There was a small littering of hearts and then Enid had signed her name in a too-flourished scrawl. Great, now he was going to have to explain that to Laurel. He thought of the bookstore owner’s pinched face and over-cloying smile when she admonished him for “being too nice” to his employees. Like they weren’t her employees as well and like she gave a shit about the till being short every once in a while. Not like her family didn’t own half the damn town and this was just her way to show that they “gave back to the arts and culture of Jericho” or whatever placating line they liked to use at the yearly Department of Commerce function that he was always forced to attend.
Which was coming up soon, now that he thought about it. Great. Just fucking great. Last year he had evaded the way Laurel’s hands got a little too generous on him after a couple glasses of champagne. Her star employee , she would half-coo, half-slur to Jericho’s upper brass as her fingers trailed across his arms, against the small of his back. And he had to just offer a gritted grin, telling himself this job was just a stop-gap, only temporary. He was going to get his degree and then get into grad school a million miles away from this hellhole town. But it didn’t make his boss’s advances on him any less fucking creepy.
Tyler left the till for a second, deciding this was a problem for after the caffeine had taken effect. He strolled into the breakroom, pitch-black still, and that’s why he didn’t remotely see what was coming when he flicked on the overhead fluorescent light.
The light flickered on, and there sitting at the employee lunch table was a small figure, a young woman, clad entirely in black, glaring at him as if he had truly offended her.
“Holy crap!” He yelped, jumping back, his fight or flight instinct confused; while he probably should immediately run outside and call the cops, this wisp of a girl seemed hardly worth that level of panic. And, she was just sitting there, looking at him expectedly. So, instead, Tyler rocked back on his heels, still ready to retreat, but he hedged, “Who the hell are you?”
She regarded him coolly for only a second before she said flatly, “You said in the job description that punctuality was a preferred quality of an employee.”
He blinked, his brain trying to rapidly process the scene in front of him. He had planned an interview today, with Enid’s roommate who she had vouched for.
“She’s a little eccentric,” Enid had warned but then smiled, “But oh my god, she’s so smart. And funny. If you’re into dark humor at least.”
Eccentric was a bit of an understatement, Tyler decided. The woman in front of him was sitting stiffly, her back ramrod straight. Her fingers, nails painted inky black, were clutched around her knees. Everything about her seemed ready for some sort of intense interrogation. And her dark eyes bored into him, unblinking. The two braids on either side of her head seemed as tightly wound as the rest of her body. Not one iota of her body language looked phased that she had broken into the place of employment that she was interviewing for.
“ You’re Wednesday?” He asked, finally, eyebrow lifted. “Enid did say you were a little… kooky.”
“I prefer spooky,” she countered quickly.
“Sure,” Tyler drawled and then finally allowed himself to breathe, realizing he was not getting robbed by a woman who was probably about ninety pounds soaking wet but also gave off the vibe that she would give him a fair fight. “Do you make a habit of scaring the hell out of people?”
“It’s more of a hobby.” She cocked her head to the side. “Do you generally start interviews in this fashion, or does it get more tortuously tedious than this?”
Tyler smoothed down the front of his shirt, still trying to calm his nerves. Honestly, he should tell her that this was entirely inappropriate, that he wasn’t going to interview someone who literally just broke into the store they were planning on working for. But the fact of the matter was that he needed someone desperately. The store always got nuts after Halloween when the holiday shopping kicked in, and the paltry pay that Laurel was willing to offer store employees made it difficult to get anyone, let alone keep them. Hell, the local supermarket paid the cashiers a dollar more an hour than Prose & Cons did.
Also, he had to admit that there was something compelling about this strange woman in front of him, something that had him taking a breath and asking, “Do you generally start interviews by breaking and entering the place you’re planning on interviewing at?”
“There was no need to break anything,” she retorted, looking clearly unaffected by his sarcastic question. “I could have picked the lock on your front door while I was asleep as a child.”
He gawked at her. The lock to the store involved two sets of keys and an industrial-strength deadbolt. If he wasn’t kind of pissed, Tyler would have been impressed. “You… picked the lock? To the store.”
“Naturally,” she replied, again, her voice an emotional deadpan, as if this was a standard procedure for her. “And Enid keeps the keypad code written on a sticky note on our fridge.” She eyed him coolly over the fringe of her dark bangs. “You really should have a conversation about security with your employees.”
He regarded her in shock for a long second, also silently cursing Enid for being such a ditz sometimes. Not that Ajax probably hadn’t done the same thing, but still . Then, finally, he said, “Okay, so, for the record, usually I would ask you to leave.”
She glared at him like this affected her zero percent.
Tyler sighed. “But since you’re already here, and we actually do need someone, um… do you want a coffee or something?” He looked down at his cup and then offered, “I have a pot brewing. It should be done by now.”
“Drip?” She asked, arching a brow.
“Um, yeah?” He then stuttered, “We have cream and sugar, too.” Why was he basically apologizing to her for the current coffee offerings? He needed caffeine and he needed to get himself together. He did not need to be so disarmed by this person, despite the fact that she was intense and possibly also a criminal.
She stood. “Drip is for people who hate themselves and know their lives have no real purpose or meaning.” Quickly and cat-like quietly, she moved past him and back into the store, saying over her shoulder. “I’ll take a quad, instead.”
Blinking, Tyler took three seconds to process his current situation and that he had just been bossed around by a prospective employee. Quickly, he took after her, catching up to say, “Uh, sure?”
“It’s four shots of espresso,” she said flatly as if he didn’t know what a quad was. Reaching the espresso machine, she offered him a raised eyebrow. “A Dalla Corte? For a town as pathetically reductionist as Jericho, it could be… worse.”
Well, now he knew her feelings as a whole about the town, not that he disagreed with her in the slightest. A small smile tugged on his lips when he said, “Yeah, our old one broke last year. The fact that I convinced my boss to buy this one is probably my greatest achievement as an employee.” He stopped, and tipped his head at her, “Wait. You’re versed in expresso machines?”
Wednesday regarded him for a long second before she reached into her small, black leather backpack. Plucking out a piece of paper, she shoved it toward him in a way that did not invite any debate on whether he would take it. “Yes. It’s on my resume. Along with the various other skillsets that should be adequate for the…” here, she shuddered, “... store associate role.”
He took the paper gingerly, scanning it briefly. It seemed to have been made with a typewriter, which seemed in line with the descriptive eccentric that Enid had bestowed on her roommate. Tyler read through briefly: she was a current student at Nevermore University, which was what all the staff at Prose & Cons was composed of. Well, except him. The thought of him ever going to that stuffy, prestigious school tucked away in the tall hills of Jericho was almost laughable. So, Jericho Community College called his name after high school, and now he was stuck working with a gaggle of rich, self-important Nevermore students. He guessed most of them were alright, and, in some cases, pretty cool. But, on the whole, the Nevermore student body always had this air about them like they couldn’t give you the time of day let alone come work with you.
Wednesday, though? She seemed entirely unapproachable, but in a different sort of way, like she bestowed this level of cool indifference to everyone without bias.
And, without asking for any further permission, she set about turning on the espresso bean grinder and tamping down the grounds into the basket. She screwed the portafilters into the machine with a strength that confirmed his suspicions that she shouldn’t be underestimated in a fight. Sliding four shot glasses under the spouts, she started the brewing process and then glared up at him.
“It’s really not my most engaging writing,” she noted, nodding at the resume. “And I didn’t add my past assistantship at the mortuary. I didn’t think that working with dead bodies would be relevant for the current position.”
He almost choked on his sip of Americano. “Yeah, um, you’ll be dealing with a lot less dead bodies here at Prose and Cons.” He offered her a small, grim smile, “I would hope at least. Although this is a mystery and thriller-themed bookstore, I’m guessing you’re aware?”
“I am,” she replied curtly before taking the shot glasses and emptying them delicately yet quickly into a small mug. “In fact, several of my books are in stock on your shelves.”
Again, he gawked, unsure if he had heard her right. “Your… books?” He blinked at her as she took a delicate sip of her quad. “You’re a published author?”
“Do you have a policy of stocking unpublished authors on your shelves?”
Tyler couldn’t help but keep a slightly agape expression on her. “Um, well, no. Fair enough.” He eyed her for a long moment, and then asked, “Can I ask what the title of your books are?”
She seemed to debate answering for a long second before saying, “I publish under a pseudonym. W. A. Shelley. I write the…”
“... Viper De La Muerte series,” he finished for her, disbelief permeating his words.
“You know it?” She sounded vaguely impressed, or as much as Tyler could assume she ever sounded impressed.
“Um, yeah? Of course.” He shook his head and gave her an incredulous smile. “They’re kind of popular.”
She shrugged as if this mattered about as much to her as if someone had offered her a cup of drip coffee. “They’ve seen moderate success, I suppose.”
Tyler had read them. All of them, actually. They were the brutal, Nordic-type of thriller-mystery, the one with a hardboiled, professional sleuth heroine who didn’t take shit and was always a problem for the local DA. Something like a gothic and American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , but five times more gory. And they were good; well-plotted, full of interesting and complex characters, and he honestly never saw the gnarly twists coming. The fact that this slip of a woman who couldn’t be more than twenty-two years old was the author of said novels? It was frankly blowing his mind.
Also, another thing wasn’t computing. “Why in the hell do you want to work here ?” Tyler blurted out and then checked himself when she raised an appraising eyebrow at his outburst. He chuckled and then said quickly, “I mean, you’re a successful author. You have a…” he scanned her resume to make sure he had read it correctly and then continued, “... a 4.3 GPA? I don’t even know how that’s possible.”
“Honor classes,” she said blandly, rolling her eyes. “They claim they’re more difficult, so they incentivize them with a weighted GPA average. It would make sense if those classes weren’t as much of a joke as the general education ones.”
Okay, sure, of course this strange woman in front of him would think that the honors classes of the already-rigorous academics of Nevermore University were a joke. Clearing his throat, he said, “No offense, but if you find the honors classes at Nevermore kinda boring, you’re probably going to find working at Prose & Cons a real snoozefest.” He winced as her eyes flittered in reaction to the term snoozefest. He internally chided himself. God, he could be such a dork sometimes.
But then, rather than level another one of her rather blanche statements at him, she looked almost shyly into her quad and offered, “I have some deficiencies with… human interaction.” She straightened her spine suddenly, recovering her uptight quality quickly, “Not that it bothers me, of course. But, Enid has suggested it may be why I am having some issues with writer’s block. I tend to agree: I think a job that challenges me in said deficiencies would help unblock me. Also, it would probably help with my insomnia.”
That caught his attention. A pang of empathy hit him, eyeing her for what felt like really the first time, catching the way her own eyes were lined in the same kind of dark circles as his. Every other part of her seemed rather polished and buttoned-up, but those bruise-dark lines were telltale and he knew exactly what it felt to be that person who was floating throughout the day, trying to engage on a normal level all the while knowing another night of tossing and turning was waiting for you even though you were so fucking exhausted.
And then he evaluated her as a manager, turning his critical eye on her resume, weighing the pros and cons of her as a candidate. She had a smattering of internships and assistantships, including one at Nevermore’s literary journal. She had worked at the university library on what was noted as a “work study” program. And she was a fairly well-known author, even if her government name wasn’t the one printed on the actual books. The per-hour amount was advertised in the job description, so she must not have been turned off by the meager pay.
Also, Tyler was desperate for another person. He knew the madhouse that this place became when the holiday season rolled around and the thought of having to face it with just the four-and-a-half of them (Xavier was a pointedly only .5 employee) was migraine-inducing.
Additionally, he had just watched her navigate a very European and somewhat complicated espresso machine with an ease that frankly had him half-hard in appreciation.
“Can you make anything other than a quad?” He asked her after that long moment of evaluating silence.
Wednesday took another sip of her drink before saying smugly, “You really shouldn’t insult your brand-new employee.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said, although he couldn’t suppress the grin on his face at her level-headed cockiness. “Okay, hotshot, if you’re so sure of yourself, can you make me a mocha?”
Her expression was borderline horrified. “A mocha?” Her face paled lightly. “Do people actually order those?”
The laugh that left him was completely unbidden, but then he realized she was a thousand percent serious. Then, shaking his head, he said with a chuckle, “It’s probably our most popular drink.”
“And you just let people order that?”
He couldn’t stop chuckling. “Listen, we don’t get to place moral judgments on our customers. They order it, we make it.”
Wednesday glowered at him for a long moment, like an internal war was happening inside her head. “ Fine ,” she hissed before turning to the espresso machine while muttering, “I knew there was a reason I’m not a people person. All of them, mocha-loving psychopaths.”
That felt rich coming from the person who had penned the unusually brutish Viper De La Muerte series, but Tyler kept his lips zippered from comment.
She moved quickly, not asking him once for help. Emptying out the baskets in the trash, she quickly rinsed them before refilling one with espresso grounds. Her eyes scanned briefly the syrups that stood arrayed next to the drip coffee maker before she pumped some chocolate syrup into the bottom of a mug. Flicking the frothing wand on for only a second to see if it was steaming, she nodded at the acceptable amount of heat. Making quick work of frothing the milk, her eyebrows drawn at attention, she was finished almost perfectly in sync as the espresso finished brewing. Her hands flew quickly to dump the espresso in the mug first, mixing lightly so that the chocolate syrup was blended well. And then, she carefully poured in the warm milk, layering on the frothed milk on top, moving her hands in what looked like a way to create some fancy pattern that Tyler had been working on himself for the customers that he liked best.
Then, with a frown, she brought him the mug, setting it rather unceremoniously in front of him. “One mocha for the man who wants to watch the world burn,” she growled, clearly grumpy at the fact that she had just been forced to make a drink that she found offensive at best.
Tyler eyed the drink, noticing that the pattern that she had swirled into the frothed milk looked suspiciously like a middle finger. He almost choked in surprise, but merely nodded appreciatively. “Not bad. Now, let’s see what it tastes like.”
He took a sip and wasn’t at all upset at the taste. The milk didn’t have the sometimes burnt taste that pervaded Ajax’s concoctions. The warm milk to frothed milk ratio was perfect. It was a little more bitter than what the average Prose & Cons customer wanted, but otherwise, it was the quintessential mocha drink, sans the rather inflammatory coffee artwork.
Taking another sip, he asked, “How do you know your way around an espresso machine anyway?” He hadn’t seen anything on her resume to indicate actual barista work experience.
“Another hobby,” she offered, and when he only blinked at her, she shrugged. “I’ve been making espresso since I was child. Although Enid insists this is… odd, my family appreciates the more bitter things in life. Coffee drinks included.”
Okay, fair enough, considering every part of her black-clad visage seemed to echo that this would totally be the kind of household she grew up in.
So, that was it, then? Tyler hesitated only a second, not believing he was about to hire the person who had broken into his store and just told him to fuck off via coffee art. But, honestly, he’d made worse hires; Xavier Thorpe was evidence of that.
“This is probably only a seasonal gig,” he started, watching her face for a reaction. When she didn’t balk at the temporariness of the position, he continued, “After the holiday season, we can talk about how we could continue, but I can’t promise anything.”
She nodded. “Acceptable. The job description said as much.”
He fiddled with the end of her resume, suddenly feeling sheepish. “You’d be working with me in the morning shifts, here in the cafe. It said on your application that you’re available in the mornings every day? Are you sure that doesn’t conflict with your classes?”
“I only do night classes,” she remarked, coolly. “I think best at night.”
Tyler could relate; it was why his insomnia was relentless. His damn brain was perpetually exhausted but wouldn’t turn off as soon as night rolled around. But he didn’t feel like revealing that would do any good, so he continued, “I’ll have to do office work for the middle shift, so you’ll be alone in the cafe from noon to two. Then the night shift takes over. You’re going to be ok by yourself for that long? You know, with the mocha-loving psychopaths ?”
Her lips pursed in a way that was somehow adorable, but Tyler squashed this thought quickly. “It will be a learning opportunity,” she said through gritted teeth and he merely grinned widely at her.
“Customer service is an… acquired taste,” Tyler offered, although he tended to agree with her sentiment. As much as he had learned to deal with working with the public, there was always that one person who insisted on stirring some level of wrath inside him.
Of course, there were people like Enid who thrived off it, with her hive of adoring customers who came in just to have her rave over the newest novel she had finished and loved (most of them involving cozy mysteries with a cat featured as the main character). There was also a level of local gossip that was indulged in during those conversations, but Tyler had pointedly decided to ignore that.
“Alright,” he said finally, resigning to the fact that he was doing this. “When exactly can you start, Wednesday…” he checked her resume, scanning for her last name, “... Addams?”
She flashed him what seemed like the biggest smile she ever offered anyone, which meant it was slight at best. Then, her smile dissolved and she asked, “Did you ever plan on telling me your name?”
“Oh! Right!” He chuckled and then extended his hand for a shake. “I’m Tyler. Tyler Galpin. I’m the store manager.”
She stared at his hand like she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. But then, she took it gingerly, her palm cool and dry. Her intense dark eyes met his own when she asked, “How about I start today, Tyler Galpin?”