She dumped the coffee down the drain, rinsing out her mug before grabbing another K-cup to try again.
“Whoa,” Asa said, his eyebrows raised. “You better not let our accounts person see that kind of waste. She’ll take the coffee machine away from us.”
Lauren was about to say something immature and not even face-savingly clever, but luckily Kiki walked in at that moment and rescued her from herself.
“Hey,” she said, looking from one to the other. “Dolores was asking about you guys. The meeting is starting in five minutes.”
Lauren could vaguely make out noises in the front lobby now, the shuffling and footsteps that indicated more people were arriving. She’d been so wrapped up in this break room melodrama over the coffeemaker that she hadn’t even noticed. Between that and her complete blanking on the meeting in the first place, what was wrong with her? Maybe it was more than just her worrying about her new volunteer role. Maybe it was the grad school application she’d sent off to get her master’s degree in accounting, which she’d told herself she wasn’t sweating. Maybe it was just the holidays, which she’d never liked.
Asa gave her a final salute with his mug, then turned back to Kiki. “Where are we sitting?”
“Top bleacher, next to Saulo.”
At least now the Keurig machine was working perfectly for her. Lauren filled up her mug, making a face at Kiki while she did so.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m running a little behind this morning. I guess I’m . . . distracted.”
“Is it about the visit tonight?”
Kiki was the only person Lauren had told about finishing her guardian ad litem training and her appointment to meet the kid she’d been assigned to for the first time. She probably would’ve kept even that information to herself, except she’d had to take an afternoon off to get fingerprinted. Since Lauren never took time off work, Kiki had been worried and texted her. Lauren hadn’t even thought Kiki was on shift that day, but it was kind of nice. To have someone notice, and care.
“I just don’t even know what I’m doing,” Lauren said. “I’m not good with kids. I mean, I haven’t been around many. But I never know what to say. I’m like, How’s school? and then that’s it, I’m tapped out.”
“I still don’t fully know what a guardian whatever is, but you’re responsible and kind. You’re going to kill it.” Kiki’s eyes widened as her own words seemed to sink in. “It being the role, not the kid. Not that you’d call the kid an it. Pretty sure there’s a whole book about that.”
Lauren smiled. “I knew what you meant.” They were walking together back to the ice skating rink, which was flanked by several sets of bleachers that accommodated everyone when they had these rare staff meetings.
Her gaze scanned the twenty or so faces she’d come to know over the last two years. There were more employees, mostly part-time or seasonal, but they weren’t the core group that came to meetings like this one. Asa had taken his spot on the top bleacher, deep in conversation with Saulo, who worked the front ticket counter. Most people had grouped in their cliques—those who worked the stands on Wonderland Walk, those who did maintenance and back-of-house, the front office people who Lauren assumed she would end up sitting with. Including . . .
She stiffened, and next to her, Kiki sucked her teeth. “Right,” Kiki said. “I was going to warn you . . .”
There, in the bottom row of the bleachers, was Daniel Alvarez. Dolores’ son, vice president of Cold World, and the target of all Lauren’s stupid, pointless infatuation feelings since the first day she’d set eyes on him.
He looked like he should play a sexy doctor on TV—all dark hair and smoldering eyes and perfect teeth. Although he didn’t actually work on site at Cold World very often, when he did he always wore impeccable button-up shirts, stretched over his muscles and ironed within an inch of their life.
The vice president thing was little more than a title, Lauren knew. She wasn’t even entirely sure what he did—something with investments? She’d never had the chance to ask him because she’d spoken approximately five words to him, and she could remember exactly what they were.
“Oh, I don’t handle payroll.”
He’d stopped by her office because he had some question on the last check he’d received, and after blinking up at him for several awkward moments—during which Lauren had the uncomfortable feeling he knew exactly why she was rendered so speechless—she’d come up with that brilliant rejoinder.
It was true, though. They contracted payroll to an outside company, which meant at least Lauren wasn’t put in the uncomfortable position of knowing down to the penny what her coworkers made.
She wished she could say she was subtle in her crush, but Kiki at least had noticed. And once, Dolores had made a joke about wondering when her son was going to settle down, and then given Lauren a look of such pity that she’d literally tossed and turned in bed for nights afterward, prickling with the memory. God, she was pathetic.
“It’s fine,” she said now. “You don’t have to warn me anytime he’s on the premises. I can handle—”
In a completely unrelated, not-affected-by-Daniel move, Lauren tripped slightly on the transition to the carpet around the ice rink, sloshing hot coffee over her hand.
“Ow,” she said, switching the mug to the other hand so she could survey the damage.
“Damn, you okay?” To her credit, Kiki immediately defaulted to concern rather than mocking.
Lauren sucked on the sensitive skin between her thumb and her index finger, trying to soothe the burn. It was probably the exact wrong thing to do, but maybe at least she’d get a trace amount of caffeine in her system from her coffee-drenched skin. She almost couldn’t have blamed Kiki if she had laughed—it was hilarious, after all, how tied up in knots Lauren could get. If Asa knew about her crush—which, god, she would die—and he’d seen her make this kind of an ass of herself, he definitely would’ve laughed.
Her gaze lifted to the bleachers. Daniel was slouched slightly, typing furiously into his phone with both thumbs. With any luck, that meant he hadn’t seen her clumsy moment. She glanced then at Asa—it was the blue hair, she couldn’t not notice him—but he was rubbing the back of his neck, squinting intently at something in the distance. She turned, trying to figure out what he could be looking at, but the only thing she saw was the posted sign with all the ice rink rules.
“Everyone is here—good!” Dolores exclaimed, clapping her hands together. She was a thin, birdlike woman with long black hair streaked with a single, classy line of silver. She’d come over from Cuba when she was a teenager, and worked her way through various service jobs before a well-connected customer had offered to help her start a business. Cold World had been little more than a café with a higher-than-average air-conditioning bill when she started it at twenty-eight, the same age Lauren was now. Thirty years later, she’d built it into a true destination.