Punch, Pastries, and Poison by Harper Lin (ebook reader for pc and android .txt) 📕

in the baggy black T-shirt, one of which was a slash across her abdomen that left a gaping swath of her midriff exposed.

Her acid-washed jeans were similarly scattered with holes. If they hadn’t somehow been still attached to her, I would have thought she ran them through a shredder.

I looked at Sammy imploringly, silently begging her to tell me I was looking at the wrong girl.

Instead, she leaned over and said quietly in my ear, “It’s the fashion.” She inclined her head slightly towards a group of college-aged girls who had set up camp at one of the tables with their laptops, a stack of pastries, and their lattes. Their clothes, too, looked like they’d spent some time at the mercy of a razor.

I sighed and resolved myself to ignoring her outfit. And her lateness. And her hair needing a visit with a comb. I took one more look at Sammy, hoping she’d finally admit that Persephone was a no-show, then walked around the counter to the girl. “Hi, Persephone?” I gave her a warm smile and stuck out my hand. “I’m Fran. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She stared down at my hand before slowly taking it, if you could call what she did taking it. It was more like she slipped her hand limply into mine and allowed me to attempt to shake it. The second I released it, she pulled it back and wiped it on her jeans.

I clenched my teeth and forced myself to keep smiling. “Why don’t you follow me to the back and we can get started?” I turned and headed for the back, catching Sammy’s eye on the way. I widened my eyes, knowing she’d caught every second of the awkward greeting and attempt at a handshake. She grinned back at me but didn’t make any movement to let me know that this was an elaborate joke, which I was still wishing it was.

My hopes momentarily dashed, I led Persephone to the back, pulled up a chair opposite mine, and sat down, gesturing for her to do the same.

She peered down at it, made a face, brushed off whatever invisible dirt she thought she saw, and sat down, perching on the very edge of the chair.

I gritted my teeth some more, then smiled big. “So, Persephone, what makes you want to work here at Antonia’s?”

I listened to the seconds literally tick away on the little wall clock above my computer. It slowly dawned on me that she hadn’t spoken at all yet. Could she speak? We had arranged the interview by email, so she hadn’t had to speak then. But wouldn’t she have mentioned it? I picked up her application in case she’d written it down there and I just hadn’t noticed. “Um, do we—” I started, wondering if we needed to work out another means of communication. Before I could finish my sentence, she finally spoke up.

“It’s Ephy.”

I looked up at her, trying to figure out what on earth she’d just said. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s Ephy,” she repeated in a monotone. “You keep calling me Persephone, but no one calls me that.”

I forced a smile as I glanced down at the empty spot on the application labeled “nickname.” I held my pen over it. “E-F?”

She stared at me.

I held back a sigh.

“P-H.”

I smiled and nodded. “I?”

She cocked her head to the side with an expression like she thought I was talking nonsense.

“E-P-H-I?” I enunciated each letter.

She heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes. “Why?”

I could feel my smile getting more patronizing by the second. I clenched the pen tighter in my fingers. “I just want to be able to spell your name correctly.”

Again with her condescending look. I resisted the urge to stand up and show her straight to the door. “So, you spell it E-P-H-I?”

“Why?” she asked again, sounding even more irritable.

I was halfway to standing when it clicked. I sank back down in my chair, my face feeling like it was on fire, and wrote down the letter Y at the end of her name. She hadn’t been being difficult at all. She was spelling her name just as I asked. No wonder she was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “Oh, of course, sorry about that.” I smiled again, deciding I was going to have a new attitude towards her and the interview. “So, what makes you want to work here?”

“I, like, really like coffee and stuff?”

So much for the new attitude. “Have you ever used a professional-grade espresso machine?”

“Yeah?”

“What kind?”

She rattled off a list of high-end espresso machines, some of which even I hadn’t even used.

I was surprised. I looked again at her resume, which definitely didn’t list any coffee shop experience. “Have you worked in a coffee shop before?”

She shrugged as her eyes wandered the room. “Just filling in for people? Like, my friends and stuff?”

I nodded, but I was skeptical. Hiring someone who needed to be taught how to use the machine from the bottom up would give me more work to do, not less. And if she needed to learn that from scratch, I’d probably have to teach her how to make all the drinks too. Between her attitude and her lack of experience, it wasn’t looking good for her. But I was afraid I wasn’t giving her a fair chance. I’d already leapt to a conclusion about her once. I’d never been responsible for hiring before, and I didn’t want to screw it up. I needed help—good help—in the café, and I wouldn’t get it by cutting interviews off after a couple of questions.

I took a deep breath and, despite my better judgement, plowed ahead.

Chapter 2

The rest of the interview actually wasn’t a disaster. Not completely anyway. Her answers to my questions always seemed to end in a question mark, but they were reasonable. And she actually had a good response to how she would handle a crowded café with refills, orders, and dirty tables all needing attention. But as I led