"What can I get you?"
Jahseh glances from his phone, down to the croc-caged feet positioned half a metre or so away from him, and then up into a bright set of eyes and an even brighter toothy smile, "Huh?"
"What you having?"
When Jahseh isn't shackled to his desk at Guerrero's, chewing numbers and regurgitating bibles of reports, he's more often than not reclined in one booth of six at his sister's desert shopâhis brother's girlfriend, that is. Small and snug and intimate, with scenes that quarrel his typical aesthetic. Most people wouldn't think to search for him there, all the more reason why it's where he chooses to spend a lot of his time.
Sugar & Spice, endowed by Morgan Spice herself, is adored by each and every resident of Greenwich Millennium Village, yet it's its typically idle scenes that draw back her regulars, with their latest reads or their catalogues of assignments, or even just an innate desire to sit back and relax with Morgan's menu of guilty pleasures. From cookies and cupcakes to waffles and crepes, doughnuts and glazed pastries to ice cream flavours every colour of the rainbow, milkshakes spiked with any confectionery that can fit into a blender to a loaded lineup of coffees and teasâSugar & Spice has it all.
"Morgan, piss off."
"Oi, don't be mean to me, or I'll start charging you," Morgan tuts, her flurry of curls are whisked over her shoulders as she turns on her heel and sashays towards the other side of the counter, "Coming in here everyday eating up all my product."
Jahseh's gaze rolls over the glass-fronted display and back up to Morgan, who busies herself plating Jahseh's concrete orderâa posy of buttery pretzel bites carpeted with enough cinnamon sugar to cure a diabetic, a serving of caramel sauce alongside a larger one of Nutella, and a steaming cup of hazelnut mocha. Jahseh watches her take both his plate and his drink into her hands, and then throws out a hollow, "I'll stain you."
To which Morgan wittily retorts, "Sul will beat you up for me." And Jahseh lets her be, because he knows it's the truth. "Here."
"Love," he mumbles. When Morgan slips into the seat opposing his, her hands slither their way towards his food, she takes one pretzel bite and then another. By the third, Jahseh cuts his glare towards her. Morgan, numb to the daggers he's defaulted to, ignores him, until he swats her away like a nat. Jahseh indulges in his own food minus Morgan's nimble fingers, as she lounges back in her chair. "How's my baby sis?"
"She's fine, you know she likes the Midlands and all the freedom. You could always call and ask her yourself," Morgan suggests, her teeth make a small appearance in her smile, Jahseh's unsure whether it's at the thought of her neice, or the fact Jahseh had asked about her.
Jahseh offers a stiff shrug and a dismissive flag of his hand, "As long as all them man are good."
"Are you good?"
"Hm?"
"How've you been lately?"
In that moment, Jahseh's flattened expression seems all the more flatter. He's yet again confronted with that internal battle he's grown jaded from fighting, torn between a heavy heart and a softened one. To speak or not to speak, where his silence reigns undefeated. He was born to feel, and yet forced to inure to all the hardships he'd weathered. Of all the storms he'd withstood and the floods he'd refused to succumb to, he never thought there'd one day be something he couldn't come out the other side of, yet within the confines of his chest, his heart no longer beat the same. His wrongdoings finally caught up to him, with a sin he couldn't forgive himself forâhe now understood why hurricanes were named after people.
"Move, man."
Although unsurprised by his reticent response, Morgan can't fight the sinking of her stomach nor her shoulders. Nevertheless, she's sure not to let it show. Jahseh is quick to flee at the sight of affection, markedly with respect to himself. She's grown to consider him family over the few years they've come to know each other, but as deeply as she cares for him, she knows she can't force anyone to be vulnerable, especially when they've spent all their lives being the opposite. So, defeated as much, she smiles and says, "I'm always here for you, you know. My favourite in-law."
"Your only in-law," Jahseh scoffs.
"Whatever. Keep your foul mood to yourself, 'cause my friend's stopping by to pick up an order," Morgan says, as she pushes back her chair and makes her way towards the back of the shop. Jahseh dismisses her warning at first, and then decides he ought to take heed of it.
"If it's Ana, tell me now so I can leave," he calls out. Morgan's head reappears through the tassels of the fringed doorway to the restaurant's hidden workshop, where she spends hours on end replenishing orders and taking bookings.
"Oh, stop it. It's my new friend, she just moved in across from Sul's," Morgan replies, before she vanishes once again. "She's really sweet, you'll like her!"
"I won't," he mumbles, too quietly for Morgan to hear. Jahseh spends the next five or so minutes eating his food and sipping sluggishly from his mocha. He blurs out the distant murmur of Morgan's mixer and her subconscious singing that accompanies it, and instead fixes his eyes upon the scenes beyond the four walls of the shop.
Because of this, the white Range Rover Velar that rolls to a chaotic halt before the entryway doesn't go unnoticed by him, nor does the head full of curls that emerges from its driver's side. Jahseh's eyes are practically magnetised to the stranger's approaching figure, whose gaze remains angled to her phone, even as the rusty bell atop the door chimes upon her entrance. At the little of her profile that catches his eyes, Jahseh can already tell the woman is pretty. It's not until she lifts her eyes to the chalked menu-boards behind the counter that he's fully taken aback, awestruck and inwardly choking on sands of cinnamon sugar.
With terracotta skin, doe-like eyes, penciled cheekbones and plum plump lips, Jahseh finds himself quickly correctedâthe woman is beautiful. Her curtains of curls frame her face, but not so much as to completely shroud the temple of her bone structure, so perfectly forged beneath her beaming skin that she looks almost unreal to him. Jahseh's eyes roll over her entirety while she stands in her oblivion, hands tucked into the back pockets of her jeans as she rocks to and fro on her feet. There's a swirling in his stomach and a burning in his cheeks at the sight of her, or so he thinksâhe finds himself subconsciously hoping that she'd steer her attention his way.
When she steps further into the shop and therefore further into his peripheral, Jahseh remains winded by the beauty of her, so much so that he quickly grows annoyed by the fact. On the surface, he still appears his usual prickly self, but beyond it a dormant emotion bubbles and boils, flustered as ever although he refuses to accept it. Instead, he quietly peeves, honing his ears to Morgan's eventual conversation with the woman. He marvels at the air of her laughter and reels at the harmonies of her voice, silently waiting for an introduction that never comes.
Morgan, unheeding to her friend's swelling allure to the woman, gives her her goods and sends her on her way, while Jahseh watches on, too struck with both pride and awe to stop her.
Among their babes and darlings and endearments of the sort, Jahseh latches onto her name and his mind prepares itself not to let it goâEve.
Hm, I like this one.
I promise I've not neglected Favourite Crime, it's just always a process. This book is like, I can write a chapter in one sitting.
Jahseh and Morgan <3
A man who thinks I'm as beautiful as Jahseh does Eve, please and thank you. The fictional men that I create are unfortunately the reason my standards are now so high.
Tell me what you think!