Satin Sheets

Anyone who cares lies on satin sheets

Ding!

She heard the bell signifying the same thing every time and looked up. A customer. It was about time.

Ah, this one. The boy. The same boy.

He came often, and she had taken an unusual interest in him. His solemn looks, habitual solitude, and brilliant eyes---big blue eyes that definitely had once held a spark, but now reflected everything that stared into their empty pools. He was undeniably attractive, but always held an air of hostility.

She knew who he was, of course. Ever since he had begun to show up at this café, she had caught herself feeling amazed at how... normal famous people could look. How lost. How---even at times---disheveled.

The blonde boy walked slowly to the counter and sat himself down on a stool. She looked at him expectantly. He cleared his throat. But he didn’t have to speak.

A straight coffee it was. She knew his routine order. She poured, mixed, and stirred without saying a word. The boy stared at the counter.

He shouldn’t look like this---a star shouldn’t look like this, she was thinking. He appeared as always, hair not brushed, clothes thrown on carelessly, a generally unhappy look. It was the vulnerability that scared her---a look that a weathered rock star shouldn’t have.

Ding!

She looked up again, as the boy took a sip from his mug. A cocky looking man, perhaps her age, perhaps older, was squeezing his way around the small round tables to the counter. He arrived and sat down next to the lone boy. After getting himself situated and removing his coat, the man ordered a spiced coffee, special order.

She nodded, smiled (all part of the job description), and set to work. She had barely gotten the cup when the man’s voice pierced her attention.

“Hey, you.”

She looked at him briefly, thinking he was so rudely speaking to her.

“Who does your hair, fucker?”

The object of ridicule was now obvious. However, she promised herself she would not get involved; things like this never ended well, and her intervention rarely altered a situation. She feigned an unusually large interest in the hot drink she was making, but couldn’t resist watching the counter out of the corner of her eye.

The boy hadn’t looked up; his gaze was still fixed to his drink. The customer next to him was looking him up and down with disgust. “You’re rich, right?” the man said. “You don’t look rich. You look like you just stepped out of the back end of some shit-smelling alley.”

It had become physically painful for her to keep out at this point. She wanted to yell at the boy, “Are you going to let him speak to you that way? What are you waiting for? You’re FAMOUS! You don’t have to take it!”

But she said nothing. Whalup, Whalup. A plastic spoon stirred the coffee she was making. Sploop. A scorching drop bounced out of the styrofoam cup onto her thumb. She didn’t notice. She stared at the sad, beautiful blonde boy.

He hadn’t budged, but she thought she could sense an invisible protective covering building its tension around him. The man’s remarks had put it there, and in a way, she was happy to see it. Maybe it could save him---maybe it would remain.

The man suddenly spoke again.

“You’re such a faggot.”

That did it.

For the first time since he had sat down, the boy moved his head. It rotated sideways from the coffee to the man sitting next to him, its eyes opening wider to reveal their spotlights. She almost felt sorry for the man, being glared at with those. She half expected the man to turn to stone, like some sort of reverse Medusa.

Then the boy’s soft voice permeated the air for the first time that night.

“Shut. Up.”

Yes, here it was, here was what she needed, here was the real star coming out. The famous face that had dealt with a million assholes in its lifetime, and a face that knew how to deal with this one.

The man seemed a bit phased by the boy’s blue stare, but he wasn’t about to let his guard down at such a simple response.

“Are you going to make me? What can you do, send your producers on me? You make millions for writing crap sell-out songs---”
---she saw the boy noticeably flinch---
“---and then you don’t even use the money, you let it rot in some bank account while your pathetic loser self wears the same clothes every day and has nothing better to do than sit around in coffee shops all night.”

Satisfied with his retort, the man sat back on his stool as she handed him his coffee and backed away again, where she watched, anxious. The man took a sip from his cup, grinning.

She took a daring glance at the boy. He was looking at the counter again, taking slow, deep breaths. The shell was completely formed now, but he didn’t look like he was going to use it again. She almost cried out in frustration, and turned her back to them, trying to involve herself in the coffee machines.

Then---

“Do you think I really care what you say?”

She whirled around and caught the boy and the man in a locked grip of eyes. Except now there were two men---and the one talking was a rock star.

“You people think you’re on top of the fucking world.” His eyes were blazing blue now, like the hottest part of a flame. “You live in your mansions and drive Porsches and smoke expensive cigarettes and sleep on bigass waterbeds with satin sheets... well, guess what. I won’t have to send anyone on you, because I’ll be living comfortably, just ‘sitting around in coffee shops all night’ when you’re rummaging through fucking garbage cans because you spent all your goddamn money on tacky shit like that suit you’re wearing.” He took a breath, then finished. “Fuck off. I don’t have to waste my time on people like you.”

She wanted to cheer. She wanted to join the whole staff in a big rendition of “Hallelujah!” She wanted to shout “Touchdown!”, bound up to the counter, and plant a kiss on the boy’s near-perfect lips. But she settled for a small, knowing smile, as the other man felt himself cut in half by the burning eyes at last. He looked away, and in that second, she knew her rock star had won.

He gave no victory dance. His eyes simply fluttered back down to the counter, rippling like lakes, as if he had only been diverted from the main attraction of his coffee.

About five minutes later, the other man scooted his stool away from the counter, picked up his coat, and left, leaving his drink still steaming. She watched him leave,
(Ding!)
then took the full cup, dumped the drink out, and bent down to toss the styrofoam into the wastebasket.

She wasn’t exactly sure when it happened, but at some point she looked up again, and the angry blonde man at the counter was gone. His shell, his rockstar-fuck-you covering had fallen away, and in its place sat a sad, lonely boy with unkempt hair staring into a cup of cold coffee.


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