Fic: La Forchette
Title: La Forchette
Author: vinvy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Allusions to future Frank/Jamia... maybe... if you squint.
Summary: Jamia works at La Forchette. Frank Iero is the last thing she needs to deal with today.
Word Count:~2800
Warnings: profanity, past abuse, sore feet, angst, charming mafiosos, a total lack of resolution, author's inability to spell in Italian
Disclaimer: Beware the fallacies that fangirls speak
A/N: I could have sworn I'd posted this before. It's not on my journal here, though, so have at it y'all.
Sunday lunch hours are the best for business at La Forchette and the worst for Jamia Nestor’s stress levels. Mass up at Our Lady of the Snows makes the whole neighborhood hungry. The verdant lull over the street vanishes in a flurry of cars packed with well-dressed churchgoers. Coffee percolating complements the chipper jingle of the bell above the bistro door.
Jamia ties her apron in a tight bow and double checks that her cell phone is locked away beneath the cash register. David can send her irate texts and leave desperate voicemails to his rotten heart’s content- she’s got work to do that’s more important than him. They haven’t spoken in three days and she plans on keeping up the habit.
The wave of the lunch rush is easy to ride. She drops off hot plates their signature scampi- Kroger has outdone himself at last- and steaming mugs of espresso. Yogurt parfait to the lady at table three. Mediterranean chicken to the scruffy guy by the counter. Help Kroger fix a spaghetti crisis and almost kick Maria in the shin for looking too sympathetic after showing up twenty minutes late.
She makes small talk with the little old lady who always orders lasagna and smells like perm. Mop up spilled tea and sweep tips into her apron pocket on the way back to the kitchen for a pitcher of water. Snatch up a high chair for the couple with the toddler standing awkwardly in Maria’s section.
The bruise on her cheek must be showing through her melting foundation, if the sad glances she gets from married women are any indicator. Peachy. Absolutely peachy keen. The last thing she needs is for the lunch rush ladies to judge her for her shitty life choices. She’s broken up with David and that’s all that should matter now!
Stress walks through the cheerful door as she stoops to tie her shoe, pulling a muscle in her lower back. It turns out that the last thing she needs is really for Frank Iero and his “family” to waltz into La Forchette. Jamia has a few seconds to come to the conclusion that the big blond guy must be Iero’s new body guard- and wonder about what happened to the old one- before relief and breaking glass distract her. The gaggle of guys in suits and fedoras sit in Maria’s section and Jamia needs to track down the mop again.
She swipes a stray lock of hair back under her headband and gets her head back into the groove of the bistro. Three hours are left until her shift is over. She can so totally do this. No, really, she can.
She can... until Johnny calls in sick at half-past two and Maria ducks out early for an appointment. The lunch rush is over and it’s just Jamia, Kroger, and heaven-sent-manager Andy to gear up for dinner. Andy assures her that she’s making double time for this when she shuts herself in the bathroom for a few minutes of peace.
The money isn’t much consolation. Every muscle she has is sore and she needs to get an ice pack for her face. She has to go to the campus laundromat now that she’s living in the dorms again- she doesn’t even want to think about unpacking the garbage bags. She’s pretty confident that her computer got left in David’s apartment.
Jamia sighs and splashes water on her face. It’s time she got out of this funk. Screw David. The laptop isn’t that important. David can go fall off a cliff with a bunch of lemmings. That makes her want to cry and her break suddenly takes ten minutes longer than allotted.
When she drags herself out of the bathroom (hands scrubbed, hair in a tight bun) Andy isn’t around to scold her for taking too long and Kroger is out front smoking. Aside from Frank Iero sitting at the counter (his bodyguard is pretending to be inconspicuous at a corner table) the cafe has gone empty.
She give him her best I-didn’t-break-up-with-my-abusive-stalker-boyfriend-last-week smile. “Anything I can get for you, Mr. Iero?”
Beneath the cash register her cell buzzes mournfully for the fifth time in two minutes. It’s a miracle it hasn’t exploded- maybe she’ll throw it away and move to the woods and go all the way off the grid for a while.
“My dad is “Mr. Iero”. My name is Frank.”
“Okay, Frank, can I do anything for you?” She runs a towel over the top of the counter to keep her nervous hands busy.
“Take some aspirin,” he says, pulling a bottle out of his jacket pocket, “you feet must be killing you. I don’t think this place would run without you.”
That makes her laugh because the son of the city’s most powerful man agrees with her secret suspicion. She takes the aspirin even though she knows she shouldn’t, checking to make sure the pills say “Bayer” in tiny font before swallowing them dry. It wouldn’t be good for business to be rude to the son of an acquitted mafioso and she really does need some pain relief.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Anything else? A tap dance maybe? I did take lessons once,” she jokes.
Frank smiles. “I think you’d slap me if I said “stand there and look beautiful” so how about one of those caramel macchiatos that I’ve heard so much about?”
He is not that charming and Jamia isn’t blushing. If she doesn’t think about it then it isn’t real. She gets right to working the espresso machine.
Frank must pick up on her discomfort with his flirting because he starts chatting about the weather, of all things. It’s been unseasonably warm, thanks to global warming probably, and it sucks to go to mass in a church without AC and it makes zero sense that they have no AC because the Church is a pretty modern institution- Frank is good at carrying on a conversation solo. There’s no space for Jamia to make a comment or play devil’s advocate like she wants to. It’s pretty clear that Frank doesn’t get out much so she let’s him ramble over his macchiato while she straightens things up in preparation for the customers that should be trickling their way in any time now.
Evenings are more smooth than afternoons as a rule. There are more couples on first dates, looking for quaint restaurants that offer high-quality cooking and it’s a lovely coincidence that La Forchette offers just that. Jamia bounces between being a hostess and waiting tables while Andy slips into an apron and busses then seats anyone she doesn’t have time for. Her boss has got to be one of the best in the world.
The soreness in her legs turns to numbness and the failing light makes it harder for anyone to see her bruised face. Without children running around there are far fewer messes to clean. Adults require more attention, though. Back and forth for refills on the house wine or glasses of real Italian soda. It’s hard to find a balance between efficient service and friendly service but she manages to make it work. She gets a great tip from an elderly couple out for their fortieth anniversary that just about makes her night.
Jamia doesn’t get out of the groove until Andy tells her to close up shop (she takes back what she said about him being the best) after the last customer leaves. This is weird because the redhead usually has no issues with kicking people out to go home to their families- this isn’t a bar- but then she glances around and sees- who else?- Frank Iero slouching over a table. Of course.
The last time she checked, this isn’t the 1920’s and mobsters don’t get special privileges. Especially at nine o’clock at the end of the hardest week of Jamia’s life.
Iero’s pin-striped suit is wrinkled and his tie undone. He’s mussing his short hair and taking notes in the margins of a heavy textbook, muttering to himself like a normal, stressed out college kid. It makes her pause and reconsider sending him on his way. That second is enough for Frank to look up and smile.
“Closing time, right?” He stretches and cracks his knuckles. He closes his book and writes something on a napkin. His eyes flicker to the aching side of Jamia’s face for the first time, “If you need any help with that rat problem, call me. I know a guy.” Then he tucks the book under his arm and leaves, the body guard appearing out of nowhere to walk along behind him.
Jamia stares after them then looks down at the phone number scrawled on the paper napkin. “Rat problem”, he’d said. Laughable phrasing that was, so blatantly obvious. There’s no other real way to describe it, though. She has a problem with vermin.
Stacking the last of the chairs onto a table she sighs. She’s grown up being taught to take bullshit from no man which is why she walked out the night David hit her but she knows it’d been going on longer than that. All the “warning signs” she learned about in high school had been there but she’d ignored them. Being with a jerk was better than being alone, right?
Jamia shoves the napkin into the bottom of her apron pocket instead of throwing it away. He’d stuck around through both of her shifts to give it to her- she won’t call him about her “infestation” but that doesn’t mean she’s about to be unappreciative of his wasted day.
The door gives one last jingle of farewell when she’s done straightening everything up. The street lamps make everything feel a little warmer and though it’s the most irrational thing in the world Jamia feels hopeful that she can put David behind her.
~~
Frank Iero, it seems, now has nothing better to do with his spare time than hang out at La Forchette, drinking the espresso in the back corner with his nose stuck in a book. This distracts her so much that Maria has to say her name twice to get her to look away.
“You do know today is your day off, right?”
“I just can’t get enough of this place,” Jamia says, letting the taller woman pull her into a motherly hug. She misses the days when they had the same shift schedule- Jamia and Maria made a dream team and work went by so easily that Maria had bothered to show up on time and stay as late as needed.
“Whatever you need to do. Sit down wherever you want- you still like peppermint mochas?”
She meanders to a table that’s the farthest away from Iero and his cool Black Flag shirt and textbooks. “Just coffee, thanks.”
“You’re missin’ out, Mia.”
Jamia pulls out her phone and cringes when she finally works up the courage to turn it on. It buzzes for three minutes straight with unopened text messages and voicemails. The breeze coming through the bistro’s open windows gives her a nice dose of fresh air to steel her nerves. She calls her voicemail.
“Mia... Baby we really need to talk...” David purrs out of the small speaker. She presses 7 to delete and waves a hand in thanks when Maria drops off her coffee. “Jamia, I didn’t mean it-” he gets out one sob in this one. There are a few more with David blubbering about how she’s his whole world and that he just can’t help getting mad. She can almost smell the vodka. There’s one that sounds like he’s jerking off which makes her choke on her coffee and stab the 7 key violently.
David goes from crying to semi-coherent, proposing they meet in a public place to talk things over. He starts in on the vodka again and he starts to get angry. The yelling doesn’t really bother her as much as it would anyone else- she’s used to it- but the bellows of rage coming out of her cell phone do make it hard to hear for a while after. When her hearing comes back the last voicemail is mid-sentence. “Jamia, you perfect, beautiful little cunt. You’re so fucking oblivious. Stupid. Asleep. You don’t like being hit? How about being cut up?”
She drops her phone from her ear, white-faced. She swallows. He’s crazy. Drunk and crazy and there is no way he could have seen her sleep because the only window looks into the dorm’s courtyard and that is closed to the public.
A painted china mug smelling of peppermint is set in front of her. Frank Iero is on the other end of the hand doing the setting. “May I sit here? If not, I’ll leave.”
“I don’t care,” she says, feeling hollow.
“You look a little pale- have you eaten? I could get you-”
“I don’t need pity pasta from the place I work at,” she snaps with more venom than she expected.
Frank sits down, looking surprised. “It isn’t “pity” pasta. It’s “I think you’re pretty and I was raised to feed pretty girls with absolutely no strings attached” pasta. If that’s a round-about yes we can always go somewhere else- they have great veggie burgers up the street. If you’re not hungry I won’t push it.”
He’s ridiculously sincere and that makes her feel even dizzier. She goes out on a limb and says it. “I’m not hungry.”
“Okay. Is anything the matter?” His eyebrows are drawn together in worry.
Fuck. This niceness is getting uncomfortable. “Rat problem.”
“Ah,” he nods. “I know how that goes. Say, you’re in school right? Are you any good with history? I’ve got this killer essay due and it is kicking my ass in every way possible.”
The subject change throws her. School. She can do that, especially essay advice. It’s concrete and stable and not frightening in the least.
“Hey! What the fuck do you think you’re doing? She’s mine.”
Jamia thinks she’s hallucinating at first but it isn’t like David hasn’t shown up here- though before it was to whisk her away for an adventure before the end of her shift. David towers beside her little table, the master of popping up out of nowhere - how did she ever think that was cute?
“The last time I checked slavery was still unconstitutional, so, no, Miss Nestor isn’t your property.” Frank doesn’t flinch when the other man yanks him up by the collar of his shirt. His face hardens into a warning. “You do not want to do this,” he says to David in a low tone.
People are staring and Jamia wants to crawl in a hole and die of humiliation. As it is her face is a perfect red accent to the caramel-colored marble flooring.
He pulls back one arm. “Like hell-”
“Bob?” Frank says, interrupting and confusing David enough to make him pause.
The blond body guard grabs David from behind and puts him into an arm lock that has David tugging Bob? around in a circle trying to escape. Bob does something to make David yelp and he leads him out the door before any more yelling can happen.
“Sorry about the disturbance, “ Frank announces.
Jamia can hear him from where she’s closed herself in the linen closet. She’s having a little trouble breathing and if one more person looks at her like that- like she’s a puppy on some commercial - she’s going to scream. A light knocking on the door makes her jump.
“Jamia? Are you okay? Shit...” Frank’s voice stumbles awkwardly, “Can I call you ‘Jamia’ or is that too forward? Miss Nestor?”
“”Miss Nestor” is my mother.” She starts refolding a table cloth so that the creases will be perfect.
“... Are you okay, Jamia?”
That makes her snap, “Are you stupid?”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Stop being so fucking nice to me. Go away. Leave me alone.”
The lengthy silence lets the sounds of the bistro seep under the door. Happy chatter and clinking silverware. They’re forgotten the near-fight already. There might be hope for her day yet.
“I can do that. No one’s going to let that bastard fuck with you anymore, okay?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Now that Frank has opened the door on profanity everything feels a lot better.
“We’re just not going to put up with him bothering you. Or anyone, for that matter. I hope that helps. I’m gonna go now - my class starts at noon.” His hand taps lightly on the door in lieu of a goodbye.
Author: vinvy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Allusions to future Frank/Jamia... maybe... if you squint.
Summary: Jamia works at La Forchette. Frank Iero is the last thing she needs to deal with today.
Word Count:~2800
Warnings: profanity, past abuse, sore feet, angst, charming mafiosos, a total lack of resolution, author's inability to spell in Italian
Disclaimer: Beware the fallacies that fangirls speak
A/N: I could have sworn I'd posted this before. It's not on my journal here, though, so have at it y'all.
Sunday lunch hours are the best for business at La Forchette and the worst for Jamia Nestor’s stress levels. Mass up at Our Lady of the Snows makes the whole neighborhood hungry. The verdant lull over the street vanishes in a flurry of cars packed with well-dressed churchgoers. Coffee percolating complements the chipper jingle of the bell above the bistro door.
Jamia ties her apron in a tight bow and double checks that her cell phone is locked away beneath the cash register. David can send her irate texts and leave desperate voicemails to his rotten heart’s content- she’s got work to do that’s more important than him. They haven’t spoken in three days and she plans on keeping up the habit.
The wave of the lunch rush is easy to ride. She drops off hot plates their signature scampi- Kroger has outdone himself at last- and steaming mugs of espresso. Yogurt parfait to the lady at table three. Mediterranean chicken to the scruffy guy by the counter. Help Kroger fix a spaghetti crisis and almost kick Maria in the shin for looking too sympathetic after showing up twenty minutes late.
She makes small talk with the little old lady who always orders lasagna and smells like perm. Mop up spilled tea and sweep tips into her apron pocket on the way back to the kitchen for a pitcher of water. Snatch up a high chair for the couple with the toddler standing awkwardly in Maria’s section.
The bruise on her cheek must be showing through her melting foundation, if the sad glances she gets from married women are any indicator. Peachy. Absolutely peachy keen. The last thing she needs is for the lunch rush ladies to judge her for her shitty life choices. She’s broken up with David and that’s all that should matter now!
Stress walks through the cheerful door as she stoops to tie her shoe, pulling a muscle in her lower back. It turns out that the last thing she needs is really for Frank Iero and his “family” to waltz into La Forchette. Jamia has a few seconds to come to the conclusion that the big blond guy must be Iero’s new body guard- and wonder about what happened to the old one- before relief and breaking glass distract her. The gaggle of guys in suits and fedoras sit in Maria’s section and Jamia needs to track down the mop again.
She swipes a stray lock of hair back under her headband and gets her head back into the groove of the bistro. Three hours are left until her shift is over. She can so totally do this. No, really, she can.
She can... until Johnny calls in sick at half-past two and Maria ducks out early for an appointment. The lunch rush is over and it’s just Jamia, Kroger, and heaven-sent-manager Andy to gear up for dinner. Andy assures her that she’s making double time for this when she shuts herself in the bathroom for a few minutes of peace.
The money isn’t much consolation. Every muscle she has is sore and she needs to get an ice pack for her face. She has to go to the campus laundromat now that she’s living in the dorms again- she doesn’t even want to think about unpacking the garbage bags. She’s pretty confident that her computer got left in David’s apartment.
Jamia sighs and splashes water on her face. It’s time she got out of this funk. Screw David. The laptop isn’t that important. David can go fall off a cliff with a bunch of lemmings. That makes her want to cry and her break suddenly takes ten minutes longer than allotted.
When she drags herself out of the bathroom (hands scrubbed, hair in a tight bun) Andy isn’t around to scold her for taking too long and Kroger is out front smoking. Aside from Frank Iero sitting at the counter (his bodyguard is pretending to be inconspicuous at a corner table) the cafe has gone empty.
She give him her best I-didn’t-break-up-with-my-abusive-stalker-boyfriend-last-week smile. “Anything I can get for you, Mr. Iero?”
Beneath the cash register her cell buzzes mournfully for the fifth time in two minutes. It’s a miracle it hasn’t exploded- maybe she’ll throw it away and move to the woods and go all the way off the grid for a while.
“My dad is “Mr. Iero”. My name is Frank.”
“Okay, Frank, can I do anything for you?” She runs a towel over the top of the counter to keep her nervous hands busy.
“Take some aspirin,” he says, pulling a bottle out of his jacket pocket, “you feet must be killing you. I don’t think this place would run without you.”
That makes her laugh because the son of the city’s most powerful man agrees with her secret suspicion. She takes the aspirin even though she knows she shouldn’t, checking to make sure the pills say “Bayer” in tiny font before swallowing them dry. It wouldn’t be good for business to be rude to the son of an acquitted mafioso and she really does need some pain relief.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Anything else? A tap dance maybe? I did take lessons once,” she jokes.
Frank smiles. “I think you’d slap me if I said “stand there and look beautiful” so how about one of those caramel macchiatos that I’ve heard so much about?”
He is not that charming and Jamia isn’t blushing. If she doesn’t think about it then it isn’t real. She gets right to working the espresso machine.
Frank must pick up on her discomfort with his flirting because he starts chatting about the weather, of all things. It’s been unseasonably warm, thanks to global warming probably, and it sucks to go to mass in a church without AC and it makes zero sense that they have no AC because the Church is a pretty modern institution- Frank is good at carrying on a conversation solo. There’s no space for Jamia to make a comment or play devil’s advocate like she wants to. It’s pretty clear that Frank doesn’t get out much so she let’s him ramble over his macchiato while she straightens things up in preparation for the customers that should be trickling their way in any time now.
Evenings are more smooth than afternoons as a rule. There are more couples on first dates, looking for quaint restaurants that offer high-quality cooking and it’s a lovely coincidence that La Forchette offers just that. Jamia bounces between being a hostess and waiting tables while Andy slips into an apron and busses then seats anyone she doesn’t have time for. Her boss has got to be one of the best in the world.
The soreness in her legs turns to numbness and the failing light makes it harder for anyone to see her bruised face. Without children running around there are far fewer messes to clean. Adults require more attention, though. Back and forth for refills on the house wine or glasses of real Italian soda. It’s hard to find a balance between efficient service and friendly service but she manages to make it work. She gets a great tip from an elderly couple out for their fortieth anniversary that just about makes her night.
Jamia doesn’t get out of the groove until Andy tells her to close up shop (she takes back what she said about him being the best) after the last customer leaves. This is weird because the redhead usually has no issues with kicking people out to go home to their families- this isn’t a bar- but then she glances around and sees- who else?- Frank Iero slouching over a table. Of course.
The last time she checked, this isn’t the 1920’s and mobsters don’t get special privileges. Especially at nine o’clock at the end of the hardest week of Jamia’s life.
Iero’s pin-striped suit is wrinkled and his tie undone. He’s mussing his short hair and taking notes in the margins of a heavy textbook, muttering to himself like a normal, stressed out college kid. It makes her pause and reconsider sending him on his way. That second is enough for Frank to look up and smile.
“Closing time, right?” He stretches and cracks his knuckles. He closes his book and writes something on a napkin. His eyes flicker to the aching side of Jamia’s face for the first time, “If you need any help with that rat problem, call me. I know a guy.” Then he tucks the book under his arm and leaves, the body guard appearing out of nowhere to walk along behind him.
Jamia stares after them then looks down at the phone number scrawled on the paper napkin. “Rat problem”, he’d said. Laughable phrasing that was, so blatantly obvious. There’s no other real way to describe it, though. She has a problem with vermin.
Stacking the last of the chairs onto a table she sighs. She’s grown up being taught to take bullshit from no man which is why she walked out the night David hit her but she knows it’d been going on longer than that. All the “warning signs” she learned about in high school had been there but she’d ignored them. Being with a jerk was better than being alone, right?
Jamia shoves the napkin into the bottom of her apron pocket instead of throwing it away. He’d stuck around through both of her shifts to give it to her- she won’t call him about her “infestation” but that doesn’t mean she’s about to be unappreciative of his wasted day.
The door gives one last jingle of farewell when she’s done straightening everything up. The street lamps make everything feel a little warmer and though it’s the most irrational thing in the world Jamia feels hopeful that she can put David behind her.
~~
Frank Iero, it seems, now has nothing better to do with his spare time than hang out at La Forchette, drinking the espresso in the back corner with his nose stuck in a book. This distracts her so much that Maria has to say her name twice to get her to look away.
“You do know today is your day off, right?”
“I just can’t get enough of this place,” Jamia says, letting the taller woman pull her into a motherly hug. She misses the days when they had the same shift schedule- Jamia and Maria made a dream team and work went by so easily that Maria had bothered to show up on time and stay as late as needed.
“Whatever you need to do. Sit down wherever you want- you still like peppermint mochas?”
She meanders to a table that’s the farthest away from Iero and his cool Black Flag shirt and textbooks. “Just coffee, thanks.”
“You’re missin’ out, Mia.”
Jamia pulls out her phone and cringes when she finally works up the courage to turn it on. It buzzes for three minutes straight with unopened text messages and voicemails. The breeze coming through the bistro’s open windows gives her a nice dose of fresh air to steel her nerves. She calls her voicemail.
“Mia... Baby we really need to talk...” David purrs out of the small speaker. She presses 7 to delete and waves a hand in thanks when Maria drops off her coffee. “Jamia, I didn’t mean it-” he gets out one sob in this one. There are a few more with David blubbering about how she’s his whole world and that he just can’t help getting mad. She can almost smell the vodka. There’s one that sounds like he’s jerking off which makes her choke on her coffee and stab the 7 key violently.
David goes from crying to semi-coherent, proposing they meet in a public place to talk things over. He starts in on the vodka again and he starts to get angry. The yelling doesn’t really bother her as much as it would anyone else- she’s used to it- but the bellows of rage coming out of her cell phone do make it hard to hear for a while after. When her hearing comes back the last voicemail is mid-sentence. “Jamia, you perfect, beautiful little cunt. You’re so fucking oblivious. Stupid. Asleep. You don’t like being hit? How about being cut up?”
She drops her phone from her ear, white-faced. She swallows. He’s crazy. Drunk and crazy and there is no way he could have seen her sleep because the only window looks into the dorm’s courtyard and that is closed to the public.
A painted china mug smelling of peppermint is set in front of her. Frank Iero is on the other end of the hand doing the setting. “May I sit here? If not, I’ll leave.”
“I don’t care,” she says, feeling hollow.
“You look a little pale- have you eaten? I could get you-”
“I don’t need pity pasta from the place I work at,” she snaps with more venom than she expected.
Frank sits down, looking surprised. “It isn’t “pity” pasta. It’s “I think you’re pretty and I was raised to feed pretty girls with absolutely no strings attached” pasta. If that’s a round-about yes we can always go somewhere else- they have great veggie burgers up the street. If you’re not hungry I won’t push it.”
He’s ridiculously sincere and that makes her feel even dizzier. She goes out on a limb and says it. “I’m not hungry.”
“Okay. Is anything the matter?” His eyebrows are drawn together in worry.
Fuck. This niceness is getting uncomfortable. “Rat problem.”
“Ah,” he nods. “I know how that goes. Say, you’re in school right? Are you any good with history? I’ve got this killer essay due and it is kicking my ass in every way possible.”
The subject change throws her. School. She can do that, especially essay advice. It’s concrete and stable and not frightening in the least.
“Hey! What the fuck do you think you’re doing? She’s mine.”
Jamia thinks she’s hallucinating at first but it isn’t like David hasn’t shown up here- though before it was to whisk her away for an adventure before the end of her shift. David towers beside her little table, the master of popping up out of nowhere - how did she ever think that was cute?
“The last time I checked slavery was still unconstitutional, so, no, Miss Nestor isn’t your property.” Frank doesn’t flinch when the other man yanks him up by the collar of his shirt. His face hardens into a warning. “You do not want to do this,” he says to David in a low tone.
People are staring and Jamia wants to crawl in a hole and die of humiliation. As it is her face is a perfect red accent to the caramel-colored marble flooring.
He pulls back one arm. “Like hell-”
“Bob?” Frank says, interrupting and confusing David enough to make him pause.
The blond body guard grabs David from behind and puts him into an arm lock that has David tugging Bob? around in a circle trying to escape. Bob does something to make David yelp and he leads him out the door before any more yelling can happen.
“Sorry about the disturbance, “ Frank announces.
Jamia can hear him from where she’s closed herself in the linen closet. She’s having a little trouble breathing and if one more person looks at her like that- like she’s a puppy on some commercial - she’s going to scream. A light knocking on the door makes her jump.
“Jamia? Are you okay? Shit...” Frank’s voice stumbles awkwardly, “Can I call you ‘Jamia’ or is that too forward? Miss Nestor?”
“”Miss Nestor” is my mother.” She starts refolding a table cloth so that the creases will be perfect.
“... Are you okay, Jamia?”
That makes her snap, “Are you stupid?”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Stop being so fucking nice to me. Go away. Leave me alone.”
The lengthy silence lets the sounds of the bistro seep under the door. Happy chatter and clinking silverware. They’re forgotten the near-fight already. There might be hope for her day yet.
“I can do that. No one’s going to let that bastard fuck with you anymore, okay?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Now that Frank has opened the door on profanity everything feels a lot better.
“We’re just not going to put up with him bothering you. Or anyone, for that matter. I hope that helps. I’m gonna go now - my class starts at noon.” His hand taps lightly on the door in lieu of a goodbye.