Page 82 of September
“Areyou?” Gwen asked.
“No, I’m staring at you, and I shouldn’t be because I’m supposed to be prepping this class.”
“Do you want me to go? You invited me over tonight.”
“No, I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay. I just also have to work, and you’re distracting.”
“How am I distracting? I’m just watching some meerkats run around and minding my own business.”
“You’re cute, and I just want to look at you the whole time,” Juliet replied.
“Oh, so you’re blaming me for my inherent cuteness? I see,” Gwen replied and rubbed her hand over Juliet’s legs. “Prepping for a class?”
“Yes. It’s a manager class I’ve never delivered before,” she said. “So, I need to prepare for it, which isn’t something I’ve had to do in a while.”
“Can I help?”
“Yes. Can you cover your head in a paper bag and put on a parka or something?”
Gwen laughed, and that seemed to wake Carly up. The dog jumped off the sofa, so Juliet worried she’d want to go out again, despite just having gone out an hour ago, but she didn’t. She just moved over to her bed and flopped down as if she had run a marathon and needed to sleep. Juliet smiled and shook her head. When she looked back at Gwen, she was shifting Juliet’s legs out of her lap to sit on the sofa facing her.
“Okay. Can I actually help you for real? I’m not going to find a paper bag.”
“What would you do?” Juliet asked.
“I don’t know, Jules. I’m askingyouhere,” Gwen said. “I’d like to make myself useful.”
“You’re very useful,” Juliet said and smiled.
“Not with cuteness.” Gwen laughed and rubbed Juliet’s legs again. “Come on. How can I help?”
“You can pretend to be my audience, I guess, but that’s weird. I don’t know if I can pretend to teach you.”
“Why not? I’ll take it seriously. I won’t heckle. Do they heckle you? Should I heckle so that it’s realistic? Wait… If they heckle you, I’ll kill them.”
Juliet laughed and sat up so that she could lean over and kiss Gwen quickly.
“They don’t heckle me. Sometimes, they ask annoying questions and keep going on and on with them because they don’t respect me as their trainer, but it’s mostly the old guys.”
“How many old guys are there?”
“Depends, but usually at least one in each class.”
“Can I join one of these classes?”
“You can’t beat up the old guys.”
“No, I meant to maybe watch you in action or something,” Gwen replied.
“You want to watch me teach people how to manage a coffee shop?”
“I’d like to just watch you.” Gwen shrugged. “It’s cool, what you do.”
“It’s cool?” she asked.
“You teach people things. That’s cool. And you know how to roast coffee. I mean, how many people know how to do that properly? I’m still waiting for my espresso to be ready to drink, by the way.”
Juliet laughed and said, “Only a few more days, and I’ll pick it up for you. We can try it together.”
