A little detour.

It was still fairly early in the day when we picked Mila up from her school. Not yet even 4:00 pm, yet I was fully ready to go back home, half because I wanted to pick my guitar up and half because leaving Cake alone still made me feel guilty. However, the girls had a suggestion.

“Why don’t we stop by the coffee shop?” Mila said in the van. “It’s a bit out of the way, but I’m craving donuts.”

“We could always buy some donuts on the way, but… Yeah, I’d like to sit down and have some coffee,” Grace agreed.

“...” Maria’s coffee shop? I looked at my mental schedule, and while I knew Isabelle wasn’t working today… Fernanda was. “You know, a cheesecake sounds really good right now,” I said.

“Yeah, a cheesecake,” Sarah teased with a knowing grin, getting behind my seat and poking my cheek.

“So you don’t want to go?” I asked.

“No, let’s go, I want one of those huge muffins.”

“You ARE ready for Maria to be mad are you, right?” Alice asked me, chuckling.

“What? Why would she be mad?” Noelle asked.

“Because I haven’t been there since I quit, I think. I’ve wanted to, but… we had a busy summer.”

It seems we all wanted to go, and I swear that there must be forces at work in the world a million times more powerful than even Frey’s magical powers, because we could not have picked a better time to go there.

We parked the van somewhere nearby and walked to the shop. But as we got closer, I could see something happening inside through the glass doors. Fernanda was talking to a man… Or rather a man was talking to Fernanda. He stood up from his seat and began to approach her, and I instinctively quickened my step.

I could hear even from outside.

“Come on, give me your number,” the guy said. He looked older than us, likely around his early 30s. Tall, fairly well built, lightly tanned skin, short brown hair. Well dressed, too, in a neat white buttoned shirt and black dress pants “I have a yacht that you’d love. How can you say not to a weekend of fun?” He was getting uncomfortably close to Fernanda, to the point she was flinching. Maria wasn’t around for some reason.

“Boy, she’s not interested! Give it a rest!” said a customer at a table. It was the old lady, the regular that always came with her husband. He was there, too, witnessing the scene with a disapproving frown.

“Stay out of this, lady,” the guy dismissed her with a wave like she was nothing but noise or a bad smell.

The bell over the door rang as I opened it, and I felt it clear as day. Discomfort, disgust and fear washed away by relief the moment Fern saw me. Her plea was wordless, but powerful.

‘Help, please!’

“She wants nothing with you. I think it’s best that you leave,” I told the man, walking up to him.

He turned to me with annoyance. He was at least a full head taller than me. “Kid, I’m talking to Fern, here, not you.”

“Oliver, he’s been harassing her all afternoon!” the old lady said, pointing her finger at the man.

My brow twitched. “Fern, is this the guy you and Isabelle mentioned?” I asked her.

“Y-Yes!”

So this is the creep that kept giving my girlfriend and my sister inappropriate looks and tried to snap pictures of them when they weren’t looking.

That’s it. Fuck repercussions. Maybe the fact that this same thing had happened to Grace and Sarah at university made me even angrier, maybe it was the fact that I still felt a bit of possessiveness over the girls despite trying hard to keep that feeling at bay, maybe it was the dude’s tone even when talking to the lady, or maybe it was all of that combined with the fact that this wasn’t his first time harassing Fern, but I just had to do something a bit more drastic.

I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and dragged him out of the shop. He must’ve been surprised by the strength of the pull, because he nearly tripped. Alice and Grace kept the doors open as I practically tossed the guy out, which was pretty easy considering he was off-balance.

He fell on his ass as he turned mid-fall and looked up at me with pure fury in his eyes. “What the FUCK do you think you’re doing?”

I didn’t answer. “Can someone call the police, please?” I said.

“On it,” Mila said, her phone already out.

The man scowled, stood up and turned to leave, but I grabbed him by the wrist. “No, you’re staying.”

With a loud groan, the guy shook me off and hit me with a backhand on the face. The most shocking part of that was that… I barely even felt it. I felt the hand reach me, I felt its weight, but I felt little to no pain.

“Sexual harassment and ****,” Alice said. “What else do you want to add to the list of charges?”

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” he asked, suddenly getting smug.

“Should I care?” I asked.

“You should.”

“I don’t. That girl you were harassing? She’s my girlfriend. The other girl you’ve been ogling? That’s my sister.” I gritted my teeth. “You better hope the police do something to you, because if not…!” I took a step forward and the man flinched, tripping and falling back on his ass again.

Frey had probably turned on the intimidating aura, because there was little chance anyone would be actually scared of me. But it was better this way because seeing him tremble pathetically on the ground calmed me down a bit.

Maria arrived just a moment later, carrying a couple of small, white boxes with pies from the bakery, and was confused and shocked at the scene. The police arrived a minute later, a couple of officers, a man and a woman. Fernanda explained what happened, and with eight witnesses, including the old couple, the man was detained and carried off in the police car.

I still dread to think what could’ve happened if we hadn’t randomly decided to go to the coffee shop that day.

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