Page 7 of Johann
“Is he like that with everyone?” Alexei asked, hoping his expression was significantly more neutral than he felt. He needed to place the strange interaction he’d just had into some sort of context.
“You mean unknowingly charming the pants off everyone he meets, giving devastating and sincere compliments that leave people reeling, then flouncing away without a care in the world?”
Alexei coughed weakly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Yeah. That.”
The redhead shrugged, her smirk turning into an evil grin. “Pretty much, yep. He’s like that with everyone.”
Five minutes later, coffee in hand, Alexei wandered back to his car in a daze.
By the time he remembered to drink his Americano, it had gone ice-cold.
Alexei couldn’t stay away after that.
There was no rhyme or reason to it. He hadn’t even meant to go back to Death by Coffee the next day, not consciously. Alexei had just been driving around, and then soon he was parking in a familiar spot and then walking through that jangling door, and there Jay had been, smiling and waving.
Alexei’s heart had stopped in his chest for a moment at the joyful, “You came back!” he was given on that second visit, thinking for a moment the strange attraction he felt was mutual. But he soon learned the redhead hadn’t been lying: Jay was like that with everyone. Beaming smiles, sincere compliments, absurd non sequiturs.
But the frustrating thing was, no one else seemed quite so…affected by it. Not like Alexei was.
It was certainly clear—after a week of daily visits, observing every interaction more closely than was strictly sane—that Jay’s regulars adored him. Alexei had watched, dumbstruck, as one older woman had actually pinched Jay’s cheek, something Alexei hadn’t known happened in real life.
But for the most part, as far as Alexei could tell, everyone seemed able to move on with their lives after an interaction with him. No one else stared, salivated, or masturbated furiously in the shower to thoughts of pink lips as Alexei had every night for the past week (or at least, Alexei had to assume they didn’t do the last part; he wasn’t exactly following anyone home to check).
The manager though. He paid Jay more attention than Alexei would have liked. He also paid Alexei more attention than Alexei would have liked, scowling at him from across the café. Not exactly prime customer service.
But the scowls were worth it for Alexei’s little interactions with his strange new obsession. He could get quite a few of them, if he timed it right, coming in at a slow hour. He even found himself lengthening his orders, just to hear that sweet voice repeat them back to him.
And yes, he did realize he was acting psychotic. Possibly this was some kind of mental break after a lifetime of stress, on top of the heightened anxiety of his new life on the run. That would explain the absurdity of making himself an honest-to-God regular somewhere in his new town rather than lying low as he should have been doing.
But he told himself—in complete opposition to the paranoid reasoning he’d been living with for so long—that it was okay to let himself be seen and known in Hyde Park. That his brother was satisfied with having run Alexei off. Why track Alexei down when he finally had what he’d always wanted? Alexei out of the fucking picture. Permanently.
He also told himself, when he was feeling particularly delusional, that Jay paid him special attention.
And to be fair, the little barista did often wander over when the café was slow, asking Alexei if he wanted anything else, offering up more absurd compliments. Once he’d asked Alexei if he’d just been baking. When Alexei had told him no, Jay had cocked his head. “But you always smell so sweet. Like one of our vanilla cupcakes. Are you sure you haven’t been baking?”
Alexei had never heard such a blatant fucking pickup line in his life.
Or so one would think. But that was the thing. The incredible, mind-melting frustration of it all. Itwasn’ta pickup line. Jay had said it and then just…skipped away, unbothered and completely unembarrassed by his words.
And, to be fair, Alexei had also once overheard Jay compliment his fucking cash register for opening “so smoothly and quietly.” He also greeted every canine guest in the café like visiting royalty, waving and beaming and handing out dog treats like Oprah giving away a free car.
So at least Alexei factored into Jay’s thinking somewhere on par with an inanimate object or someone else’s pet, right?
He made himself leave each day after two hours, deciding arbitrarily that anything longer than that would be truly pathetic.
Walking home after his latest visit, feeling absurdly wrung out after what amounted to several hours sitting still in a comfortable chair, Alexei dialed the only number he knew by heart.
“If this is who I think it is, you shouldn’t be calling me.”
Just the sound of his younger brother’s voice put Alexei at ease for the first time in six weeks. “Sascha.”
Sascha’s answering sigh was dramatic as hell. “Alexei. You really set off a shitstorm this time.”
“I know. You’re safe though?” Alexei already knew the answer. Their older brother would never hurt Sascha. The baby of the family. The only one of their trio not raised to be heartless, ruthless, and cruel.
Sascha scoffed at the question. “Of course I’m safe.Youcan’t come back though. You know that, right? Ivan seems ready to shoot on sight.”
More like Ivan had already hired goons to shoot on sight, and he’d be happy to have the deed done whether he was there to witness it or not, but Alexei didn’t feel like splitting hairs. “I cost him a lot of money.”
