Page 41 of Shaped to Be Yours
“Anything else, sir?”
“One second, please. What did Ricky want again…?”
I whipped my head toward the order line. The person after me was scrolling through his phone, which I’d done too to get my orders right. He was wearing some sort of cloak, hood up to hide whatever he was, but I could tell he was a monster. The cloak wasn’t long enough to hide him from the knees down, which looked like giant frog legs.
“Oh! Troll Latte, please. Hot. Medium.”
“Those will be right out, sir,” horse guy said.
When the monster in the cloak came over to stand by me near the pickup counter, I had to ask, “Did you just say Ricky?”
Black eyes snapped to mine. Definitely frog-like. Fish-like?
Fish guy seemed frozen, studying my face.
Then he gasped. “It’s you. You are the one I matched with.”
“Matched? On wha—?” Shit. I glanced at my phone, still in my hand from when I’d ordered. I could see it, the little symbol at the top of my screen that meant I had unread messages from the Monster Match app.
“Itisyou, isn’t it?” Fish guy blinked at me—with sideways eyelids—and smiled hopefully. “Jason Bosco?”
“Uh… yes? But I gotta tell you something.”
“You are not interested.” Fish guy’s smile wilted. “It’s okay! I understand that not all monster species are attractive to humans—”
“It’s not that! I… look. Let’s sit while we wait, and I’ll explain.”
So we did, tucked back at one of the café tables.
It really just amounted to me admitting to him, “I’m not human. Anymore. I was! It’s complicated. I shouldn’t be on that app at all.”
Fish guy—Kai, he’d said—tilted his head at me. He had a sweet mohawk top fin once he’d dropped his hood. “Humans can become monsters?”
“Experts say no, but I seem to be proving them wrong at every turn. Sorry, man.”
“Was anything else on your profile incorrect?”
“No, I was pretty honest about all that. It’s a long story why I even made that profile—”
“You do not have to be human for me to be interested!” he blurted, his frilled ears giving a little bounce, as he smiled hopefully again. “Ifyoucould be. Interested, I mean.”
“I have a boyfriend.” How could an even worse day than yesterday still manage to beat me into the dirt? “Who you apparently just got coffee for.”
“Ricky?” Kai’s ears bounced again. “Oh! He said ‘Jason’ when he chased after the cat. That was your house.”
“Yeah.”
“I like Ricky! Platonically! He has been very nice to me. You are lucky to have each other.”
“I am really sorry, dude. I need to get off that app. I use it to talk to monster friends. And we can be friends! If you want.”
“I would like that! I do not have any friends here. My sister made several right away, but I have never been good at it. I studied your English language for years though, hoping for the chance to come here.” He did have this sort of purring accent, very faint and fun to listen to.
“Well, you got a friend now,” I said. “Two! I’m sure Ricky would say the same. He’s great. The best. And I totally went off on him earlier. More of a long story. See—”
“Jason and Kai?” a troll working with the horse guy announced, with our orders in bags and to-go trays. We’d asked for them to wait to call us until both of our orders were ready.
“Guess we’re out of time, but maybe…we…” I trailed off as we went over to the pickup area, because outside, visible through the front window, I could see a small crowd forming, and though I could only make out the ringleader’s profile, it was enough to see that it was Ronald McDickhole.
