While the girl in front of her looked a little baffled at her offer of a towel, Katie simply smiled to herself, stifling a giggle and not wanting to offend her. She supposed it was probably a bit odd, but she was only trying to help, and she’d like to think that if she were in a similar situation someone else might offer the same courtesy.
When she accepted her offer, profanities slipping from her tongue with ease, she broke her resolve almost instantly and let out a genuine laugh, her smile wide and sincere. The girl’s response had been blunt, and she tried (and failed) to imagine such a response coming from someone like Simon, Brooke, or James, all of whom she had no doubt would have had a much softer reaction to her offer (though, admittedly, she wouldn’t have to ask James, who would no doubt be listing off numerous scenarios in which his sopping state could lead to his untimely death). Content to spend her time around just about anyone, it was oddly refreshing to hear someone so shamelessly blurt out the word ‘fuck’ when working around people as soft as Mickey, or Jay. Especially given her usual company involved the likes of Seth, Kevin, and Jess who had an affinity for making utter nuisances of themselves.
“Not a problem,” she responded, still wearing the same warm smile from moments before. She must be freezing, bless her.
When the girl passed a comment about staying put, Katie frowned to herself, not sure whether or not she should just leave her there. It seemed a little harsh leaving the poor, rain-soaked girl to just loiter in the middle of the aisle, puddles forming around her in the middle of the store. She was contemplating asking the girl to follow her through to the back room when she watched, and heard, the scene unfold before her.
Eyes widening, Katie’s hand flew up to her mouth as a loud, raucous laugh escaped her lips. It was entirely unflattering, and she tried her hardest to stifle the noise as she lapsed into a severe case of the giggles at the girl’s bizarre outburst. She had not been expecting that. Far too focused on her own amusement, it took her a short moment to realise that they had managed to capture the attention of some other shoppers, eyes trained on them as Katie stood opposite the loud, theatrical girl who looked as though she’d just spent the past hour in the harbour.
Blushing at suddenly being centre of the attention (though, she was more than happy to share the title with her new customer), she decided now would be the time to get back on track with her original plan. The towel plan.
“Do you want to follow me through to the back?” she asked, her voice low as she tried to ignore the strange looks being sent their way. People were cruel, that she knew, but she had nothing to worry about here. This was her safe space, and the girl was perfectly innocent and lovely.
“To get the towel, I mean. It might be nicer if you had a little privacy, rather than an audience while you try to dry off and have words with Poseideon,” she explained, cringing at her word choice. Had she spent too much time listening to Simon in all of his Percy Jackson excitement, or was she just a blundering idiot? Probably the latter.
Pointing a thumb over her shoulder, she nodded over towards James who had managed to slip in and settle himself on the stool she’d been sitting on moments before. Well, if he was here keeping an eye on things it wouldn’t be too terrible for her to disappear for a few minutes to help the girl.
“It’s just through here, it’ll be much more dignified, I promise,” she smiled, before turning on her heels and leading the way. “Admittedly, I could just send you through on your own and make you promise that you’re not, you know, a well-read robber of sorts, but I’m fairly certain that thieves of any kind don’t tend to admit as such.”
She wasn’t quite sure what the nonsense coming out of her mouth was, nor why she was rambling on to the poor girl who, no doubt, just wanted to dry off and disappear again, and she could practically see the smirk on Kevin’s face, the smug bastard inhabiting the back of her mind, no doubt teasing her in one way or another.
“I don’t think I’d get to keep my job if I came back to you having pilfered the staff room,” she joked, glancing over her shoulder so as to make sure she hadn’t entirely offended the customer with all the rubbish she was spewing.
Holly’s head shot up when Katie began laughing, uncontained giggles bursting forth from the other girl, and she took a feeble step back. While she liked to think of herself as downright fucking hilarious, even on a bad day, she wasn’t sure that her fleeting act of stupidity had merited a reaction like that. Something told her to be pleased, but after everything she’d been through in the past five minutes, she chose to be alarmed instead and continued to stare at Katie like she’d grown another head, or used ‘Alex Cayley’ and ‘heterosexual’ in the same sentence.
When Katie insisted that Holly follow her through the back room to dry off, who was she to argue? Not her usual loud-mouth self, certainly. Instead of arguing that she’d rather stand where she was, soaked to the skin and loudly disrupting the ambience of the bookstore, Holly simply gave a stiff nod and follow Katie’s lead meekly.
“Poseidon?” Holly echoed, tucking her chin in to let confusion show plain on her face. “Who the fuck?”
Even though Holly had begrudgingly reached the conclusion that this Katie girl was too pretty for her own good in a way that reduced Holly to a gibbering idiot, the brunette wondered if the bookstore employee was a few sandwiches short of a picnic as she babbled on and on while leading Holly towards the back room.
“Uh…” Holly sounded, because there was really nothing else for her to say, and she wondered how much agility and stealth would be required to sneak away before Katie turned back around. However, with each step she took, her new Nikes, drowned by rainwater, let out a noisy squelch and she bit back a frustrated sigh. She wasn’t going anywhere.
“What if I did admit I was a well-read robber?” Holly challenged, folding her arms across her chest even though her heart wasn’t really in it and she was only indulging in this conversation full of gobbledegook because it stopped her thinking about how shiny Katie’s hair was. God, she wanted to pummel herself with a baseball bat.
As she entered the staff room, she wrinkled her nose and glanced at her surroundings.
“Yeah, why would I want to pilfer any of the shit from here?” she asked, picking up a tattered paperback copy of something or other by someone or other who apparently went by the name of Rick Riordan. It was only when she saw that the book had previously been resting on a lunchbox labelled ‘property of Simon Hudson’, that she allowed genuine surprise to show on her face.
“Wait, shit, yo, Simon works here?” she asked swivelling around towards Katie. Oh. That’s right. Katie. Realisation hit her quickly and she screwed up her face at once.
“Aw, fuck off,” she cursed. “Does that mean you’re Seth’s Katie?”
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