Bare Knuckles ♛ lrh

07- hot

The bright, dimpled smile that greeted Evelyn as the bell above the door rang was a great start to her day.

"When the hell did you start working here?" Ashton asked as he strolled up to the counter, still sporting his bubbly smile. Evelyn laughed before responding,

"A few months ago," she said, a smile mirroring Ashton's on her face.

"I think I've missed you every time I've come here," he said.

"You better start coming early so you can keep me company," she warned jokingly.

"Does your friend Finley come to keep you company?" he asked her.

"She has classes most mornings that I work,"

"Ahh," Ashton said, resting his head on the palm of his hand that was lent on the white counter. "Oh yeah! I meant to ask you the other day before Mr. Grouchy-Pants left lunch, did you pick a major? The whole conversation was just Cal talking about himself, which isn't anything new," He asked Evelyn.

"Nope, I have an idea of what I want to do but I haven't had to pick yet so I'm still trying to figure that out," she said with an eye roll. "It's honestly more stressful than anything else in school right now. Finley and I moved up here mainly because I didn't have a major and she did, so we decided she could get in a good program here and I could find something that interests me,"

"Where did you move from?"

"Colebrook, Connecticut. It's a pretty small town and Finley and I kind of always wanted to move to New York to get out of there," she lightly smiled.

"Well I'm sure you'll figure it out soon," Ashton nodded with a confident smile. His words of encouragement made her feel confident that she will figure it out, and wouldn't have to take a simple major just to graduate.

"Okay, enough about me, what would you like to order?" she asked, waving him away.

Ashton told her his order and she went over to the glass display to grab his food.

She walked back over and handed him the food. "Thanks... Sophia?" Evelyn paused her movements and looked down at her uniform, she still had the wrong name tag on. The same one Luke so graciously pointed out.

"Why does it say Sophia?" Ashton asked.

"Uhm... I didn't have mine but need a name tag, so I stole a co-worker's," she explained quickly, a blush rising to her cheeks as she remembered that day the blonde came into the shop.

"Mhm..." Ashton agreed skeptically.

"What," her voice squeaked as she looked at the look he was giving her. She was embarrassing herself more by the minute. "What's with the red cheeks," he mused as he leaned more over the counter, as if to inspect her face to find the answer.

"Well uh... You see, I kind of lost it a couple weeks ago and someone came in and pointed it out,"

Ashton scoffed, "And that's why you're blushing so hard right now?"

She huffed as she looked up, "Well no—first of all your embarrassing me right now," she mumbled, "Second it was the person who pointed it out," she looked at her nails that were tapping against the counter.

He soon realized she was done talking when she kept her eyes on her hands, "Okay well spill! You can't tell me someone can make you blush that hard just by thinking of them and not tell me who it is!"

She sighed, even after not knowing Ashton for more than a few weeks, she could tell he was really stubborn and she didn't have the willpower to try and get him to drop it. "Okay fine. It was Lu—"