Chapter 17

Benji returned a couple minutes later with the biggest mug I’d ever seen and he threw himself in the armchair. “So, you come here often?” he asked and I couldn’t help but giggle.

“Oh, look at me using bad pickup lines on you when I said I wouldn’t make a move.” He grinned at me. “Is this the time for me to ask if you want to come up and look at my etchings?”

“Or maybe what a nice boy like me is doing in a place like this?”

He waggled his eyebrows. “Or if you work here. Because I like you a latte,” he said.

“Huh?”

He gestured at his latte. “I like you a latte. Get it? A lot…a latte?”

I burst out laughing. “Oh my God, that’s terrible. Did you just make that up?”

“No, no, no, no, no. I refuse to take credit for something that bad. I’m much smarter than that.”

“It is bad. I think I’d prefer the etchings,” I said and he cracked up, doubled over, and clutched his stomach.