"GrandΓ© cappuccino, extra shot please." Lucy said as the young woman looked up with a smile.
"Take away?"
"Stay in." Lucy contradicted and handed over her Starbucks card before she could be tempted into a peach and raspberry muffin.
Leaning against the wall, Lucy glanced at the clock as she watched the barista work. It was almost eleven o'clock. She had almost forty minutes to kill before her mum was due to meet her. It wasn't her perfect idea for a day off, but once her mum had found out that she wasn't at work, she'd been left with no choice.
She'd even just turned down a lunch date to be here, which also meant the chance of a damn good fuck, typical. As she waited for her coffee she thought about the man on the bus who had watched her from behind his newspaper for most of the journey before finally plucking up the courage to speak to her and invite her to lunch. She quite fancied the idea of spending her day off with a stranger's hands exploring her body. And compared to lunch with her mum, it was no contest.
The barista slid the mug towards her, plucked the ticket from the rail and dropped it into the bin at her feet. The handle was still hot from where it had only just been taken from the dishwasher. Lucy nodded her thanks as she turned away and headed for the stairs.
The first floor was almost deserted and she helped herself to a huge, purple velour sofa, sinking luxuriously into the plump cushions. Somewhere, Herbie Hancock spilled effortlessly from a speaker and flooded the air with soft jazz.
Lucy pulled a trashy gossip magazine from her bag. She'd grabbed it from a news stand on her way through the bus station. The cover shrieked about the latest Hollywood revelations. Who was too fat, too thin and who was doing what with whom. Pathetic really, but it passed the time. She also knew how much her mother hated her wasting her time with 'that sort of thing' so in part, she'd bought it deliberately just to see how long it would take her mother to comment - most likely slightly longer than it would take to comment on the way she was dressed. But then she'd be the first to concede that her skirt was exceptionally short.
She glanced at her watch. She had half an hour before her mother bustled in bang on time, and set about deconstructing her life, her choice of reading material, her clothes, her hair, her weight. Lucy sighed and took a mouthful of smooth froth, just dipping her lips into the creamy coffee beneath and leaving a smear of candy pink lipstick on the white mug as she licked her lips clean.
As she read, she played with her shoulder length black hair, twirling it constantly around her fingers until it resembled a length of rope, then absent-mindedly untangling it and brushing her fingers through it before starting the process again. It was a habit she'd had since she was a child. Her mother had always said she did it when she was tired, but when she was younger, that was just an excuse to pack her off to bed. The truth was she did it all the time she had a spare hand.
Reaching for her coffee she glanced up just in time to see a face disappear behind the spread pages of The Times. Lucy smiled to herself and took another mouthful of coffee.
Lucy would have described herself as a late developer. She was barely recognisable from the timid, over-weight girl that hid behind her long, lank, jet black hair throughout her school days.
University had changed her life completely. It was almost as if they put something in the water. The weight dropped off her, her confidence flourished amongst her new surroundings and new friends and paradoxically, as she slimmed her chest grew from flat and boyish to a robust 36C.
Her confidence continued to blossom throughout university and for the first time the male students started to take notice. Her first boyfriend convinced her to stop hiding behind her hair and even their split had failed to dent her new found self-belief.
But it was no ugly duckling to swan story. It was simply that there were pupils who, even after seven years at the same school as her, would not have recognised her face, hidden as it always had been beneath her hair, so people simply never got to see what lay below.
After graduation she was let loose on the big wide world, but it turned out that she was damn good at what she did and she worked with the same dedication that she had always shown throughout her education. She was respected, her opinion was valued by her peers and her career seemed to have found the fast lane. It just left her with precious little time to herself and even less to find someone to be attentive to her. It seemed recently that one night was about as close as she was going to get to a relationship.
Lucy turned her attention back to her magazine, but with half an eye on the man in the corner.
Before long, she saw one side of the newspaper drop down. Slowly, she glanced up, trying to look like she was still concentrating on her magazine. It was the man she had met briefly on the bus. He was in his late twenties, his blonde hair cropped and he was watching her whilst pretending to read his paper, just as he had done so earlier.
Lucy glanced casually at her watch. It was still over twenty minutes before her mother arrived. Perhaps there was still time for a little fun. Had she met him for lunch, she knew she would have found somewhere she could fuck him before she let him go, so as he was here now, why not give him that now in lieu of lunch.
She shifted position on the sofa and placing her magazine down, she closed her eyes and stretched her arms up as far as she could, managing to squeeze out a yawn.
As she reached for the ceiling, she felt her t-shirt ride up, exposing her navel with its small silver ring. She also knew her crossed legs would have afforded her admirer a good view of her white cotton panties beneath her mini-skirt.
As she relaxed, she pulled her t-shirt back down around her waist and smiled innocently across the room. This time, her admirer did not scuttle back behind his newspaper.
Lucy picked her magazine back up but made sure she kept him at the top of her vision. She could feel his eyes all over her body. Now eye contact had been established he no longer felt the need to hide and just watched her as she pretended to read.