A light pout on her face as she retorted, "I never said my cooking was the problem! For all you know my cooking could be the most delicious meal anyone's ever made in their entire life."
The man laughed when he heard what she said, his eyes shone and his brilliant smile gleamed. He didn't have dimples, but when he smiled he was still the cutest, most handsome man in the room, in any room. His smile drew the attention of everyone, all the women, old and young each stopped whatever they were doing and were captivated by him.
Some dropped their cups some their phones and some were frozen solid, his laugh was melodious and sounded like a beautiful tune that soothed the ears of anyone that was listening.
The women were captivated whilst the men were all jealous, some were with wives or girlfriends, they were envious of the looks their partners were giving this man, and even people who were single and came alone were so jealous that they wanted to cough up blood.
They knew the harsh reality that they'd never look as handsome as this man and that if he wanted he could easily steal any of their girlfriends or wives with little effort. Some men who were confident in their heterosexuality even admitted out loud that the man was sexy, there was no need to lie about it, everyone knew that much just from a single glance anyway.
All of them, however, were also focused on Emma, the women wanted so badly to be the one in her place, having their hands kissed by this beautiful man. Whilst the men were just hyper-focused on the man behind the counter, however, some of the single men were also jealous of Emma, they thought that they were in a relationship and couldn't bear to watch such public displays whilst still being single. The single men felt like crying, some crossed their arms on the table and buried their heads in their arms.
"Oh what a masterful chef you are, how could I, a mere home cook, dare call your terrifyingly amazing cooking anything other than majestic?" He asked, his tone one of teasing, as he had a smile on his face. He had bowed down with his right hand on his chest and his left arm reaching out slightly forward and to the side. "You should punish me for being so insolent, my darling lady." He added with a smirk whilst looking up.
He gazed into her eyes and Emma couldn't help but get more flustered. She looked away with her cheeks instantly reddening, she fiddled more with her hair before letting go and proceeding to fiddle with her hands below the counter. She took a deep breath to calm herself and smiled before looking back at the man teasing her.
"This lady wishes for you to pay for your crimes with your life." She continued with a smile plastered on her face and her eyes filled with joy, "How would I dare let such a man live after he's implied such things about my fabulous talents?"
The man's expression changed to one of shock for a second before his original warm smile came back and he continued this ruse with her, they were both having fun as he enacted a scene of him stabbing himself in the chest with a knife before leaning onto the counter and pretending to die.
He kept his eyes open and proceeded to open his mouth and stick out his tongue, Emma laughed heartily at this scene and quickly grabbed her phone to snap a picture, she was laughing so hard tears were forming in the corner of her eyes.
She d taken a number of photos before the man got up and they both laughed together, she then proceeded to show him the pictures and they laughed even harder than before.
"Hey, wheeze, can I set this, wheeze, as my profile picture on, wheeze, WhutsUpp?" She asked between laughs, she didn't know this man very well, actually, they'd only ever talked when she ordered or when they'd made small talk about the weather and so on.
He smiled at the unexpected question and nodded as reassurance, "Of course, after all, we need to spread my handsomeness don't you think?"
They both began laughing again, however, this time not as hard as before, she selected one of the photos and quickly set it as her profile picture before turning off her phone and sliding it back into her jacket's pocket. A thought suddenly struck her as she opened her mouth.
"By the way, since we're at the counter anyway, can I please order a regular americano along with…" she paused for a moment as she was unable to decide between the wide variety of deserts they had to offer.
After a while she'd narrowed it down to a slice of strawberry cheesecake and a piece of tiramisu, she'd never tried tiramisu before and it looked delicious, but she really liked strawberry cheesecake and it was normally sold out when she was here, it looked as though there was only a single slice left too.
The man behind the counter chuckled at her inability to choose, he saw that she had supposedly narrowed it down to a few options due to what she was eyeing, he decided to give her a hand in choosing to speed up the process so he could finish the job for this customer, so she could start on her order, and so the people behind her could finally start ordering.
"Do you want some advice real quick? If I were you I'd go for the strawberry cheesecake, we started selling tiramisu since sometime last week, I think Wednesday or Thursday. Sales for it have been good so far, but it's not selling nearly as much as strawberry cheesecake. Since tiramisu is quite popular it won't be removed from the menu anytime soon, so since there's one slice of cheesecake left you should order that and next time you can try tiramisu since it's almost always still in stock-up to around closing time."
Emma lifted her hand, turned it over and started tapping the underside of the counter, she thought about what he'd said and came to the conclusion that he was right. She then ordered as he suggested, a slice of strawberry cheesecake and a regular americano before paying and finding a seat.
She'd sat at a table relatively far away from the counter, one near the window and had begun looking outside with a slight smile on her face before she noticed someone walking over to her table. She looked up at their face and noticed it was the man from behind the counter that she'd laughed around with earlier.
She looked over at the counter, wondering what he was doing here when it was still his shift and noticed Chris had returned and was manning the counter, taking people's orders. She realised that he had probably gone on break and decided to talk to her during it.
"Feeling better now?" He asked gently, bringing another cup of coffee to the small table to join her, he then sat down and looked at her face.