The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Rony, Silviya, and Kevin took their seats at a corner table of the Warm Land Cafe and waited to catch Cixi at work, or cleaning.

Silviya wanted to take a video of Cixi cleaning the floor.

She had decided, before she walked into the cafe that afternoon, that she would drop coffee on the floor and watch Cixi pick up a mop. Her stomach was doing slow, uneven flips as she imagined how Cixi would react at the sight of the three of them at the table. The wide eyes. The trembling hands. The small, private moment of recognition that would arrive in Cixi’s chest before her brain caught up. The anticipation made Silviya smile against the rim of her cup.

The server came. She took their order. She left.

The three of them watched the floor for Cixi. Two hours had passed, and there was no sign of her.

Silviya decided to go to the counter. The woman at the counter was finishing a cappuccino. She placed the cup on a tray. The server collected the tray and walked it across the floor to a table at the window.

”Excuse me,” Silviya called.

”Yes, ma’am.” Lily turned with a polite smile. It was the polite smile she had been taught to wear during a shift. ”Would you like to order something?”

”No. I was wondering if Cixi is here. Or if it is her day off.”

Lily’s smile faltered.

She schooled it back into place before it had fully fallen.

”You know her?”

”Yes. We went to the same college. Since she decided to leave college, she cut contact with all of us.”

”She might have her reasons. I am sure,” Lily said it bluntly. ”If she wants to be in touch with you, she will contact you. You just need to learn patience.”

Cixi was Lily’s good friend. Lily knew Cixi well enough to know that Cixi did not cut anyone out of her life without a reason. And Cixi’s personal life was Cixi’s. No one had any business crossing that line at a counter in a cafe with the morning shift winding down.

”How can a depressed person want to be in touch with anyone?” Silviya said. ”Especially with anyone who reminds her of her cruel past.”

Silviya was building a chain.

Lily looked at the clock above the espresso machine. It was her break timeth.

She turned to her colleague at the counter. ”Take over until I am back.”

She then turned to Silviya. ”Come with me.”

Rony and Kevin watched the two women cross the floor toward the back of the cafe. Neither of them moved from the corner table.

Lily took Silviya into the small office space behind the kitchen. She closed the door.

”So, what were you saying about Cixi?”

Lily felt something was off about the woman in front of her. She remembered the man who had come into the cafe. The one Cixi had taken one look at and walked into the back room to hide from. She had not asked Cixi about him at the time. She waited for Cixi to speak, but she didn’t. So she didn’t want to push her further after the club incident.

And what was it about the college that was still following Cixi? So Lily decided to listen — politely.

”Cixi was depressed. I am sure she still is!” Silviya said. ”After what happened to her. I could not help her, even though I was her friend.” She made a sad face.

”What happened to Cixi?”

”She was dating a guy at the college. He was the biggest bully on campus.”

Lily snorted. ”Are you sure you are talking about Cixi?”

”Yes, I am. Have you not heard that good girls get attracted to bad boys?”

Lily did not have an immediate answer to that sentence. It was a sentence she had heard before. It was also a sentence the woman in front of her seemed to be delivering on the assumption that a person standing behind a counter would not know any better. Lily decided to keep listening anyway, and to keep her face polite while she did.

”What is your name?”

”Silviya.”

”So you are saying she was dating a bully?”

”Yes. The bully was handsome. Cixi fell for him because he had the bad-boy habit. He smoked. He had tattoos.”

A piece of Lily’s brain registered the description.

A man. Smoking. tattoos. The image lined up, for a brief, uneven second, with the man Cixi had introduced as her fiancé. The man Cixi had told her once over a coffee break was older than the city and ran half of it.

”What was that guy’s name?”

”His name...” Silviya paused, trying to think of some name. ”His name was Felix.”

Lily nodded slowly.

So it was not Cassian.

The piece of Lily’s brain that had snapped to attention released its hold.

”I told Cixi not to date him,” Silviya continued. ”I tried to stop her. She was so much in love with him that she ignored me. She stopped talking to me. After she knew I had tried to stop her, the guy started to harass me. Cixi could not say anything to him. But I saw the guilt in her eyes. She wanted him to stop. She could not say it to him. She did not want to upset him.”

Lily, against her better instincts, began to listen.

Cixi was naive. Lily had registered that within the first week of working alongside her. It was possible. It was possible that the woman who would not raise her voice at a customer who shorted her on a tip might also be the woman who would not, in private with a man she loved, raise her voice against him either.

”After months of dating him,” Silviya said, ”Felix began to hurt Cixi when he caught her speaking to other people. He would go after the other person as well and hurt them.”

Silviya looked at Lily. She did not try to elaborate.

The not elaborating was, by Silviya’s careful private estimate, the most efficient instrument she had at her disposal.

Lily’s mouth was not quite open. Her mouth was a small, considered line. She did not, in the careful corner of her chest that had decided to keep listening politely, want to believe the woman across from her.

But she had seen the way the man at the club had looked at Cixi when his head had been severed. She had seen the way Cassian Crown handled every person for Cixi because they didn’t stop the bastard who tried to make Cixi uncomfortable. The accuracy in his manner had been precise and possessive. He had decided he was not going to share the woman in front of him with anyone in the world...

So was her ex the same? No, Cassian never hit Cixi. It was Cixi who had slapped him for vanishing for months.

When did she break up with Felix, and when did she become Cassian’s fiancée — let’s say fake fiancee or real? She was confused.