A Billionaire Irish Christmas

A few weeks went by, the temperature finally, blessedly dropped, and Ellie also dropped the possibility that Hunter was into her. She chalked it up to first impressions - not of Hunter himself, but of such an offer - and decided it was ultimately a friendship thing. Yes, he was a good-looking guy, and so kind, but as far as she could tell, there were no sparks for him, as life had gone on much like before.

She wondered sometimes if she would need to be the one to broach the subject, but she also wasn't even sure she wanted anything like a romance with him. He was her best friend, she thought with a pang of guilt about Stacey, but nothing more.

Although the weather wasn't strictly cold yet, they had gone from selling a lot of iced frappuccinos along with the hot coffee that was still mysteriously in demand during the hot weather, to exclusively hot drinks apart from a few iced ones here and there, almost as if it was the summer inverted. There was always somebody weird, she'd decided, and she even tried it herself from time to time. Ellie had once read, in her perusal of travel books from everywhere, not only Ireland, that those in hot countries sometimes enjoyed hot drinks because it made them feel cooler. So far, she hadn't had that experience.

Ellie and Stacey had a standing date now every week where they met for coffee and then hit the thrift shops. Although she enjoyed Stacey's wild fashion sense, the crazy colors of the 80s had never really spoken to her. Ellie found she was far more enamored of the 90s style overall, since it was a lot more subdued but not quite to the level of the mid-2000s. They still had some interesting stuff, like chokers and crop tops and big jeans, along with the eventual cruise into the total beige supremacy of the 2000s.

They talked, about guys and life and why fashion seemed to have hit a standstill for some years, and whether that standstill qualified as fashion, too. They still talked about the upcoming trip, but much of it faded into the background as they caught up on their friendship.

Stacey even started to visit their coffeeshop, not all that often, but she was there.

This time, it was to pick her up for their Halloween thrift store shopping. The holiday was right around the corner, along with some chillier weather that heralded the actual winter. Ellie had never been much of a fan, and sometimes wished she had been able to go on the cruise with her parents, but she knew they would be enjoying a celebration of their marriage for their thirty-year anniversary. So she was fine with it, although the Caribbean sounded wonderful during that time of year.

"Really? You wouldn't miss a white Christmas?" Hunter asked, as he handed a quadruple-espresso to a squat little old lady who only ever ordered the same drink, and they had their nickname for her as well, Quadricycle, as if she used it as fuel. Ellie thought she was around a hundred years old, but Hunter insisted she was like sixty-eight and had lived a strenuous life as a secret spy and former acrobat, despite her squatness.

"People shrink as they age," was Hunter's explanation, but Ellie held forth that she had actually been a circus strongwoman. She definitely agreed with the spy part, since the woman also wore very cool ironic Matrix Morpheus style sunglasses all the time. Although if Hunter was correct about her age, maybe they weren't ironic at all, but something she'd owned since the film came out, which made them even cooler.

The door opened, and the bells jingled, and there was Stacey, in all her neon finery.

"Hiiiiiiii!!!!" she called out, and Ellie waved at her as she came in, while Hunter immediately got to making her signature drink, which was the mint red velvet thing she'd fallen in love with at the other coffeeshop.

"Hi, Stace," Ellie greeted her friend, and Quadricycle put a few coins in Ellie's tip jar with a wink. Stacey made her way up to the till, where Hunter handed over her drink and she gave Ellie some cash.

While Ellie rang her up, Stacey got into some kind of very deep whispered conversation with Hunter, which was making Ellie very nervous.

"What are the two of you conspiring about?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," said Stacey. "Just some possible Halloween plans we were texting about last night."

Ellie gave her a suspicious look.

"And you're texting each other now," she said flatly.

"Hey, now. Don't you be jealous of your best friends best friending," said Stacey.

Hunter lifted his head and looked at Ellie with an expression she had never seen on him before. If she didn't know any better, she might have said it was almost heartsick.

"You think I'm your best friend? Really?" he asked.

"Hm. No. I'm her best friend. Get in line, newbie."

Ellie laughed.

"Aw, don't fight over me," she said. "You can both be my best friend."

"Kind of defeats the purpose of the word best," sniffed Stacey.

"You can have more than one best friend!" argued Hunter.

"Well, maybe you can, seeing as how you're man's best friend - "

"Come on, guys! Don't be like that. What are you planning, anyway?"

Hunter blushed, and smiled to himself, raising Ellie's suspicions even more, but he turned away to serve a customer just as Ellie was about to give him the third degree.

"We are plotting," Stacey announced loudly, taking a sip of her red velvet concoction. "It's a secret."

"It's not much of a secret if you announce it to the entire coffeeshop."

"The actual plot is a secret, not that we're doing it."

"I think you need to watch a few more spy movies. Or you could get some advice from Quadricycle over there, I hear she's in the business."

"Quadricycle is the business," intoned Hunter, as he rejoined them. "But yeah. It's our little secret."

"I curse the day cellphones came into existence."

"That's not true. You love cat videos."

"Okay, but mostly they are a disgrace to this Earth for various reasons, not least being that they allow the two of you to come up with some nefarious plan."

"Less on the nefarious and more on the plan," said Hunter.

"You would make a terrible spy. You can't keep a secret to save your life."

There was a strange quiet lull just then in the coffeeshop, and this time Hunter gave her a look that, try as she might, she could not decipher.

"Yeah, you're right," he said faintly. "I can't really keep a secret. Not for very long, anyway."

Ellie was about to ask if she'd inadvertently hurt his feelings or something when he smiled and belted:

"But that's our SECRET HALLOWEEN PLANNNNN!" he said, like he was one of those over-the-top football newscasters.

"Wow. And not a hint of embarrassment," said Stacey nonchalantly, as she took another drink, and Hunter went to serve another customer. "You don't see that much these days. What if those shenanigans end up online, I ask you? Philosophically, of course. I would never. I have class."

Ellie gave her puff-paint neon shirt a questioning look, and Stacey held up a finger.

"Do not question the splatter paint," she said. "It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever."

"I would never," Ellie reassured her, and then the shop got inexplicably busy even though it wasn't lunch rush yet, and she was distracted by other things.

Half an hour later, she and Stacey were out the door, Ellie wrapping her scarf around herself.

"Brr!" she said. "Just think, we were roasting a few weeks ago, and now I'm in a long coat."

"That's what I'm looking for today, a vintage 80s coat," said Stacey. "I can't wear this modern thing I bought any longer, it's really cramping my style."

"An absolute tragedy," said Ellie as they walked. "Aren't we going Halloween shopping?"

"You might be," said Stacey. "I'm set. And I'm sworn to secrecy, so don't even try it."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Ellie opened the door to the thrift store to a welcome blast of heat, and they were able to hang up their jackets at the front without worrying that anyone would think they were for sale, too.

"Have you given any thought to what you want to go as for Halloween?" asked Stacey, in a light and airy voice, as she looked through the jackets on display.

"Are you spying?" asked Ellie. "Because Quadricycle could probably give you a few pointers about being more subtle."

"Let's call it investigating. Do you have a detective among your regulars?"

"Yeah, but those are real cops, and not quite as much fun."

"Oh. Yeah. Agreed."

"So. Should I be scared about what's happening on Halloween, or...?" Ellie asked.

"I wouldn't say scared, no."

"Well, that's not much in keeping with the holiday," commented Ellie, then yelled, "Score! Yes!"

"What'd you find?"

"This!" she said, holding up an outfit triumphantly. "I'm going as Cher, from Clueless."

Stacey nodded her head.

"Interesting."