“Now watch,” I said, grabbing the jug of milk and gesturing for Baekhyun to come closer. Standing next to me, he leaned forward and looked inside the empty dish I was holding in my hands. “Don’t put too much milk in. Do you see the ‘v’ of the jug spout? The surface of the milk you pour inside has to reach this spot.”

He leaned closer, trying to see the spot I was talking about, and the smell of his cologne reached my nose. It was subtle, a perfect amount on his skin and clothes, not like on other guys I knew who used to spray half the bottle at themselves. He smelled fresh, like he’d just come out of the shower. And I should’ve known better than to analyze his fragrance, because now my stupid brain had decided to go wild and bombard me with images of Baekhyun in the bathroom.

Great, just great...

I’d always been a er for nice-smelling guys, and Luhan’s cologne he would put on after a shower had been enough to make me weak in the knees, pull him closer, and start something I definitely shouldn’t start with Baekhyun. Just thinking about it would create a disaster I surely didn’t want to experience, but it was hard to think straight and ignore it when his fragrance was seriously flirting with my nose.

Oh dear God, I was just a young, healthy girl without a boyfriend, and with a ridiculously hot guy standing so close to me, it was perfectly normal for me to be feeling this way, right?

“...what do you think?”

“What?” I blurted, lifting my head to look at him in confusion after finally snapping back to reality. He was eyeing me with interest, his brows raised as he waited for my answer – something I surely couldn’t give him now because, instead of listening to what he was saying, I’d been imagining him in the shower.

And that was the last thing I wanted him to find out.

To quickly cover my embarrassment, I decided to throw a random, evasive reply at him. Shrugging half-heartedly, I put the jug on the counter top, trying to come up with an answer perfectly matching with the end of his question and, after a moment of intense thinking, I gave up on my creativity and decided to stick with simple: “I think it’s okay.”

The sudden smile twisting his lips told me I was going to regret it. Pretty soon.

Without wasting any time, he ran to our big coffee machine and grabbed the nozzle of the steam wand, twisting it in his direction. It was pointing directly at his chest, and having something spitting hot air at you was never a good or safe idea. My nervousness turned into pure horror when he tightened his grip on the steaming wand in an attempt to turn it on. I sprung up in his direction, reaching to the machine. “Hey, don’t—!”

The sudden noise of air and the remains of burning water leaving the wand shot through the café, and I placed my hands on both sides of my head in panic, watching as Baekhyun jumped away from the coffee machine just to bend over second later, holding onto his left hand.

“Are you hurt?” I asked hurriedly, turning off the wand and taking his hand in mine to examine it. The tips of his ring and pinky fingers were red, but it didn’t look like he’d burned them badly.

“That is dangerous,” he huffed, still in shock.

“You finally discovered the truth,” I said, trying not to smile. As the feeling of shock vanished and my body relaxed, I somehow found the whole situation – especially Baekhyun’s wide, surprised eyes along with his cute pouty lips – hilarious. I bit the left side of my bottom lip, hopelessly trying to prevent myself from smiling. “It’s not a coffee machine; it’s a machine of destruction we hide here.”

“Damn, I knew you’d planning how to take over the world during your lunch break,” he played along, and I chuckled.

“I told you I’m fun to be with.” I stuck my tongue at him and reached for the drawer on the left side of the counter, where the first aid kit was. “Do you want a band-aid?”

“Prove it.”

We both jerked our heads in the direction that the sudden challenge had come from. Sehun was leaning against the counter with a wicked grin on his lips, eyeing us with interest. He wiggled his eyebrows in a funny way, trying to tell me he had witnessed everything – which meant me, a diehard Baekhyun hater holding his hand with concern – and was more than happy to torture me about it for the rest of my life. Or at least till his shift was over.

“Prove what?” I said, turning my head away in annoyance.

“That you’re fun to be with,” he stated, taking a few steps in our direction.

I sent him a frustrated glare, choosing to ignore his provocation and make a joke out of it. “You always say you have fun with me.”

“Really? Isn’t Sehun too wild for your liking? I thought you were more of a calm, homely type.” To my discontent Baekhyun picked up the topic, finding it interesting to join Sehun in teasing me, and I groaned inwardly, preparing myself for a battle between me and them. It was an obvious brickbat I should have turned a deaf ear to, but I willingly fell into their little trap. Turning to face them both, I crossed my arms over my chest defiantly. “I can be wild too.”

“Really?” Baekhyun repeated, this time in a singsong voice, and I cursed under my breath. I am so going to regret this. He tilted his head to the side, looking at me with one brow raised, and a slow grin spread across his lips as our eyes met. Suddenly I felt an incredibly big urge to smack that brow down to where it belonged. And maybe also punch the now quietly laughing Sehun in the face for throwing me under the bus.

“Really,” I said, trying to sound like the conversation was over. “Now Sehun, get your back into the kitchen; I’m not finished with Baekhyun.”

“Oh, I’m sure you aren’t,” Sehun cooed happily, and I mentally slapped myself for the wrong use of words in his presence. Purposely ignoring the don’t-you-even-dare-start look I sent him, he continued, tapping his chin like some kind of hard-thinking philosopher. “But we still have a small problem to solve here. How can we test your ‘fun side’?”

It turned out I actually had some remains of good luck that day, because we were interrupted by a group of coffee-deprived tourists before Sehun could come up with an idea of how to kill myalready shattered self-esteem. If we weren’t standing in front of our customers, I would have jumped around in joy, doing a victory dance.

“What a bummer,” Sehun groaned, seeing around thirty people taking their seats and grabbing the menus. “I was hoping for a longer break.”

With a wide smile on my face, I threw a rag at him. “Have a nice day in the kitchen!”

“Don’t think you’ve won,” he muttered at me, and then clapped his hands loudly, startling the first two costumers who were standing near the counter to order. “Going back to the topic, there’s a big party tomorrow in ‘Eleven’ and we should grace the club owners with our presences. So how about small a pre-game in my apartment before the actual party?”

“I can’t,” I said almost immediately. Since Luhan had decided to go on a small vacation, I’d been struggling to perform twice as much work. I was the boss now and had to take care of payments, workers, and supplies that we may or may not have ordered on time. After a long day in the café, I had no energy left to party.

“What happened to your ‘fun side’?” Sehun made a sad face, but there was a shade of a smile on his lips. That sneaky brat. I was going down – there was no chance he would let me go so easily – but I surely wasn’t going alone.

I glanced at Baekhyun, who seemed uninterested in Sehun’s proposition for tomorrow and kept lightly squeezing his injured fingers. It didn’t look like he was a big fan of clubbing, and although I’d already learned that he liked to drink, I couldn’t quite picture him on a dance floor. But it was an opportunity to get to know Baekhyun better, and by ‘know better’ I meant getting him drunk and blurting out all his secrets. I had to know his background, his plans; I had to get closer to him s