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The bell on the cafe’s door chimed as Nene sped through it, and she let it slam behind her as she speedwalked to the usual table. God, she couldn’t believe she’d gotten caught in traffic and ended up late. She paused when she got there, looking at the woman who was sitting there with an iced coffee and tapping away at her phone.
“…Emu?”
The woman looked up, slipping her phone back into her purse. “Nene!” she cheered.
“…Are you wearing a wig?”
“Yep!”
“Why?”
“Well, you said we should try to stay incognito after what happened on our last date, so here I am!” Emu explained.
“I didn’t exactly mean a wig,” Nene replied, looking Emu over. She was wearing a light brown waist-length wig, a frilly cream dress shirt, a long light brown jacket with lapels designed to look like monarch butterfly wings and realistic flowers embroidered on the sides, plain black jeans and black pumps with an ankle strap, and next to her was a cute little brown plaid purse. She looked nice, and it was a really good disguise: if she hadn’t already known which table Emu would be waiting at, she probably would have walked right past her. “God, we really don’t match at all, huh?”
“I think you look nice!” Emu chirped. Nene was pretty sure she was lying, considering her outfit consisted of round black sunglasses, a plain black hoodie, a dark grey pleated skirt, black knee socks and white sneaker boots. She looked WAY less put-together than Emu did. “Oh, and your hair looks even better in person! The bobcut really suits you.”
Nene blushed. “Thanks.”
It was at that moment the waiter showed up. Nene’d been to the cafe enough times to have already decided what she was getting without checking the menu. “Triple-shot latte, please.”
The waiter scurried off, and Nene looked back at Emu. “…So, anything new with you? How are your brothers?”
“They’re good! We’re in the middle of negotiating a deal with— well, I probably shouldn’t be talking about it in public, but it’s going to be REALLY cool if it goes through.”
They talked for a while about the Otori family business and Nene’s current acting project, and then Emu’s newest additions to her massive plushie collection (one of which she’d brought in her purse) and cute cats Nene had seen recently, and then the waiter finally came back with Nene’s coffee.
Nene always forgot just how good this place’s coffee was until she was actually drinking it again. She must have drained half the cup before she had to stop to breathe, temperature be damned. (Another reason why this place was the best is that they didn’t superheat the coffee, so by the time it was at your table it was at least mostly drinkable.)
After setting her cup back down, she turned to Emu. “So… what are we doing today?”
Emu hummed in thought. “Well, we could go see that new movie! The one with the stork and the baby and all the whoosh whoosh? Ooh, or we could go do karaoke!”
“Yeah, we could. Let me check if there’s anywhere that still has seats for the movie first?”
“Sure! I’ll check karaoke places then!”
Nene opened her phone and searched up movie theatres. She opened the website for the closest movie theatre and checked for tickets, and…
“Nothing, seriously?”
“No seats left? What about later?”
“Yeah, no, there’s nothing until the end of the week. How are they completely sold out for the next three days?”
“That nice karaoke place is all booked solid too. Let’s keep looking, I’m sure we’ll find something!”
The next three theatres she checked were a similar story: the only showing she could find was in four hours and didn’t have any adjacent seating left, so they’d have to either try and trade seats with other moviegoers and hope they got lucky or watch the movie from opposite sides of the theatre.
Meanwhile, Emu was having just as little luck. “I don’t think we’re going to find anywhere that’s not booked…” she said, slouching in her seat.
“Ugh, we should have planned this earlier, then we could have booked someplace in advance.”
Suddenly, Emu straightened up, eyes gleaming. “What if we went shopping?”
“Really? That’s not much of a date…”
“It’ll be fun! We can look to see if anything goes crackle-crackle-pop, and maybe we’ll find something fun to do while we’re there too!”
“…Well, when you put it like that…” Suddenly, something occurred to Nene. “Wait, did you drive here? Because I took a taxi, and I’d really rather not take the subway…”
“Yeah, I did!” Emu answered, beaming like the sun. “So, we’re going shopping?”
“Yeah, just let me finish my latte and we can get going.”
“Great, I’ll get the waiter!” Emu said, already waving at the guy from earlier, who beelined to their table after dropping off the plates he was carrying.
“Can I help you with anything?” he asked politely.
Emu nodded. “Yep! Could we have our check, please? I’m paying,” she added.
“Emu-“ Nene started.
“Nope, I’m paying and you can’t stop me.” The waiter reappeared with a credit card reader, and Emu pulled a card out of her purse and tapped it. “Okay, let’s head out!”
And with that, Emu skipped out of the cafe with a car key in her hand and Nene following behind.