Today could not get any worse, Cassie decided as she sat squeezed between strangers on the subway, bleary eyed and angry. She and Kate's flight home yesterday had been delayed several hours thanks to the snow storms on the East Coast and they'd ended up on a red eye and only got back a few hours ago. Cassie managed to leave her charger at home over the weekend so her phone battery was totally dead and right now it was still at the apartment charging. She had a morning shift and, of course, she was late now because she'd overslept just trying to catch a few minutes of sleep before she had to go in. This had not been the best morning ever.
She left the subway and wound her way through the crowds at a jog, then broke into a flat out run on the streets. Her manager was gonna be so pissed off, especially since she'd called in for Sunday. Maybe she could make it up somehow, offer to do an opening shift on a day off or take responsibility for cleaning the bathrooms for a month or- Cassie stopped short at the sight of her store, staring in confusion at the line of people wrapped around the building. What the hell was going on here?
A lot of the people were clutching red flyers that, when she actually focused on her surroundings, she noticed were also littering the ground and tacked to the sides of buildings. The information provided by said flyers did nothing to enlighten her on the situation and there was nothing for it but to remove the apron she'd thrown on ahead of time (she didn't want any of these people waiting to actually know she worked here) and slink in through the back entrance to peek through the arch between the backroom and the coffee bar. The other employees shot her exhausted looks and a few glares, but Cassie didn't notice. Her eyes were fixed, disbelieving, on that jerk in the finely tailored suit standing on the counter-top.
What in the hell did he do?! She marched right over, ignoring the crowd and the shouting and her coworkers to tug hard on Tony's jacket until he looked back at her so she could ask, "What the fuck, Tony?"