I Watched My Nephew's Secret Fetish, Then I Made It Real

The café was quiet, the kind of quiet that settled like dust in corners. Cass sat at the counter, the spreadsheet open on her laptop, numbers blinking like they were personally accusing her. The last quarter had been brutal—rent up, suppliers squeezing, customers thinning like her patience. She rubbed her temples, the screen’s glow making her eyes ache.

Then the door chimed.

She didn’t look up right away. Footsteps, measured. A pause. When she did glance over, Hiro stood just inside the threshold, not in the hoodie she’d washed a hundred times, but in a white button-down, sleeves rolled with surgical precision. He held a tablet like it was part of his arm.

“Morning,” he said, voice flat, professional. “I’ve compiled the preliminary audit.”

Cass blinked. “Audit?”

He stepped closer, tapped the screen, and turned it toward her. “Revenue per square foot is twenty-eight percent below comparable venues. Inventory turnover is sluggish. Your POS system predates touchscreens.”

She stared at the graphs, red bars like open wounds. “I know the numbers, Hiro.”

“Then you know the current model is unsustainable.” He didn’t smile. “We’ll need a full overhaul. Cloud-based ordering, dynamic pricing during off-peak, loyalty algorithm.”

She closed the laptop with a soft slap. “It’s a café, not an app.”

He met her eyes, unflinching. “Data doesn’t care about ambience.”

The words stung more than they should. This was the kid who used to hide behind her apron when the espresso machine hissed. Now he looked at her like she was a line item.

“I hired you to help, not to turn my living room into a server farm.”

“I’m here to keep you solvent,” he said. “If that means upsetting some décor, so be it.”

Cass stood, arms folding under her breasts. “People come here because it feels like someone’s kitchen, not because a bot texts them a coupon.”

“Retention trumps nostalgia.” His tone stayed cool, but a muscle flickered in his jaw. “We can’t pay rent with feelings.”

She wanted to shout that feelings were the only reason the place still stood, that every chipped mug had a story, that the faded mural was painted by his mother the summer before the accident. Instead she said, “If you erase the soul, there’s nothing left to save.”

For a moment the air between them crackled, the old warmth replaced by something sharp and unfamiliar. He looked down, swiped a finger across the tablet, and the screen went black.

“I’ll draft a hybrid proposal,” he said. “You’ll have it by noon.”

He turned toward the door. She watched the fabric stretch across his shoulders, the way his shoes clicked on the tile, and felt a sudden, dizzy distance—like he was walking out of her life instead of into the kitchen.

The bell chimed again. She was alone with the smell of old coffee and the echo of her own breathing.

The argument had started over barcodes. Hiro wanted every muffin wrapped in plastic with a sticky label; Cass said it made them look like airport food. Voices climbed, papers slid across the table, and by late afternoon the air conditioner gave up with a cough. Sweat collected under her breasts, between her shoulder blades, in the crease of her elbows. She finally slammed the ledger shut and told him she was done for the day.

He stayed inside tapping numbers. She went out back, yanked the plastic hose until the little pool wobbled upright, and filled it with cold water. While it gurgled she peeled off her dress, kicked away her sandals, and stood in the bikini she usually wore only under clothes—black triangles, thin strings, nothing left to the imagination. The water shocked her calves, then her thighs, then her stomach as she folded herself in. She floated for a minute, hair spreading like seaweed, eyes closed, listening to her own heartbeat.

The brush had fallen earlier, knocked from the patio table by a breeze. She climbed out, feet slick on the grass, and bent to retrieve it. Water streamed down her legs; the bikini bottom had ridden high, half of each cheek exposed, the fabric darkened to near-transparent. She wrung her hair, straightened, and that was when the slider hissed.

Hiro stood framed by the glass, tablet forgotten at his side. His gaze started at her ankles, travelled upward, paused at the damp strip of cloth, the knot at her hip, the water chilling her skin into gooseflesh. His mouth opened slightly. A flush surged from his collar to his ears, violent against the white shirt.

He spun so fast his shoulder clipped the doorframe. “Sorry— I didn’t— the Wi-Fi dropped.” The words tumbled, voice cracking on the last syllable.

Cass froze, brush dripping. She felt the cool air move across her bare back, the way the string tugged between her cheeks, the sudden awareness that her nipples were hard against the thin top. She should have spoken, laughed, anything, but her throat closed.

Behind him the hallway lights flickered. A soft mechanical whirr announced Baymax inflating, round form filling the doorway like a moon. “Cass, your epidermal temperature is thirty-five degrees Celsius,” the robot announced, extending a fluffy towel. “Evaporative cooling is recommended.”

Hiro muttered something that sounded like thanks and bolted, leaving the robot wedged half-in, half-out, towel flapping like a surrender flag. Cass took the cloth, pressed it to her chest, water pooling at her feet. The echo of his shocked face—eyes dark, pupils blown—stayed printed on the inside of her eyelids. She exhaled, shaky, and realized she was still holding the hairbrush so tightly the handle had left ridges in her palm.

Baymax’s vinyl shoulder squeaked against the doorframe as he tried to squeeze through. The towel flopped over Cass’s head like a surrender flag, blocking her view for a second. When she tugged it free, Hiro was already halfway across the kitchen, back rigid, shoes skidding on the tiles.

“Hiro—” she started, but the slider slammed before the second syllable left her throat.

Baymax rotated his head, optical sensors blinking placidly. “I will retrieve additional towels if required.”

“No,” she said, voice thin. “We’re good.”

The robot deflated a fraction, processing, then trundled back inside, leaving wet tire tracks that gleamed like snail slime in the dusk. Cass stood alone on the grass, towel clutched to her chest, water still dripping from the bottoms of her bikini. The elastic had crawled higher; she could feel the string sawing gently between her cheeks, a reminder she couldn’t shake.

She should laugh. Should roll her eyes, call Hiro an idiot, pretend the whole thing was nothing. Instead her pulse thudded so loudly she thought the neighbors’ security lights might flicker on. She kept seeing the exact moment his expression cracked—mouth parted, pupils blown wide, color flooding up his neck like heat lightning. He’d looked at her the way men look at strangers in bars, not at the woman who used to cut the crusts off his sandwiches.

She pulled the towel tighter, but terry cloth couldn’t erase the feel of his gaze on her bare skin. It had lasted maybe two seconds, yet her body replayed it in loops: the sudden awareness of how the triangles barely covered her nipples, the way the bikini bottom had slipped low enough to show the dimple at the base of her spine. She felt branded.

Inside, the kitchen light snapped off. Through the window she watched Hiro’s silhouette pass the refrigerator, shoulders set, one hand dragging through his hair. He paused, knuckles whitening against the counter, then disappeared toward the front of the café. A second later the faint glow of his laptop seeped back into the hallway, steady and blue as ice.

Cass exhaled, shaky. The pool water had turned cold against her ankles; gooseflesh rippled up her thighs. She stepped back onto the concrete, towel under her feet, and told herself to move, to shower, to forget. Instead she stayed motionless, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, the distant clack of Hiro’s keyboard, the small wet sounds of her own breathing.

Eventually she wrapped the towel around her waist like a sarong, knotting it above her hipbone. The fabric was thick but she still felt naked, as if his stare had stripped off more than clothes. When she finally pushed through the slider, the air-conditioning hit her overheated skin like a slap. She passed the doorway to the café and caught a glimpse of him: head bowed over the tablet, the same device that had earlier displayed her failing revenue in neat red bars. Now his thumb hovered above the screen without moving, as if he’d forgotten what he meant to do next.

She climbed the stairs slowly, each step pressing the damp cloth between her legs, the friction sending small, involuntary sparks up her spine. In the bathroom mirror her cheeks were sunburned, her lower lip swollen where she’d bitten it. She brushed her hair with the same plastic brush, counting strokes—eight, nine, ten—until the bristles scraped her scalp hard enough to hurt. The pain helped, a little.

Downstairs, the typing resumed, faster than before, like he was trying to outrun whatever he’d seen. She turned off the light, but the image followed her into the dark: Hiro’s face, shocked and hungry, reflecting her own body back at her in a way no one had for years.