Who is "xoxo G"?

“Ray!! Ray!”

“Geez Frank, you don’t have to yell! You knew i’d be in here anyways.”
Frank completely ignored his colleague’s annoyed reaction and got straight to the point.

“Does anyone here go by the letter ‘G’? Just that letter? Or anyone who works here whose name starts with a ‘G’?” Ray thought for a minute.

“Well, the only one i can think of right now is Greta, our cleaning lady. Wait. Why are you even asking me this?”

Frank let him read the note he got and explained that he’d like to thank the person he got it from. “Well you know what?” Ray said “She comes in to clean on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. So if you’re lucky she’ll be early!”

Frank and Ray chatted all night, and they barely got any customers. When even Paula left at 4:30am she left an empty cafe behind. Frank went ahead and started to get everything ready for rush hour. Well, maybe ‘rush hour’ wasn’t the best term. It looked more like a line of dead people desperately waiting to pay too much to receive life support. But hey, Frank’s not complaining, at least this way time will go by faster.

Hannah was late today, she had been showing up on time for a few weeks now and it was almost 8am already. Frank kept looking at the door, impatiently waiting for either Hannah or Greta to enter.

When he saw the redhead climb out of her car he was ready to sprint to the back. Hannah barely said ‘hello’ before Frank had disappeared. He got changed and put his uniform in this locker, and locked it.

Then it hit him, he was already late and he hadn’t seen Greta yet. He looked through his bag and ripped out a piece from a notebook he kept in there for some reason, he knew it’d come in handy.

He looked at the piece of paper from Greta, it said “locker #6” on it. Frank looked over to her locker and decided he would just slide the paper through the air slits.

“Hello Greta,

You might not know me but my name is Frank, i work the night shifts at The Busy Bean.
I just wanted to say thank you for cleaning my clothes, it was very kind of you and i really appreciate it.
If i could ever do something to return the favor, please let me know!

Xoxo F”

He folded the piece of paper, pushed it through the slits in the locker and sprinted out after saying goodbye to Hannah.

On his way home, Frank wondered why he had never even heard of Greta before. And that lead him to thinking about how many employees the busy bean actually had that he’d never seen before. He knew five, including himself. Hannah, Ray, himself, Layla, who usually worked the day shifts but sometimes helped out at night, and now Greta. There’s no way this was it, right?

When he got home, Frank grabbed his laptop and googled “The Busy Bean”. There were actually quite a few cafe’s with the same name as his. He scrolled a little and found the one he was looking for.

After digging through the entire website he still hadn’t found a “crew” page. Which meant he’d have to ask Hannah tonight.

He closed his laptop, set his alarm for 4pm and passed out right there on the couch.


Frank woke up to the sound of the doorbell. He slowly got off the couch and shuffled over to the door. But when he opened it there was no one there. He looked around the corner, but all he saw was Ms. Mendez and her dog Max. She waved at him and he was about to walk up to her to ask if she had seen anything when he tripped over something and fell face first on the floor.

“Oh my gosh, Frank? Are you alright?” Frank heard the ‘click clack’ of her heels come closer and looked up. “What? Me? Oh i’m fine!” He said while touching his cheekbone. Damn that hurt! “You sure? You need anything?” Frank stood up, “No i’ll be okay. Thank you Ms. Mendez!” She shook her head. “Boy, watch out, you might really hurt yourself one day.” And walked off to her own apartment across the hall.

Frank looked behind him, at the object he’d tripped over. It was a box? A package. He didn’t remember ordering anything. He picked it up. Well he tried to but it was crazy heavy. He bowed down to read what was on the label.

It was definitely not his name. This package was for someone named “Mr. G. A. Way” who lived on number 62. The apartment next to his? But as far as Frank knew that apartment had been empty for years.

He shrugged and pushed the package with his foot to the apartment next to his. Both too lazy and too tired to even try to pick it up. He rang the doorbell and waited. And he rang it again… and waited longer.

Frank shoved the package back to his own apartment and put it inside, next to the door. He then ripped out another page of his notebook and grabbed a pencil.


“Hello neighbor,

I believe i received a package that was belongs to you.
I tried to return it but you weren’t home . You can come to pick it up every day between 8am and 10:30pm.

-Your neighbor from #60”

Frank put the note in his neighbor’s mailbox and went back inside. What time was it anyways?

He grabbed his phone and it was 7:30pm? That meant he slept for over 10 hours and he was still tired.

Frank forced himself to be productive by taking a shower and making a sandwich. He decided to watch tv until it was time to work again.

By 10:30 Frank started getting ready. Really slowly though because it was only a 10 minute walk to The Busy Bean anyways. He turned off his tv, drank a glass of water and grabbed an apple for on the way.

When he got to the shop he waved at Hannah and headed straight to the back. He opened his locker and ...found another note? Weird. He changed and unfolded the note, he was early anyways.


“Dear Frank,

Greta? You think i’m Greta?
Haha i’m not but i suggest we play a game:

The goal is for you to find out my name.

And there will be only one rule:

You can’t ask anyone about me, you have to do it all on your own.
I have already contacted all our colleagues about our little game.

Your note said you wanted to return the favor?

Well by playing this game you will!

Xoxo, G”

Frank, who was really confused by the note, stuffed it in his pocket and headed to the counter to ask Hannah about this ‘game’ and whoever is sending these notes. But she was nowhere to be found.

Notes

So i quickly wrote this chapter this morning after receiving some really positive feedback.
It's a little shorter than the first one but i'm pretty proud of it.
Hope you enjoyed it!