Self-effacing and gorgeous. Great! Not that it matters. In the least.
“Wait, if there’s only two of you, how do you manage to supply the whole of Pine Bluff and half the delis in London?” Fred asked.
“Firstly, it’s not half by a long chalk, but I am working on it.” Ryan grinned. “And secondly—”
“He works harder than anyone I know,” Mina put in.
Ryan scratched the side of his head and Fred recalled this was what he did when he felt self-conscious. She mightnot know the man he’d become but she still knew the essence of him, and she was surprised by the warm pleasure it gave her.
“Do you want to take a look around?” he asked, looking at his watch. “I need to check the roaster; it should be about done.”
“Sure.”
“Holler if you need me,” Ryan said to Mina as he opened the door behind the counter, releasing the roaring sound of the roasting machine and an intense burst of hot coffee-scented air. He motioned to Fred to follow him.
The large coffee roaster took up most of the room and the giant sacks of coffee beans took up the rest. To the left was a small office and a kitchen, to the right a packing and storage room with shelving units housing more of the pre-packed coffee bags. Ryan checked the machine and, seemingly satisfied with what he saw, he turned it off. The deafening sound—like a hailstorm clacking on a tin roof as the coffee beans were tossed around the drum—abruptly died down.
“So, it’s ready to grind now?” Fred asked.
“Not quite,” he said, emptying the beans into what looked like a giant version of the sieves prospectors used to pan for gold. “Now we need to cool the beans down really fast, or they’ll keep on cooking in their own residual heat and the roast won’t be right.”
The whirring of fans picked up speed, and a rotating arm in the tray began to swish the beans around in the cold air.
“And then we can grind them?” Fred asked.
Ryan chuckled. “I’d forgotten how impatient you were. No, once they’ve cooled, I’ll leave them to rest for a couple of days and then they’ll be either bagged whole, or ground, depending on the customer’s preference. Most coffee shops grind their own beans as and when, for optimum freshness, but we sell to a lot of people who just want to enjoy a nice filter coffee when they wake up, so we offer ground too.”
“Like Aunt Aggie.”
“Your family are some of my best customers.”
“I’ll bet. This machine must be going day and night to fulfill all your orders,” she said, looking over at the packing room.
“I’ve got another machine—bigger than this one—in one of the buildings behind the hardware store. I really need to look for larger premises.”
“You’ll leave the shop? But it’s so cute.”
“No, I’ll keep the shop but get an additional space for roasting. I can continue selling the beans locally from here and serve coffee too, but I’d like to make this more of a coffee shop than just a shop that sells coffee; maybe have a couple of tables in the courtyard. The people next door are planning to retire next year and I’d like to knock it through, have a proper little Coast Roast Café. I’ve had my eye on a La Marzocco coffee machine for a while now, I just need to bite the bullet and put my ideas into action.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“You mean apart from the potentially crippling debt I’d have to take on?” he asked, and then shrugged. “I don’tknow. Me, I guess. I get in my own head about it, and then can’t move forward.”
“But you’ve already done so much, what is it about this next step—aside from the financial implications—that’s making you pause?”
“I suppose it’s that I didn’t intend to have a big coffee brand, it all kind of happened organically. When I was getting mentally healthy again, I took a job in a little Italian café near where I lived. As part of my barista training, I got sent on a course that taught you the whole process, from raw bean to cup, and I was hooked. It all just kind of came together after that. But I worry about expanding. I mean, what if I burn out again? Maybe I’m not cut out for big business.”
“I can understand your worries, but you’ve already proved yourself to be a natural entrepreneur, and this time you have the support of friends and family around you, people who would notice if you were spiraling. I don’t imagine Martha misses much.”
He smiled at her. “Not much, no. When did you get so wise?”
She batted away his praise, not wanting him to see how much she liked it. “Oh, I’ve been wisdom personified for years.” She grinned.
“I’m glad you’ll be perching for a while,” said Ryan. He caught her gaze and held it. In his eyes she saw that same guilelessness that had always made him so easy to trust.
“Me too,” she replied, smiling.Oh, behave, stupid heartbeat!
—
