"The prep can wait sixty seconds. Are you okay? What happened?"
The morning rush wouldn't start for anothertwenty minutes. The shop was empty. It was just me and Mika and the dying cooler making its ominous grinding noise in the back.
"Callum kissed me," I said. "Or I kissed him. We kissed each other. It was mutual and devastating and happened on his couch last night while I was supposed to be reading Jane Austen and instead I—" I pressed my palms flat on the counter. "We kissed. For real. No audience, no performance, no manipulated reason. Just... us."
Mika's face cycled through surprise, delight, vindication, and concern with the speed of a slot machine landing on every emotion at once. She grabbed my arm.
"Okay. Start from the beginning. Leave nothing out. I want every detail but start with…is he a good kisser or sloppy like a St, Bernard puppy?”
I blushed. “He’s very good,” I admitted.
Mika squealed and did a little happy dance of smacked of ‘I told you so’ energy. “I knew it. Continue.”
"I fell asleep reading on his couch. I woke up and he was right there, sitting next to me, and he brushed the hair from my face and I opened my eyes and he was just—" I struggled for the right way to describe it. "Looking at me. Just... there. And he kissed me. And I kissed him back. And it was?—"
“Mind-blowing?”
"It was—" I dropped my head to the counter, forehead against cool laminate. "It was the best kiss of my entire life and I'm having a crisis about it."
Mika pulled a croissant from the bag and set it in front of me. "Eat. Then explain the crisis part."
I took a bite. Chewed. Tried to organize the storm in my head into sentences that made sense.
"He's forty."
"Uh-huh."
"He has a daughter who's three years younger than me."
"You've mentioned."
"He listens to NPR. He meal preps. He drives a sedan that's never seen a French fry. He irons his underwear, probably."
"I doubt he?—"
"The point is, he's seventeen years older than me. That's supposed to be a problem. A dealbreaker. An ick. I should be cringing. I should be thinking about how he was in college before I was born. How he had a whole marriage and a kid and a divorce while I was still watching SpongeBob and learning fractions." I ripped off another piece of croissant. "But I don't feel any of that. None of it. I keep waiting for the gross-out moment to hit and it just... won't."
"That's the crisis?"
"Yes! The crisis is that the age thing doesn't botherme and I'm worried it should and I'm also worried that me worrying about it is proof that I'm not mature enough to be with a man his age, which is a paradox that's eating my brain alive."
Mika leaned against the counter, arms at her sides. "Can I be honest?"
"When have you ever not been?"
"Fair. Here's my take." She picked up her own croissant. "You're not freaking out about the age gap. You're freaking out about the fact that you're falling for him, and the age gap is a convenient wall to hide behind so you don't have to deal with the actual scary part."
"That's not?—"
"Devon was what, twenty-four when you dated? Twenty-five?"
"Twenty-four."
"Same generation. Same cultural references. Same age bracket. And he made you feel small every single day you were together. He criticized your choices, talked down to your ambitions, and walked out telling you that you lacked direction." Mika took a bite. “I mean, when you’re adults, I don’t think age has anything to do with how you should feel about someone. Sometimes the chemistry is just too real to ignore.”
I stared at her. Hated that she was right. Hated itwith the particular fury reserved for truths you've been dodging.
"Callum is seventeen years older and he's the one who told you your job matters. He's the one who notices that you show up at five-thirty and remembers every regular's order. He's the one who bought you a book in a random town for no reason except you wanted it." Mika pointed her croissant at me. "Age isn't the variable you think it is, babe. You're terrified that this man sees you—actually sees you—and if you let him in, he'll have the power to wreck you in ways that not even Devon managed but tried.”
