"I watched a lot of tutorial videos last night," I say, which is true and also the most normal sentence I have said in several weeks.
She laughs.
Her name is Priya, and she has been working here for a year. She knows every regular and their order, and she tells me all of this in the compressed, efficient way of someone used to communicating in the narrow windows between rushes.
At nine-fifteen, the door opens, and I look up from the grinder.
Beckett.
His eyes find me immediately. He looks around the café — one sweep, automatic, the habit of someone who always clocks a room — and then back at me.
"Hi," I say, blinking. Did he know that I work here, and that’s why he’s here?
"Hi." He looks at the apron. At the espresso bar. Something moves across his face that isn't quite a smile. "You work here now?"
"I do." I keep my voice professional. "What can I get for you?"
He tells me his order.
I make it while he pays with his card and moves to the end of the bar to wait. Our hands don't touch when I set the cup down. We don't acknowledge anything. It's the most normal sixty seconds we've ever had, and it feels like its own kind of intimacy.
"When do you get off?" he says.
"An hour."
"I'll wait."
"Beck," I warn.
He lifts the cup. "Tastes good."
He moves to the corner table by the window. I watch him go, and then Priya is beside me, close enough that only I can hear.
"Who is that?"
"Someone from campus."
"He's hot." She leans on the counter. "He comes in sometimes. I've never had the guts to say anything to him."
Something in me releases slightly. "Really?"
She nudges my elbow. "I haven't had the guts. But you're clearly already there, so I'm hands off."
I look at Beckett in the corner, coffee in hand, staring out the window at the street. The way he takes up exactly as much space as he occupies and no more.
I bump Priya's shoulder back and look at him one more time.
Then I go back to work.
When my shift ends, I walk over to his table, drop into the chair across from him, and put my bag of leftover baked goods — Jordan's policy, end of shift, anything remaining goes home with staff — on the table between us.
Beckett looks at the bag. Then at me.
"Don't you have a game?" I ask.
"Pre-game coffee." He lifts the cup.
I nod. We sit in silence for a moment. The café is moving around us.
