My hands stay knotted. My heart keeps hammering. But I don’t leave.
A moment later, a woman comes out.
She looks to be about my age too, curls escaping a messy bun and a dusting of flour on her apron. She wipes her hands on a rag as she walks toward the counter.
“You’re here about a job?” she asks.
I nod.
“What position?”
“The… cleaning job.” I have to force the words out. They stick in my throat like dry bread. “The posting. On the door.”
“Wait—the cleaning job?” Kieran’s eyes widen. His brows lift. “I thought… I assumed you meant for the counter. Or serving.”
I can only look at him, my expression blank.
I don’t know what he saw when he looked at me. Someone who could stand behind a counter and take orders. Someone who could smile at strangers. Someone who belongs in the front of a room, not the back.
He was wrong.
“I don’t know anything else,” I confess, the truth laid bare in a hushed tone. “I’ve never… done anything else.”
I have never said that out loud before. I have never admitted to another person that my entire life has been reduced to one skill, one purpose, one small circle of usefulness.
The silence that follows is heavy.
I feel it pressing against my skin. I wait for the dismissal. For the politeI’m sorry, we’re looking for someone with moreexperience. For the awkward glance between them that meanswhat do we do with her.
Maeve’s expression changes. Her eyes lose their edge, turning soft and resolved. Her lips press together. She studies me for a long moment.
“Well,” she says finally. “If you want it, it’s yours.”
My hands stop moving. My heart stops beating.
Theworldstops.
The espresso machine keeps humming. Someone laughs behind me. A chair scrapes against the floor. But I do not hear any of it. I am motionless. My breath catches in my throat and stays there.
I didn’t know it could be this simple. I didn’t know people could just walk in and get a job. I didn’t know a “yes” could be given so freely, without conditions or consequences or a long negotiation where the other person slowly reveals what they really want from you.
I search her face for the catch. I search her eyes for the trick. My father taught me that everything has a cost. That every kindness is a hook. That every smile is the first step toward a closed fist. I wait for Maeve to saybut. I wait for her to add a condition.
Thebutdoes not come.
Maeve continues, her tone practical yet kind. She is already moving forward, already treating this like a done thing, like I am already part of her world. “It’s mostly sweeping, wiping down tables, taking out trash, cleaning the bathrooms. Morning or evening shifts. I can put you on mornings if that’s easier. You can start next week.”
Next week.Start.Job.
Words I never let myself believe could be mine. Words I never allowed myself to want because wanting is the first steptoward losing. Words that now sit in the air like things that were never supposed to belong to me.
I nod, the motion slow and stiff. My neck is all grit and old rust. I don’t know the correct way to accept a future. I don’t know if I should smile, or negotiate, or seem grateful. I don’t know if I should shake her hand or run out the door before she changes her mind.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Mornings are… good.”
Maeve nods. “Monday work for you?”
Monday. Four days away.
