I press play on the rough cut, and although it’ll be another hour of editing before I have a presentable draft, Brooklyn seems mesmerized. “That’s sick,” she says when the screen dips to black. “How’d you get so good at that?”
“Practice, mostly,” I say with a shrug. “I didn’t learn it at Weymouth, that’s for sure.”
We share a laugh before Brooklyn disappears to shoo away the Christian book club, and I settle back into work and into an unfamiliar feeling. I feel…content? Hopeful? Like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing, even if I’m not where I want to be? Maybe it’s that I finally have a coworker I can connect with, or maybe it’s the rush of editing video, knowing it’s something I’m actually good at. There must’ve been a time when editing didn’t come so naturally to me, but now, I’m like a painter with 3,099 different colors on her palette and no instruction other than “paint.” Videos, graphics, social media posts—so long as I make the plan and execute on it, there’s wiggle room for me to try and fail and experiment along the way. Maybe that’s allowed for studying too. Maybe that’s allowed for life in general. If I try and I fail, I’m allowed to try again—to retake the class or transfer next year—or experiment with something different, like doing marketing for Monarch.
I can hear Ellie’s voice in the back of my head, calling me a small business marketing consultant. If that involves doing more of this type of work, I could be into that. I open a new tab on my laptop, type “small business marketing consultant” into Google, and scroll through the results. Past the ads, I land on the suggested questions.What does a small business marketing consultant do? How much should a marketing consultant charge?I click on the second one and try not to tumble backward out of my chair. About $100 to $175 an hour. A few more minutes of browsing Google tells me I’m just about qualified—although a degree might make a big difference.
An email notification hits the [email protected] inbox, and I close out of my corporate daydreaming and return to today’s tasks. I pop my earbuds back in, testing whether typing emails and studying can happen simultaneously, or if I’ll start replying to wedding shower requests with details about accounts payable and revenue projections.
“What are the tax implications of a sole proprietorship versus an LLC?”
I say the answer out loud, and there’s a “Huh?” in response from a voice behind me. I flip around—it’s Brooklyn again, looking bewildered. “Were you talking to me?”
I hit pause on my phone. “No, I’m studying.”
“Ohhh. The recorded question thing.” She nods, tossing her long braids over her shoulder. “Got it. And sorry to interrupt. There’s just this customer…”
I almost laugh at how genuinely sorry she sounds, as if interrupting me at work and asking me to do my job were completely out of bounds. “It’s cool. What’s up?”
“Someone’s trying to use this coupon but”—her nose crinkles—“it doesn’t look legit.”
“Is it a punch card?” We phased out our classicBuy nine drinks, get the tenth drink freemodel when we closed for renovations, but we’ll be dealing with stragglers for the next year, I’m sure.
“I don’t think so? It’s on their phone.”
I push away from my desk and onto my feet. If it was one of the other baristas, I might tell them I’m busy and to figure it out on their own. But I like Brooklyn.
“I’ve got it,” I say. “Lead the way.”
I follow Brooklyn down the hall, chatting about finals while inspecting the back of what appears to be an intramural softball T-shirt. Just as I work up the courage to ask her if she has a team for this spring, we pass through the swinging door into the space behind the bar, and my heart bangs against the base of my throat. Standing in front of the register in a MUNA T-shirt and an ultraoversize denim jacket is the coupon user in question, Miss Ellie Meyers. Fuck, I should’ve pieced that together.
Brooklyn steps up to the register with a winning customer service smile and a bubbly tone to match. “Murphy can help you,” she says, stepping out of the way and placing me in full view. While Ellie had at least a three-hour drive to think about what to say to me, the three seconds I’ve had to prepare don’t quite cut it.
“Hi,” I squeak out, just to fill the silence as I try to compute how the hell she’s here, three hours from campus, in the middle of the day on a Thursday.
“Hi back,” she says.
I want to say something poignant, something friendly or romantic or at the very least worthy of a reaction. Instead, all that comes out is, “Trying to redeem a coupon?”
Not my finest work.
“I am.” Playful recognition shimmers in Ellie’s eyes as she hands her phone to me without breaking our gaze. From the corner of my eye, a screenshot of my email stares up at me. “I don’t think I was meant to redeem it so soon, but I’m hoping you can make an exception.”
“You drove all the way from Champaign for me?” I blurt out, hoping Brooklyn has lost interest and wandered off. I can’t check. I can’t take my eyes off Ellie. I’m certain the second I look away, she’ll be gone, disappearing like a fine dust into the air. Or else I’ll blink twice and she’ll turn into a forty-year-old man with a long-expired gift certificate, asking if we sell coffee here.
“No,” she says, drawing out theosound. “I drove all the way from Champaign for a free chaicoffski.” She leans over the register and taps her phone screen with one blue fingernail. “Lucky coincidence that you happen to be working.”
“What would you have done if I wasn’t working?”
She breathes a laugh. “I honestly didn’t think that through. Is that bad?”
“No.” I match her laugh. “But only because it worked out.”
Beside me, Brooklyn pops her tongue, startling me out of this hushed conversation and back into my workday. “So does this happen a lot, or…” She trails off into a suspicious little smirk.
“Hardly ever,” I assure her, punching in my employee ID to comp the drink. “I’m gonna take my lunch break, ‘kay? Right after I make this.” Without looking at Brooklyn, I head for the back cabinets where we keep the ceramics and pull down a pale yellow mug and its corresponding saucer. “One chaicoffski, coming right up.”
I insert myself into the fold of the bar, unapologetically giving myself priority over the existing drinks in the queue. If the other baristas mind, they don’t say anything about it.
