Begin Again | ongoing

sixteen

After the initial shock, being back at work is a relief. Back to normality. The mundanity of making drinks and heating sandwiches and serving pastries. This is what Sunny knows how to do. This is where she excels. She can serve a customer with a smile no matter how grumpy they are, even if she's having a terrible time, and she can make them think it was a genuine pleasure to deal with them. For the first three hours, the place is busy and it's nice not to have time to think between brewing coffee and refilling beans and grabbing cakes.

By eight, the rush has become a trickle. By half past, only a couple of customers remain and not many come through the doors. In the half hour that follows, Sunny serves three people, all of whom take their drinks and leave and when nine o'clock swings around, she's forgotten about the deal she made until Viv walks through the door with a tote bag clutched in one hand, curls lazily pulled off her face with a scrunchie. And she's wearing glasses. Big ones with chunky frames that make her look so fucking hot and smart that Sunny feels all rationality leave her body.

"Hey, Michelle," she says to the woman she shares the shift with, "I'm gonna take my break now, okay?"

Michelle waves her approval and continues sweeping the back, occasionally busting out a rag to wipe down a table. There's not much going on at the moment. By nine o'clock, most people tend to be where they want to be and that's not in a coffee shop. Sunny's not sure how financially viable this place is but she knows Mack has generational wealth and a passion for providing a safe place at all hours of the day, so maybe the money doesn't matter to him.

Viv has picked a spot in the window with a couple of deep sofas, Sunny's favourite spot for pausing with a bite to eat on her half hour break. When it's early enough and still light outside, it's great for people watching – even better when it's a club night and she can watch the dolled-up girls totter across the cobbles in their heels or, when the pubs shut at midnight, she watches drunk groups spilling all over the place.

"Hey." She sheds her apron and sits next to Viv on the sofa, one foot under her knee so they're angled towards each other. "I've not seen you with glasses yet. They suit you."

"Cheers!" Viv tips them at her like a hat. "My eyes are so tired by the end of the day, I need them." At the mention of tiredness, she tries to stifle an enormous yawn and Sunny doesn't look away in time to not catch it.

"How was work?" she asks to snap her out of her stupor.

Getting to know Viv will be a lot easier if she treats her like a regular customer, she reckons, someone she slowly grows to know after a long period of small talk, and if there's one thing Sunny is weirdly good at, it's making polite small talk with virtual strangers.

"Fine, yeah. Nothing to report really." Viv empties her tote bag onto the table, a veritable picnic. She's got tubs of tuna pasta bake and salad – extra red peppers, no cucumber – and a couple of bowls, as well as two books and her own Walkman. At least, Sunny hopes it's her own because she can't imagine she'd share that.

Looking around to check that Michelle is busy and no-one is earwigging, Sunny leans close to Viv and says, "So, um, apparently I got promoted to assistant manager? That was a shock. Is there anything else I should know?"

"I'm sorry, I totally forgot." Viv rubs her head. "Yeah, that was a few months ago. Don't worry, it was mostly Mack being generous and noticing your loyalty and hard work. You said once that it's a lot more money for the same old job, and your hours are the same, so."

"Okay, good, 'cause I was kind of freaking out that there's a whole bunch of shit I need to catch up on and I don't think I could take that on top of everything else."

"God, no, don't worry." Viv peels off the plastic lids of the tubs and unrolls cutlery from a napkin, doling out post and salad into the two dishes. Sunny realises all she's eaten today is the croissant at Delilah's house and all of today's adrenaline wears off in that moment. Her stomach lets out an obscenely loud rumble, the kind of noise from a horror film. Viv eyes her. "Hungry, huh?"