Begin Again | ongoing

twenty

Sunny makes it to work bang on time – okay, with a minute to go before she's late – only to see, as she's tugging on an apron and scraping her hair off her face, Celeste sitting at one of the tables, slowly turning the pages of a thick paperback. She hasn't spotted Sunny yet but Sunny spotting Celeste has put her off her game and she knocks a bottle of caramel syrup off the counter as Mack's reaching for it.

"Whoa girl, steady on," he says, like she's a horse. Grabbing the syrup and squirting a generous drizzle on the macchiato he's making, he adds it and a frothy hot chocolate to a tray that a stony-faced middle-aged woman carries off to a table where a couple of primary school kids are fighting.

"Sorry. How's it been today?"

"Same old, same old," Mack says. "Listen, I've gotta run – anniversary dinner with the wife – and Gina was supposed to cover me until eight but she just called, she can't come in. I'm afraid you and Michelle are gonna be alone – that all right?"

Sunny shrugs. "Sounds like it'll have to be."

"Well ... yeah, kind of. Sorry, Sunny. You'll be okay, the two of you, right?"

"We're always alone from eight 'til one," Sunny says. "It's only an extra three hours. It'll be fine."

"Fab. I can always rely on you, kid," he says, and Sunny makes a mental note to say no once in a while. She doesn't want to be too dependable. That's a sure-fire way to be taken advantage of. "Right. See you tomorrow?"

"See you, Mack. Happy anniversary," she says, and her voice carries across a quiet moment in the coffee shop. Celeste hears it and turns around, her expression shifting when she clocks Sunny. Something in her face makes it clear that she's there for Sunny, not for a vanilla latte or an almond croissant.

"Cheers!" Mack sheds his apron and claps Sunny on the shoulder as he leaves, and Sunny's actually quite glad it'll be just her and Michelle. Not because the third pair of hands isn't needed – it can get busy between five and eight, when people finish work and school and crave a sweet fix – but because he's the boss, and as lovely as he is, she feels his watchful eye on her whenever they share a shift. With only Michelle to keep an eye on her, though she's pretty sure she's more senior than Michelle now, Sunny can relax a little more, and address the silver-haired woman sitting in the window.

There's no-one waiting to be served and nothing that needs to be desperately done – cleaning can wait until later, when there aren't so many feet in the way – so Sunny gives a nod to Michelle and she heads over to Celeste and sees that she was right: Celeste doesn't have a drink, no empty plate in front of her. She's been waiting.

"Sunny," Celeste says, and there's a breath of relief in those two syllables.

"Hi, Celeste," Sunny says. She perches on the arm of the sofa next to her. "Are you all right? Can I get you something to drink?"

"We've been worried about you," Celeste says. The book in her hand is closed now, the pages folded over her thumb in place of a bookmark. She opens it only to dogear the page and slip the novel into her bag. Sunny's surprised by that – Celeste seems like the type to value perfection, and perfectionists tend not to deface their books.

"Worried about me? Why?"

"You didn't exactly leave us on the best note," she says, folding her hands in her lap. "We feared you may do something foolish so we've been trying to track you down. Astrid eventually came across someone who said there's a girl with purple hair who works here."

"So you've been, what, hanging around waiting for me?" Sunny self-consciously touches her hair. It's not quite long enough to comfortably twirl around her finger so she tugs on the same lock, over and over.