Cafe Latte

Chapter One

Danny knew running a business wouldn't be easy, but he didn't realize it would be this hard, either. It was always within the first five years that startups failed, they said, and here he and his partner were, in year three, barely breaking even. But at least they weren't yet in the red.

The problem was the construction on the train stop literally next door to the café. It was where most of their business came from, but it had been shut down for months, replacing the hordes of students and businesspeople with the same handful of construction workers coming in only once or twice a day. It wasn't an even trade, and they'd gone from profitable and thriving to barely scraping by.

Yes, there were a handful of loyal regulars who still made their way in, some of them even daily, despite the terrible parking and lack of a train. But there was a bus line, and a parking garage a few blocks down, and people liked their coffee enough to deal with it. If only there were more of them.

Danny was in the back, standing at the prep table. It doubled as an office during the day after the morning baking was done, this little corner in the joint kitchen-storeroom. His partner and the baker and lead barista, Meara, was turning off the ovens and pushing around racks of cupcakes and scones and cookies, trying to maximize the tiny space as best he could until everything cooled and he could set it out in front.

The doorbell chimed and Danny looked up at the monitor on the wall above the table. That student who came in every day was here. He looked back down at his laptop, the spreadsheet of their monthly budget versus their earnings.

"Josselin's here," he said. Meara looked up from the cookie sheet he was tapping to check the temperature, and he nodded.

"I'll take it. You stay here and work."

Danny nodded and Meara whisked behind him, pushing through the swinging door.

"Hello!" he called.

Josselin waved, then pointed to his cell phone, which was pressed up to his ear. Meara nodded and went to writing out little signs for the bake case, saying things like, "Chocolate chip cookies, fresh from the oven! Still warm, just ask!" He stuck them each in little holders and swapped out the labels for the signs for the few things they'd run out of. The construction workers really liked their lemon-gingerbread cupcakes. Not one of their best sellers, at least, until the work had started. Now they sold out every day, and sometimes had to make double.

Josselin set up in his usual spot in the corner where the one of the outlets was. He plugged in his laptop and started it up, pulled a few books and notebooks out of his messenger bag and piled them beside it, and sat down to finish his call. Usually they asked people on their phones to take it outside, but Josselin kept his voice down and never spoke to any of the employees while he was on it, so they let him be.

Meara fiddled with his signs and peered back through the window of the swinging door, as if he could see whether the cookies had cooled enough to stack without sticking. Of course, he couldn't. He just needed to look anywhere but Josselin, because when he looked at Josselin for too long, he tended to zone out and stare.

Josselin was cute! Meara couldn't help it. His long black hair was always pulled back in a ponytail and he always wore dress shirts and argyle sweater vests and nerdy little ties with things like Pokémon or Tetris blocks on them. Meara wasn't sure of Josselin's eye color, because he had so much trouble making eye contact, but from brief glances, he'd come to the conclusion that they were probably blue. Meara was still good with customers, though, because he'd learned tricks to get around it: if he kept his eyes at the top of a person's nose, they couldn't tell the difference, and it was so much less stressful than looking someone in the eye.