Page 68 of It's a Brewtiful Day
Neither Elliot nor myself made a move but waited silently as the friends—the meddling sisters—made enough noise to let us know they’d walked outside with their bins, the rolled coins, and the keysto Nina’s car. The whole thing was over in seconds, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t like being played by my sister and although I had suspected she had something up her sleeve, I didn’t think her friend was a part of it.
And to think, at one point I was starting to like Alice.
When the silence started to build like an oncoming storm, Elliot opened the storage room door and we exited into the main part of the coffee shop.
“Well, that’s just great.” I narrowed my eyes thinking of how Cassie just left me. My rolling emotions flipped through me like a slideshow on high speed and a soft snort followed it. “But it’s not the end of the world. I can always walk home.”
“Not so fast. What’s this about a girlfriend? Because that obviously came from you.” He stood there with his hands on his hips. “Where would you ever get an idea like that?”
“I saw you. Twice. With a redhead.” The words came out laced in venom or coated in jealousy or maybe both, it was hard to tell.
Slowly, he bobbed his head. “I see.”
“You do?”
He walked over to the counter, leaving me standing there with a stupid expression on my face. Setting a jug of milk and various other supplies onto the metal counter, he asked, “Do you want the truth, or are you in a hurry to make yourassumptions and leave?”
“I always appreciate the truth.” I unzipped my jacket and pulled off my toque.
He nodded to a stool, a small sheepish grin twitching the edges of his lips. “Great, have a seat.”
Chapter Fourteen
The counter wasn’t conducive to sitting at, but I grabbed a stool all the same and hauled it up beside the till. The overhead lights were on, but not the house lights, so it gave the area a neat look as the display case lights were off. Not that this was unusual; the last time I was in after hours there were no lights, so this was a marked improvement.
I swallowed and watched Elliot as he stood in front of the mug wall and carefully selected a coffee cup of appropriate size. Setting it off to the side, and out of eyesight, he poured milk into a metal cup, and with the machine’s hiss, the milk bubbled and frothed. He cleaned the milk frother and set the metal cup off to the side as he added grounds to a metal pod while a serious expression pushed his brows down into a deep concentration rendering him incapable of speaking, even if he wanted to. The machine whirred and buzzed, and the most amazingaroma danced in the air. As he stepped around the counter, he pumped three shots of maple syrup, added the espresso, and topped it with the foam. For a bonus decoration, he drizzled maple syrup across the foam and passed the cup over.
Suspecting there was a reason he selected this mug, I admired it a little more than usual. It was a cinnamon colour with two mugs holding hands. Above the couple were the wordswe’re the perfect blend. My heart nearly exploded; it was so sweet.
“Made just the way you like it except, because of the hour, I made it a decaf.”
I checked the time on my phone, quite surprised to see it was pushing ten o’clock already. “Thank you, I appreciate that.”
“Let me whip one up for myself, and we can discuss things, or avoid the elephant in the room like you’ve been doing.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you.”
“Who said I was the elephant?”
“I what? I never said…” I cupped my hands around the mug, allowing the heat to seep into my fingertips. “I’m so confused.”
“You honestly want me to believe you haven’t been avoiding me? Really? So… I’ve been tossing a maple twist every morning for the last nine days just because?” His right eyebrow went high enough to completely hide under his wavy hair.
I hung my head. “You’ve been throwing them out?”
“Well, not really. I can’t do that, so I’ve been sipping on them. It’s not my drink of choice, a little too sweet for my liking, but I just can’t in good conscience throw out a perfectly acceptable drink.”
“I suppose you’re paying for them too?”
When he didn’t answer, I knew, and a lump formed in the back of my throat. Taking a sip of my specially crafted drink helped shrink it, but not enough to fully dissolve it.
The machine whirred again, and a rich healthy aroma of strong coffee permeated the air, evoking a strange kind of comfort. He frothed some milk and added it to a generic robin’s egg blue mug.
“Shall we sit in your favourite spot?” A subtle head tip pointed toward the wingback chairs.
“We shall.” I got there first and grabbed the better chair—the one that faced out into the rest of the dining room. With my drink on the little table, I leaned back into the chair and wiped imaginary dust off my pants.
The air between us seemed thicker than the froth in my cup, and for many heartbeats, neither of us spoke. He blew across the top of his mug, spraying small bits of foam everywhere, and I just let mine sit, even if it was at the perfect temperature. A couple of degrees cooler wasn’t going to hurt.