Page 70 of Common Grounds

My heart feels like it might actually burst. She wants the drink I made especially for her. I don’t have words, so I cross the space between us and pull her lips to mine again.

“You sure you don’t want hazelnut?” I ask when I pull away. My voice is raspy and thick.

“Don’t get me wrong. I love hazelnut. But that drink was… special. And I didn’t get to finish it.”

The oven timer dings again. “Okay, coming right up.”

I tear myself away from her and duck into the kitchen to quickly get the muffins out of the oven. Luckily, they’re not terribly overdone. I slide the trays onto the counter to cool and grab two empty muffin tins. Normally, this is a much smoother operation.

I spin around the kitchen area, looking for the mixing bowl, but then remember I left it on the counter because I didn’t want to miss Emery when she got here. I give myself a mental facepalm as I toss the empty tins on top of the oven, but before I can go back out, Emery appears in the doorway, holding the bowl.

“I thought you might need this?” she teases, her voice feigning innocence.

I pretend to play it cool. “Uh, yeah. Muffin batter would be helpful, I guess.”

“Can I help?”

“You want to help me make muffins?”

She shrugs a shoulder. “You seem flustered.”

I laugh humorlessly. “Not going to lie, sreco, having you back here is not going to make me less flustered.”

Her features light up at my use of her nickname, and my stomach flips. She likes that name. She likes the name I’ve given her.

I am in so much trouble.

She doesn’t say anything as she walks to the muffin tins. She lines them with the paper cups on the counter, then sprays them with cooking spray. She takes the scoop from the counter and fills each space, then slides the tins into the oven.

It’s like she belongs here. With me. Baking muffins for my shop.

I come up beside her and set the oven timer, then lean a hip against the counter. I fold my arms and study her, still in awe of how she fits so well in my life.

She shoots me a little smile as she takes some of the cooled muffins to the front. “I believe I was promised bottomless coffee,” she calls on her way to the counter. “And I’m taking a muffin. Someone got me out of bed before I could have a proper breakfast this morning.”

I shake my head as if to clear it. “Coffee. Yes. I’m on it,” I say. Lattes and pastries feel completely inadequate as an offering to this incredible woman, but if that’s what she wants, that’s what she’ll get.

Chapter twenty-seven

Emery

Thank the universe and all that is holy that I finished a draft of this article yesterday because Trevor is larger than life. His entire presence dominates my senses, even from across the room. When he opens the shop, there’s a trickle of people who come in even in the early hours. Some, he greets by name and with that warm smile that crinkles the corners of his mouth. Most of them are elderly, and I realize they must be regulars his grandfather would have known.

Something about that strikes me square in the chest. These people have likely been coming in this shop for decades. What would they do if it closed? Where would they go in the morning? They surely wouldn’t visit that shop down the street to sit and enjoy their espresso for an hour or so before going about their days.

But there are newcomers, too. Trevor greets them with the same warm smile, though it’s more guarded than the one he uses for the people he knows. Not much, though. If there’s one thing I’m learning about Trevor, it’s that he’s open to almost anyone and anything.

He’s so unlike me in that way. I’m wary of everyone. It’s refreshing to be near someone so genuinely welcoming, but it still tickles something in my brain that tells me maybe we’re too different to have anything serious. Eventually, he’ll realize I’m not a relationship person, and we’ll go our separate ways.

But when he catches my eye over the shoulder of one of the younger customers he’s serving, his smile changes. It becomes tender, almost giddy, but no less intense. His amber eyes hold mine, and I break out into a smile of my own before he turns back to help the next person in line.

I’m equal parts completely at home and not of this world in this shop, tapping at my laptop with the clink of porcelain and the hiss of the espresso machine as the soundtrack to my work, but it doesn’t take long for me to sink into the comfort of the space. The lived-in ease of the laminate counters and over-loved tables and chairs seeps its way under my skin, loosening something in my chest. It had been wound so tightly for so long, I hadn’t even registered the tightness until it was gone.

I close my eyes and breathe deeply. That heady scent of coffee and sugar and vanilla fills my lungs, easing its way into the tight spaces between my ribs and around my heart. It’s the same scent Trevor carries with him wherever he goes. He wasn’t kidding when he said this place is in his veins. I don’t think he’d rid himself of this smell if he was away from here for twenty years. I don’t think he’d ever want to.

It smells like being wrapped up in him. Like burying my face into the soft fabric of his plaid shirt, or tangling in the sheets and waking up to a kiss to my temple. It’s a warm hug. Like coming home.

Home. That’s what this place is. It’s a realization, one that’s been sitting patiently at the edges of my brain, waiting for me to call it to the front. All I had to do was settle into it rather than try to run from it. This place is home for the old man sitting at the counter, pushing his tiny, empty espresso cup away from himself and placing a gray cap on his head before shuffling to the door. It’s home for James, awkwardly pouring drip coffee into to-go cups and carefully checking that the lids he places on top are firmly secured. It’s home for Mike, who stops in to grab a latte on his way to work and looks around at the people in the space before winking at me on his way out. It’s even home to the twenty-somethings who giggle before placing their orders as they try not to swoon when Trevor smiles at them.

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