Page 28 of Not That Ridiculous

They weren’t my business.

They felt like my business when Kevin’s emotions compelled Kevin to put his mouth on mine, but they weren’t.

I picked up a wooden stirrer and drew it slowly through the heart once, and then again. I X-ed it out. It looked awful. I briskly stirred it up, then tossed the lot down the sink.

Whatever happened, I was going to be fine about it.

I made another latte and tried out a feather. I didn’t quite nail it, but it wasn’t as bad as the heart.

If being obsessed with latte art was my secret, then my secret-secret was that I was pretty shit at it. I was getting there, though.

By the time I’d made two more, I was in my zone, in my groove, feeling relaxed. After six thirty, people started trickling in. Most of them ordered drinks to go. They rushed out clutching their cups to wait at the bus stop right outside the shop, or else scurried off in the direction of the tiny town carpark, or to one of the side roads where they’d illegally dropped their car long enough to dash in and get their fix.

I had a few regulars who liked to drink their first cup at a slower pace, such as Mrs Hughes who worked in the bookshop opposite The Chipped Cup, and Ray, who liked to camp out at my back table and hog it for two hours straight on one cappuccino.

With the best will in the world, I couldn’t handle all of these customers myself. When Amalie fucked off to Belize—or Bali, or wherever she went, I didn’t care—I had to cave and hire some part-time baristas.

At first, I’d had a high turnover of students looking for a cool, Instagrammable job. Most of them only lasted a couple of weeks before they peaced out.

A few took the opportunity to give me an unasked-for exit interview as they headed out the door, making sure I knew that I was too intense and should lighten up. It was just coffee, man. This wasn’t, like, their end point. Their dream. It wasn’t as if anyone wanted to make acareerout of being a barista, right?

Thankfully, I’d found a couple of steady part-timers I could depend on.

Milly was nineteen, earnest and hardworking, Pippa was sixty-three, talkative and competent, and after six months of working as a team, I’d decided that we could manage with the three of us, and stopped advertising.

Yes, I ended up putting in more hours than was good for me, but when it came down to it, I’d rather do that than keep hiring and firing people.

After all that worrying about how Kevin was going to behave when I next saw him, in the end I missed him. Pippa was working that morning, and I must have been in the back emptying the dishwasher and unpacking the latest bean delivery when he came in.

I didn’t doubt that he would come in. He did it every single day without fail.

Sometimes, if he was working, he was with Craig. Sometimes he was with friends. Sometimes he came at nine, other times it was closer to eleven.

But he always came.

So when the lunch rush passed and I still hadn’t seen him, I decided that hemusthave come in when I was busy in the kitchen.

Unless…

I froze in the middle of carrying a tray of clean cups out to Pippa at the counter.

There was a chance that, for the first time in as long as I could remember, he hadn’t come in at all.

That he was so busy feeling whatever it was he was feeling about the kiss, he’d avoided The Chipped Cup altogether.

I might never see him again.

No, that was stupid. Of course I’d see him again. Even if he did stop coming to The Chipped Cup and decided that he was a Starbucks kind of guy now, I’d see him around town. I could still see him at the gym.IfI ever went to the gym again.

Actually, if Kevin decided that he was a Starbucks kind of guy, I’d hunt him down and tell him to get over himself, you didn’t pass upmygreat coffee for Starbucks, and while I was at it, what the hell was he eventhinking?—

“Charlie, what on earth is wrong with you today?” Pippa said.

“What?” I blinked down at her concerned face. She was five feet two inches tall, fine-boned as a house sparrow, and the most stylish woman I’d ever known.

The shop’s uniform was technically black trousers, black bistro Crocs or the comfortable, work-safe flat shoe of your choice, and a black t-shirt with The Chipped Cup printed on the front in a white sans serif font.

Milly and I stuck to the rules and wore our uniforms.

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