Page 79 of Coffee Shop Girl
Lizbeth tilted her head to the left. “Can that go too? All of them are ancient.”
Dad had always loved board games, so a haphazard offering of them sat tucked under one of the tables. Every now and then, kids would stop in after school to caffeinate up for the rest of the day, playing Monopoly with ruthless vigor. Then they’d disappear to their gaming consoles at home.
By every once in a while, I meant once a year.
“Those are games!”
“They’re for grandpas.” She grimaced, then mouthed,Sorry.
“The rest of it isn’t bad. Luckily, this isn’t a structural problem. It’s not like you need to re-carpet, or anything,” Maverick said with a wary gaze. He didn’t sound so convinced.
The wooden floor was scuffed but in decent shape. I moved to clean up two abandoned coffee cups off a cracked table.
Dad had always brought home coffee mugs as souvenirs from his deployments. When he opened the Frolicking Moose, he had over a hundred mugs that he put onto a cupboard in the corner. Time had whittled them down to about seventy-five.
I take the world with me whenever I drink coffee,he always said. It was definitely fun to pick your own mug. Those weren’t going anywhere.
“Yeah,” Lizbeth drawled, “it’s all pretty gauche here, although I could live with the coffee mugs. You could potentially pass off all the decor and theme as a joke, but you’d need a few other things that are equally ridiculous—like a stuffed Sasquatch, or something.”
My brain couldn’t even process that.
“And that?” Mav pointed to a bulletin board covered with pictures of different types of fish, along with some lures. “What is that, anyway?”
“A lure exchange.” I regarded it with a tilted head, my nose wrinkled. “The idea was fish and coffee.”
“Fish and coffee?” Lizbeth whispered, horrified.
“It’s not so bad! If fishermen wanted to try out different lures, they could come in and swap ... and hopefully buy coffee. With the lake right there, he was convinced it’d work.”
“Did it?”
“Ah ... no.”
I had completely forgotten it was there. Dad had been so excited when he called me with the idea. Taking it in from an outsider’s perspective, however, I could see why it seemed ... odd.
“Who is a customer that comes in here all the time?” Maverick asked.
“All the time?”
“Someone who genuinely loves coffee, pastries, and being with other people, even if they don’t interact.”
Well, no one who didn’t feel some obligation to help me, like Jada and Millie. They were regulars, but I suspected more for my sake than their own.
Except ...
“Someone who loves to read, perhaps?”
He shrugged. “Sure. Maybe they need the internet, like to be out of their house, want to be around other people. Who would use this coffee shop as a place to be social? A place to be seen, known, and heard. Somewhere to be safe. To belong. Somewhere togo.”
With a quick twist of my lips, my gaze settled on Lizbeth.
Her eyes widened dramatically. “Uh, yeah!” she cried. “Finally, someone sees me as I really am! I freaking love coffee, and I’d never leave my armchair if you didn’t force me. Millie gave me all the dish on the latest gossip this morning.” She pointed saucily at us. “Give me a year, and I will run this town.”
The expression on Maverick’s face suggested he didn’t doubt it for a second.
I spread my hands. “So, what do you want in a coffee shop? How would you decorate this place? What would you change? Feel free to take your ti—”
“Cozy. You need to cozy thecrapout of this place.”
