Page 25 of Colliding with the Coffee Shop Owner
The rest of the room goes quiet, fading into the background. My heart pounds against the base of my throat, fierce and raw. The air between us seems thinner now, heavier in my lungs. His gaze doesn’t waver, and my breath hitches as I try to hold steady—but there’s no moving, no looking away.
And somehow, I don’t want to.
Max Lawson has stared at me a hundred times this week—enough that I’ve stopped wondering why and started counting the way it makes me feel. Uneasy. Warm. Alive. Like every time he looks, he scrapes away some layer I didn’t know was there. Sometimes I want to yell at him to stop.
Sometimes I want him to look harder.
“What makes the pattern happen?” His question catches me off guard.
“Gravity,” I say.
“That’s a weak answer,” Max counters, his voice still calm but tinged with amusement. The faintest trace of a smirk curves his mouth. “It's not just gravity. There’s precision. Intention.”
“It’s really just physics,” I deflect, repressing the urge to let his focus disarm me. “You watch the flow, decide where to drag it. It’s not complicated.”
He tilts his head, unconvinced. “If it’s not complicated, how come nine out of ten cafés screw it up? Seems like art to me.”
“It’s about understanding the elements: how the milk folds into the espresso, how steady your hand is.” I shrug, wanting to brush it off, even though his focus sets something low in my stomach stirring. “It’s not magic.”
He exhales, low and controlled, and I swear I catch the faintest quirk of satisfaction in his expression. “You make it look easier than it is.”
“It’s just—” I turn to answer automatically, and find myself closer to him than I realized. His gaze lowers to meet mine at the same time, clear and intense and searing, pinning me there.
I forget what I’m going to say. The words evaporate completely. Heat prickles along my spine, down my arms. It’s not the kind of heat that comes with embarrassment or awkward proximity—it’s sharper than that.
Hungrier.
It’s awareness.
It’s desire.
The liquid in the cup trembles slightly, a ripple breaking across the surface, but neither of us notices. Neither of us looks. My focus is caught somewhere else, somewhere closer. His hand is still beneath mine, steady on the handle of the milk pitcher, but it’s not the silk of the foam or the swirl of white against brown that holds us like this.
The room narrows to the infinitesimal space between us as his body leans closer, heat radiating from his skin in invisible waves. The air seems to tilt, gravity shifting when his shoulder brushes mine—the lightest touch unraveling something tight within.
My gaze lifts, drawn to his profile like a compass finding north. He's already watching, eyes sharp and shadowed beneath dark lashes, their weight pulling me under like an undertow. There’s a faint catch in my breathing as his attention drops to my lips. The shift whispers through the air between us, subtle yet unmistakable.
It would be so easy.
One tilt of my chin.
One lean forward.
One inch separates the charged air between us from something more.
His lips part just slightly, like maybe he’s thinking the same thing, like perhaps he’s about to say something, or maybe not say anything at all.
My pulse pounds, wild and erratic. Every part of me leans toward him, toward whatever this is. Toward something I shouldn’t want but suddenly, desperatelyneed.
But before I can decide—before either of us does anything, the front door flies open with a bright, cheerfulding!
The sound shatters the moment, loud and grating in the silence we've wrapped ourselves in. The chilly mountain air spills into the café, dousing the heat between us, followed by the noise of chatter and excited voices. A group of tourists pours inside, four or five of them, their sun-flushed faces scanning the café as they clamor loudly about pastries.
Max straightens, the glint of something unreadable slipping back behind the guarded mask of calm he always wears. A beatpasses, his eyes catching mine for one last fleeting second, and my knees almost buckle under the weight of whatever that was.
And then, like it never happened, he steps back. Just one step, but it’s enough to unspool the pull dragging me closer to him.
The tourists keep talking, oblivious to what they’ve interrupted, and I fling myself into action before I can think too much about what I was about to do. “Customer Service Lily” reactivates like a reflex—steps practiced and precise as I duck out from behind the latte station, moving toward the counter like nothing has changed.
