Chapter Seven A Meeting for a Meeting #2
The pair of them made a pit stop at the end of the counter, where there were carafes marked MILK and HALF AND HALF and OAT and ALMOND and all manner of free fixings to add to a drink.
Plunking her mug down, Emerson grabbed the OAT carafe and dumped in enough that the coffee in her cup—before, plain black, like Mal’s—turned a light shade of tan.
She swirled it around with a wooden stirrer, almost sloshing coffee over the sides of the cat ears, and then nudged it down the bar.
She stopped it in front of a bottle of simple syrup.
Unceremoniously, like it wasn’t a crime against humanity, she pumped five full pumps into her coffee mug.
“Emerson,” Mal said—half an admonishment, half a swear word.
“Look here, Mal Flowers,” Emerson said. “Don’t coffee-shame me. I won’t stand for it!”
For a half second, Mal was concerned they’d offended her, but when Emerson looked over her shoulder at them, it was with a toothy grin. She added a small mountain of whipped cream straight from the can, then topped it all off with a generous sprinkling of cocoa powder.
“I won’t,” they said, then added, truthfully, “but I really want to.”
“So, here’s the thing,” Emerson said. She waved her hand at Mal like come here, you and took off again, cup overfull and sloshing, as she led them back into the many rooms of the Haus. “I don’t actually like coffee.”
“What?!” Mal was shocked enough that, if they were editing their words on a page, they wouldn’t correct a use of a question mark and an exclamation point.
“I know, I know, but look: I think it tastes disgusting! Like bitter farts. Don’t give me that look!
” Emerson shooed her hands at Mal, putting her coffee in further danger of spilling on the floor.
“But you see, what I love is caffeine. Coffee is, unfortunately, the best vehicle for that.” She led Mal through the library room, stopping for half a second (that almost made Mal crash directly into her) to run her fingers over a particularly colorful spine.
“So, to make up for it tasting like absolute burnt garbage, I pump it full of sugar and oat milk. It’s the only way I can stomach it. ”
“That is…” Mal wasn’t sure if they were shocked or amazed.
They loved the flavor of coffee: its rich chocolates, its faint hints of fruit, the way the bitter notes played across their tongue on that first, scalding sip.
Dulling that out with sugar felt a bit like a sin.
But as they followed Emerson further into the Haus, they had to admit: “Actually, I think that’s what I really like about coffee too.
The caffeine part. It’s like… I can’t function without it to get the rest of me to keep up with my brain. ”
“Exactly,” Emerson said, a little too loud. Thankfully, she ducked them both into the back room before anyone could give them a reproachful look. “I knew you’d get it.”
“I mean, I actually do like coffee. But I get the caffeine thing, sure.”
“That’s what I knew, duh,” she said, and turned a little too hard, sloshing her coffee again as she put her cup down on the corner desk.
Mal’s nose wrinkled; that would leave a ring.
Emerson, oblivious, sat down in the rolling chair and leaned back, her arms behind her head. “So. What’s on the agenda?”
“Figuring out the agenda, I think,” said Mal. “Uh, can I?” They nodded their head at the empty accent chair they’d sat in the last time.
“Yeah, I picked it out for you, duh,” Emerson said.
Mal blinked. “Really?”
“Really! I picked both our chairs because they don’t have arms, so they don’t do the—” Emerson mimed with her hands, striking them against her hip and squeezing. Mal could fill in the uncomfortable push on their fat hips in their mind. “So we’d be cozy.”
“Emerson, that’s…” Mal trailed off. No one had ever done something so small yet so thoughtful for them. They looked at Emerson, her damp hair shining in the stormy light of the window, and couldn’t find the right words for the curious feeling swelling in their chest.
“I wanted it to be nice for us.” She shrugged. “Since this is our room now.”
Mal looked around. Other than their chairs (which somehow felt so much more Important now), it still wasn’t much—it was as barren as the first day, except now a large table had been pushed up against the opposite wall.
It had a light-colored, heavy wooden top and thick, elaborately designed brass legs that had at some point been painted green, the floral scrolling on them ornate enough to be pretty despite the bog moss color.
The table, like the room, gave off the distinct feeling of being purposefully forgotten.
It was fitting; after all, that had been the ultimate fate of Collage. And it was, in some ways, the current fate of Mal. But maybe, with careful selections like the ones Emerson had already made, it could be cozy—it could be theirs.
Mal sat, carefully placed their cup on a tile coaster, and unzipped their backpack. They tugged out their planner at the same time Emerson fished out her half-size notebook.
“So,” Mal said. “You work… Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday.”
“Yes.”
“And I work Wednesday and Saturday and some Sundays,” Mal said, making notes on today’s empty planner corner. “What else?”
Emerson opened her notebook to the back page, on which there were about two dozen different colored Post-its.
“I have…” Emerson grinned up at Mal, waving her hands at all the notes. They flapped with the breeze she created. “It’s a little harder to pin down my schedule. I’m kind of all over.”
“I know,” Mal said. “I see you around, like, everywhere.”
“Aw.” Emerson smiled, a soft little thing. Her glossed lips shone pink in the light from the window. “You see me?”
“Yeah, of course,” said Mal, before they could say something else—something less embarrassingly truthful.
“Shucks,” said Emerson, batting her eyelashes playfully. It made Mal’s chest flutter.
But they did see her around a lot—Emerson was always doing something.
Mal spent most of their time at school, Dollar City, or their house, but whenever they did go out (usually for Maddie’s soccer games, or activities before or after them), it felt like Emerson was always out too.
Standing in front of the Madison Theatre in the glow of the marquee lights, waiting for a local band’s show.
On the patios of local restaurants, laughing loudly at a meal with her moms. Going to the silly little festivals the city always held in Mainstrasse Village, a flash of vibrant red standing out in the crowd of revelers their dad always cursed for taking up too much space.
Emerson was everywhere, woven through the periphery of Mal’s life.
“It’s your red hair,” Mal said, still half in their thoughts. “And also you always seem like you’re having a really good time.” They blinked at Emerson, then shook themself, their cheeks warm. “But what does it mean for our schedule? Are there any days that are out?”
“Well, no. Not as such.” Emerson wiggled where she sat. Her voice was a little squeakier than usual. “I just go where I go whenever. And I can prioritize our meetings! I am the managing editor of the coolest new zine. So I can do that, at least.”
To Mal, Emerson’s unplanned schedule sounded like a nightmare. But her promise to prioritize the zine made them smile. They dropped their gaze to their notes. “Cool. We can work with that.”
“Also, the thing about working at the Haus,” Emerson started, leaning in so the wheels on her chair creaked, “is that everything is pretty chill. Sam was razzing me for being late, but it’s not a huge deal. And I’m always down to do a meetup like this before my shift. Or after.”
“Huh?” Mal looked up. This was a decided contrast from Dollar City, where everything ran the risk of turning into a huge deal. “Like, after hours?”
“Sure, if we need it.” Emerson shrugged. “The whole thing about the Haus is it’s a community-led space, so the hours are a bit… soft. They’re, like, only suggestions. If the space is needed outside of them, we just stay open.”
“But what does that mean for us?” Mal asked.
“Late-night editing parties.” Emerson grinned, fanning out her fingers for emphasis.
“Those epic all-nighters you see in the movies. More coffee—even if it’s without cream and sugar, you grossie.
” She swatted at Mal’s leg playfully. “But it also means we can be a little more flexible about our end times most nights. Also also—here, it helps me to see it like—”
She bent and got out two pads of differently colored Post-its from her bag. Then she wrote their free times each day on the notes—bright yellow for herself, pumpkin orange for Mal—and stuck them to the wall in front of the desk in weekday order.
“Ta-da!” she said, waving her hands at it. “Our week in Post-it form.”
Mal had to hand it to Emerson: Though it was a mess, it was also an interesting way to visually represent how their weeks looked.
And before long, between their two brains and a sea of Post-its, they came up with a schedule for their co-occurring free times: Mondays and Tuesdays from four to five p.m., like now; Thursdays, any non-school time; Friday afternoons, heavily caveated by Emerson (“as long as nothing else important is going on”); bits and bobs of time on Saturdays between their two work shifts; and the Sundays when Mal wasn’t working at Dollar City.
It felt like a lot of time to spend working in this small room. And it also felt like still not quite enough to get everything that needed doing done.
“I mean, we can sneak in other times as we need to,” Emerson reassured them. “And if we’re up against a deadline, I can do Friday whenever.”
It still sounded like a lot, but Mal nodded. “Okay. This is workable.”
“Of course it is,” Emerson said, flipping her hair. Over the course of the meeting, it had dried and was almost back to its standard poofiness. “We worked it out.”
And while Mal didn’t have as much faith in them as she did, they had to admit it had seemed to come together pretty well, all things considered.
Usually, when they tried to make plans with Maddie or her friends, it took much longer to explain the whys and hows of Mal needing extra morning time to boot up or extra time at night to wind down. But Emerson got it on the first go.
“Well, it’s almost shift time,” Emerson said, swigging the last bit of her overly sweet coffee.
“Yeah, don’t piss Sam off,” Mal teased.
“Ooh, are you in looove?” Emerson asked, the smallest shadow crossing her face before it settled into a playful smile.
“What? No.” Mal shrugged. “I just think it’s cool to see another nonbinary person in the wild. Like, we’re pretty rare Pokémon.”
“Yeah, a star-rated holographic card for sure,” Emerson joked back.
“I didn’t think of that, but you’re right, that’s cool.
Okay, I’ll stop picking on you. Maybe not Sam, but you’re off the hook.
” Her easy smile was back, her shoulders relaxing a little.
Mal watched, curious, liking to see it there.
“Well, should we meet again tomorrow?” they asked, copying the last bit of the Post-it schedule into neat lines in their planner. “We still need to nail down, like… an actual theme for this first issue, I guess.”
Mal’s stomach suddenly felt a little mushy. They had gotten so caught up in the bright colors and rich coffee scent of Emerson they had almost forgotten there was real, hard work to do. Work that Mal had no idea how to actually get done.
“Yeah, sure,” Emerson said. “And I’ll get the coffee tomorrow, since you got today.”
Mal smiled. “Okay. I like the sound of that.”
“Cool, well.” Emerson rolled her seat back to the far side of the desk. Only as she moved away did Mal realize how close they had been. It was like they’d been drawn together, magnet-pulled. “I can’t keep Sam waiting. Say bye on your way out, okay?”
And then she was gone, bouncing away from the desk and through the door—leaving Mal to pack up their backpack with the ghost of a smile on their lips.