Chapter Five
AMIRA
T he coffee machine whirs to life, a sensory overload of sound and smell as it grinds the double-roasted beans. Under my fingers, the milk jug grows warm, and I work almost on autopilot to make two skinny lattes for the women in activewear. They weave between the tables of flowers, admiring Cassidy’s creations, and even though they came in for coffee during their mid-morning run, we all know they are going to leave with flowers too.
Combining her boutique with a coffee cart was Cassidy’s best decision ever. Her floral bouquets are a work of art, the trick was getting people in front of them. But considering she is incapable of making coffee that doesn’t taste like dirt, asking me to become her business partner was more of a necessity. I couldn’t be happier with the decision though.
Flowers may be Cassidy’s art, but coffee is mine. The little flowers I’ve started drawing with the milk foam on a latte, the idea to blend two brands of coffee beans in the machine for a deeper, more full-bodied flavour. Even baking endless sweet treats in our tiny kitchen at the apartment. It doesn’t just mean our rooms always smell divine; it gives me a creative outlet even when I’m not here at work. Only, it doesn’t feel like work at all. Even on the days our customers are few and far between, or the long night we spent doing a stocktake, or when I attended an intensive floristry course so I could help with that side of the store as needed. I love it all, and working for myself, with Cassidy, has been freeing.
As I top one of the coffees with a sprinkle of cinnamon—just the way this woman always requests—I watch Cass bundle up two small posies of wattle. They’re rustic and bright, and even from my vantage point behind the coffee cart and across the room, the fresh honey-like scent takes over as Cassidy fluffs the bouquets. I never paid attention to the way the flowers change through the seasons, but there’s no missing the bright yellow buds filling buckets on the front table. They have, I’ve learnt, a limited flowering season, so while they are available Cassidy is making the most of the unusually bold native flower to liven up the space.
Don’t get me wrong, the boutique is colourful and bright all year round, but in a more understated way. Cassidy specialises in Australian Native Flowers, which are stunning but seem to be more muted than the typical rainbow of colour some florists work with. The boutique is usually a sea of blush pinks and earthy greenery, save for the table near the back that Cassidy keeps loaded with all colours of roses, lilies, peonies and dahlias. So yeah, the sunshine yellow of the wattle stands out, in the best way, and we’ve already sold through more than half of what Cassidy ordered. She knows flowers, and she knows that side of the business better than I can ever hope to.
After we say goodbye to the women, who walk out with grins as bright as the wattle and a promise to be back next week, Cassidy steps around the coffee cart and starts fiddling with the machine.
“I want an iced latte,” she says as she scoops ice into her reusable tumbler.
“Is that your way of asking me to make you one?”
Without waiting for her to answer, because I don’t need to hear her response to know, I grab the cup from her hands and get to work making us both a drink. I bump her hip with my own, nudging her out of the small space. Cassidy sits down on the edge of one of the tables, squished between two buckets, one overflowing with gum leaves and the other with a handful of the remaining pink banksias from this morning’s delivery.
“You always talk more when your hands are busy,” she muses as she reties the bow on her apron. “And I’m still certain something happened at the wedding.”
It’s been two weeks since Kaya’s wedding, and despite my efforts to convince her otherwise, Cassidy seems convinced there is a story to tell. I roll my eyes in response to her statement. “Nothing happened.”
“Noah said the same thing. But you both end up looking like Rudolf when you say it.”
Ignoring her, I wiggle my nose and focus on the drinks, adding a swirl of caramel syrup around Cassidy’s cup before pouring in the milk. I’ve tried to tell her Noah was the perfect gentleman when he walked inside and made sure I was safely in the apartment before leaving. She doesn’t believe there wasn’t more to it than that. And okay, I skipped the part where he carried me up the stairs and put me to bed. I skipped how I woke up a little in his arms and felt so at ease and warm that I didn’t want him to put me down. That I had to grab hold of my pillow to stop myself from grabbing him.
Normally, I tell Cassidy everything. But with Noah, it feels different. Maybe because they are cousins. Maybe because I’ve never quite felt this kind of pull to someone. Maybe because I still don’t know what it means or where to go from here.
Noah coming to the wedding with me meant nothing to him. He was helping a friend escape whatever terrible date my father had tried to set me up with. That was all.
I give our drinks a little shake to hide the shivers that race through me. Cassidy lunges forward to grab hers before sitting back down and taking her first sip.
“Mmm.” She closes her eyes as she tastes her drink.
“Seriously Cass, do you want to know if anything happened between me and your cousin?”
She chokes a little, snapping her eyes open to gawk at me. “Did it?!”
The gentle bells of our electronic door sensor chime, freeing me from the conversation I don’t know how to finish. Cassidy jumps off the table and wipes her apron smooth with her free hand while she rushes to the counter to deposit her stainless steel cup. I lean down with the intent to put my own drink on the shelf under the cart.
“Hello,” Cassidy chimes before I can look up at our next customer. “Oh! Mr Solak, how are you?”
Half bent under the counter, I freeze. My father. Here. No .
My parents still don’t know about Cassidy’s brilliant idea to add a café component to her boutique. I still haven’t told them I went into business with her. I haven’t figured out how to tell them I spent my inheritance from my grandmother on the coffee cart I’m currently standing behind. Hiding behind.
But I’m about to have no choice.
I can’t hide down here forever, and the cart is too far away from the back room for me to be able to escape in there. Blood rushes to my ears as I try to think. What am I going to say? How will he react? I do my best to slow my racing heart but it’s like trying to use a holey bucket to save a boat from sinking.
“Cassidy, I had a meeting in the area, and I thought I would stop in to get Emel some flowers.” My father speaks with no charm, even as he talks about the apparent love of his life. He never has. Even when I was a child, he was overly direct and never friendly. Do this, go there, finish your homework. My parents’ relationship always seemed transactional and direct. They cared for each other, still do I suppose, but would go through the motions of a loving marriage like actors in a play. Their relationship had been planned from the moment my mother was born, and although they both claim it’s a real-life love story that they ended up together, I often wonder how much of what they share is true love and how much is forced by circumstance. Even so, it’s nice he thought to buy her flowers.
“Oh, um, lovely,” Cassidy stammers.
Now, or never, I suppose. I stand up, drink still in my hand, rolling my shoulders back and straightening my spine.
“ Baba .”
He double takes before he turns to me. Visibly shaken by the fact I’m here.
“Amira? What is this?”
Pride swells in my chest. He’s never going to be impressed at all I’ve achieved with Cassidy, but I am. “This is my coffee cart. Cassidy and I are now business partners. She makes the flowers, I make the refreshments.”
“What happened to your … job?” He spits the word out, not hiding how much he hated my previous employment. I was head barista at a coffee shop closer to the city. And even though it had little career potential, I loved it. He thought it was despicable that his daughter worked in the hospitality industry.
“My favourite part was making coffee, baking treats, and interacting with customers. I get to do all that here and I’m working for myself.” I force a shield of nonchalance through my limbs and take a sip of my drink. The icy liquid cools me from the inside out, slowing my pulse and calming a little of the shaky nerves I’m trying so hard to hide. “Well, for myself and Cassidy, I guess.”
“You quit?”
My nod is meek, but I fight the urge to look away from him. “I wasn’t happy.”
Cassidy moves between tables, pulling a selection of purple flowers from their buckets. My mother and I both love purple, and Cassidy knows. She’s trying to go about her task without adding to the fiery rage consuming my father.
He might look calm on the surface, with his arms folded across his chest and his feet shoulder-width apart. But I know that stance. I can see the tension in the way he holds his neck higher than normal, the deep line between his brows and the way his beard moves as he scowls beneath it.
“A business is not what you need to be happy, Princess.”
The cutesy, immature nickname might as well be nails on a chalkboard, screeching in my ear. I want to scream that I hate it, that I’ve always hated it. But if there’s ever a good time to tell your father to stop calling you the name he has used since you were a child, now is not it.
“But I am.” I mimic his posture, hoping the power stance will rub a little courage into my bones. “I am happy.”
“No single woman is truly happy.”
Behind her counter, Cassidy snorts. Her hands clap over her mouth and she looks at me with wide eyes. Just this once, I wish she’d speak up against my father. It was years ago when I first asked her not to fight my battles for me, and she’s been respectful of that ever since. But right now? Right now, it would be nice. I give a gentle nod in her direction, hoping she picks up on the subtle signal.
Her hands drop from her mouth, but she waits for me to speak first.
I turn to my father. The scowl has shifted into something that feels a little too much like a smirk. He thinks he’s getting under my skin. And he is, but not for the reason he thinks.
We’ve been down this road. He wants me to crumble and admit I’m terribly lonely without a husband. He wants me to beg him to find me a man. He wants me to say I’m ready to settle down and serve my husband and pop out babies. But I’m not. I don’t want any of those things.
He hasn’t made me sad or reminded me I’m all alone in the world. He’s made me angrier. Angrier than before. Because it used to be just about me and how his 1950s views on women have tried to demoralise me. It used to cause endless frustration at how he’s so stuck on tradition that should have faded away years ago. But it’s about more than that now.
Noah.
As far as my father knows, I’m not single. I’m dating Noah. But even that isn’t good enough. Because he didn’t hand pick Noah from a lineup of suitors presented to him by the horrid old men he spends his days with. This has nothing to do with him just wanting me happy—even if his view on what that means is archaic—and everything to do with him wanting full control over my life.
And I’m not here for it.
“I’m not single.”
I take a long sip of my drink, sucking the last of the coffee through the straw and dumping the empty cup into the tray of dishes. And my father has the balls to laugh.
He throws his head back and guffaws, each loud ‘ha’ stabbing my eardrums. I resume the power pose and wait for him to be finished.
When he finally settles, he looks at me and I can’t quite figure out the expression on his face. His eyes are … kinder, maybe. But beneath his greying beard his lips form the tightest of lines. He shakes his shoulders, regaining his composure.
“You can’t possibly mean the boy from the wedding.”
Boy. It shouldn’t piss me off as much as it does.
“His name is Noah. And I love him.”
I don’t give him time to answer, picking up the crate of dishes and storming through the boutique to the back room where we installed a dishwasher. I don’t give myself a moment to think about how effortlessly that last line slipped over my tongue.
I listen as Cassidy politely offers him the bouquet she created, and as he thanks her abruptly. The doorbell chimes but still I wait, trying not to overthink how the conversation ended.
It was a lie in the heat of the moment. That was all.
Only, I can’t stop thinking about how there’s a small part of me that wishes it were true.