Chapter 13
EVEN THOUGH DR. REICHER GAVE me the go-ahead to start driving again, my mom still insisted I drive with her in the car first. So I drove to the coffee shop in her car for my first day of work and she drove it back home.
As expected, I passed her test with flying colors, and so far I seem to be doing the same at work.
I don’t know why I was up half the night worrying about today. Well, I guess I do. This is my very first job ever, but now that I’m here… it isn’t so scary.
Green buttons for food. Blue buttons for drinks. Total. Take payment. Write the order on the appropriate cup for the barista down the line. Easy peasy.
With each customer who trickles in, the process gets a little smoother. The locations of the buttons aren’t there in my memory when I search for them, but they start to stick and my descriptions on each cup get shorter and more efficient.
“Decaf hazelnut latte,” I announce, writing de Haz Lat on a paper cup before sliding it down the line to Cal, a guy around my age who’s crafting each drink as if he was born to do this.
His hands fly to different flavor pumps and milk cartons and levers, without ever taking his eyes off the espresso machine. I wonder if I was ever able to do that.
“Hey, Stevie. How are you doing?” Kendra, my manager, appears out of the back during a lull.
Her graying roots are giving way to long bleached-blond hair twisted into a bun using two pens. I straighten up even more.
“Pretty good, I think. Hey, quick question. When I emailed you about cutting my hours back to ten per week, you said that’s what I was already working? My mom told me I was doing twenty.”
She gives me a weird look, cocking her head to the side. “No. You’ve only ever worked ten per week,” she replies.
“Oh, okay. Perfect, then.” That’s weird, though. I know the sixty was just Savannah and Rory being dramatic, but ten doesn’t seem like too many hours at all. Definitely not enough to justify missing prom.
“Hey, I’ve been dying to ask you a few questions,” Kendra says eagerly.
“Okay?” I reply, giving her the floor. I don’t know what sort of relationship we have, but it must be good if she wants to chat.
“I’ve got to know. What was it like waking up from that coma?” she asks, leaning on the counter, her eyes wide with… excitement?
“Oh, umm…” I wasn’t really expecting to talk about this here, with people I don’t know anymore. I remind myself that to her, we’ve been coworkers for years—we might even be friends.
“I mean, two entire years of your life missing? What does that feel like?”
“I…” I think back to that horrible night when I woke up in the hospital, expecting to be at home in my bed but instead opening my eyes to fluorescent lights and voices I didn’t recognize. Tubes and needles sticking out of my arm, my head searing.
“It was really weird. Confusing, I guess,” I tell her, too nervous to simply say I don’t want to talk about it.
“In a way, I actually think it’d be pretty cool to have a clean slate, though. I wouldn’t mind being able to forget the majority of my high school years.” She laughs.
I clench my jaw and force a closed-lipped smile. “I’m just hoping to get back to some form of normalcy, honestly.”
“Well, I think that’s really brave of you. How are things going here on the register?” Kendra asks.
“I think I’ve got the hang of it,” I reply, feeling slightly proud of myself and also relieved not to be talking about the accident anymore.
“That’s great. It’s pretty slow now, so why don’t you switch with Cal for a bit so you can dip your toes back in.”
Cal lets out a dramatic sigh, clearly not thrilled to be giving up his designated post.
“Oh, some face-to-face with the public isn’t going to kill you, Cal.” She smiles.
“It just might,” he replies, slamming the hazelnut latte down on the pickup counter a little too aggressively.
“Okay, Stevie, let me show you a few things,” Kendra says, ignoring Cal’s attitude as he drags his feet toward the register.
She directs me to the monstrous espresso machine, which looks a lot scarier up close.
“You got those cards?” she asks, and I reach into my back pocket and pull out the laminated cheat sheets she gave me earlier with the different measurements of each ingredient for every drink on the menu.
She gives me a tutorial on all the knobs and levers, making sure I understand the order of operations. I watch her make the next drink and then she watches me make two, patiently guiding me in the right direction when I get lost.
“I’m going to let you do it on your own for a bit while I take some inventory in the back,” she tells me, and I look back at her with wide eyes.
“Don’t be nervous, okay? Just getting you back to that normal routine you’re after.
” She winks and then lowers her voice to a whisper so Cal doesn’t hear.
“You’ve always been my hardest-working employee.
Maybe now that you’re done with school we can get you up to twenty hours finally.
You got this down really quickly the first time around and we’ll both be here to help if you need it. ”
“Okay,” I reply with a smile as she heads into the back and sends Cal a glare on her way by. I’m flattered by what she said, but it also leaves me with a question… if I wasn’t hanging out with Savannah and Rory and I wasn’t here: what was I doing with all my free time? Was I working somewhere else?
Pretty soon two teen girls come in and order vanilla iced coffees, forcing me to stop thinking about it.
Here we go.
I check my cheat sheet and scoop some ice into two clear plastic cups. But while I’m pumping the three squirts of vanilla in, another customer enters. And then another one.
Cups slide down the counter to me, stamped with Cal’s even more extreme shorthand. I squint, trying to read them as I set the first two on the pickup counter.
I grab the next cup and examine it closer. L2BS. What does that mean? Two lattes… latte with two… two what?
I squeeze my eyes shut and will myself to remember, but nothing comes from my memory bank.
“What does L2BS mean?” I ask Cal as quietly as I can, but everyone still hears me. The place isn’t big by anyone’s standards.
“Latte with two pumps of brown sugar,” he says, without looking over at me. I didn’t even know brown sugar could be in liquid form.
I go back to my cheat sheet to make sure I’m getting the ratios correct.
By the time I get the drink finished, though, there are four more cups lined up for me.
And by the way he just picks at his nails when no one’s ordering, it’s clear that despite how gung ho he was before, Cal has no intention of helping me even though we have expectant customers waiting.
The next one is a simple Americano. No problem. Espresso and hot water. I can do this.
But after that the next plastic cup reads V ice blend.
Crap.
“Kendra never showed me how to use the blender,” I say, a sweat breaking out on my brow.
“You press blend and it blends,” Cal replies as yet another person steps up to the counter. What is up with this rush?
I take a deep breath, turn toward the back counter to figure it out myself, and get to work adding ingredients into the pitcher.
It takes me a second to understand that you have to lower the outer shield, but when I do that, it finally starts up.
When the ice and milk and vanilla powder are blended perfectly into a white puree, I dump it into the cup.
A bunch of it sloshes onto the counter, but I still manage to fill it to almost the top.
I go to turn on the sink to wash my hands off and of course the spray bounces right off a cup and directly into my face. Fan-fucking-tastic. I towel myself off as best I can, but the top of my shirt is still soaked.
My heart just about stops when I turn around to see six more cups on the counter and impatient-looking customers lined up along the barrier separating us. I look back at the mess I made on the counter, which is now dripping onto the floor, but decide to leave it. I need to catch up first.
CC w/ O.
Not even daring to interrupt Cal while he’s taking a customer’s order, I run through all the possibilities in my head until I come up with cinnamon cappuccino with oat milk.
That has to be it, it’s one of the specials of the month. I step up to get started, but everything is so scattered now, milk cartons and dirty silver pitchers all over the place. My cheat sheets are God only knows where, but… it’s fine. It’s fine. I can do it without them.
You were good at this. You did it all the time. Just remember.
I start steaming the oat milk, trying to recall how much cinnamon goes into it. One, two, three teaspoons? I decide to go with three because who doesn’t want more flavor, and scoop it in from a glass jar. The steam kicks some of it back in my face, though, and I cough.
Maybe I should’ve stirred it in at the end.
After I put it all together, I try to add a fancy little cinnamon sprinkle, but the whole glob falls off the spoon and lands in a big pile of powder on top of the foam.
I do not have the time to redo it, though, so this will just have to do.
On my way over to the pickup counter, I find one of my cheat sheets when I freaking slip on it.
Thank God I manage to keep the drink upright while I end up a heap on the floor.
“What is going on here?” Kendra’s voice booms from the back doorway, hands planted on her hips. She’s not accusatory, I think she’s more just genuinely shocked to see her shop in such disarray.
“I—I…,” I stutter, trying my best not to just start crying right there on the spot as I quickly shuffle up onto my feet.