Chapter Seven
From: Project Win
You can’t just not eat breakfast! It’s the most important meal of the day.
???? ━━━━??? · ???━━━━ ????
Three days was not a long time, and Myah knew that in the same practical, unarguable way she knew the operating hours of the coffee stand, the dosage printed on her prescription bottles, and the exact tone she needed to use with customers who wanted to flirt versus customers who wanted to complain.
Three days was objectively nothing, barely a measurable unit, a blink of time that shouldn’t have been able to root itself under her skin the way this one had.
And yet it lingered there anyway, quiet and persistent, like a melody she hadn’t meant to memorize but somehow couldn’t forget once she’d heard it.
She kept telling herself it was insignificant.
That it had only been a single afternoon in the park and that people did things like that all the time without it rearranging their internal weather patterns.
But the memory kept returning uninvited, replaying itself in soft flashes that slipped through her thoughts whenever she wasn’t actively shoving them away.
It wasn’t even the obvious parts that stuck, not the fact that she’d leaned against him on the grass or that she’d laughed more than she’d expected to, or even that she’d kissed him when he walked her home–which had been surprising enough on its own.
It was the small things that her brain insisted on preserving with irritating clarity.
Like the way his voice had dropped slightly when he spoke close to her, or how his attention had felt steady rather than consuming, or how he’d looked at her right before she kissed him–not triumphant, not smug, not like he’d won something, but soft in a way that made her chest feel too full.
That expression kept resurfacing the most, drifting into her thoughts when she reached for cups or wiped down counters or stared too long at nothing, and every time it did she felt that same complicated pressure in her ribs.
A sensation she stubbornly refused to label because naming it would make it real, and real things had consequences she didn’t trust herself to handle.
She leaned her elbows on the counter and stared down at a neat stack of plastic lids as if they’d personally offended her, trying to force her mind back into the safe, predictable rhythm of work instead of the dangerous loop it kept circling.
Three days, she reminded herself again. As if repetition might make the number shrink, as if logic might override the fact that she had, against all reasonable expectations, missed him.
She had seen him since the park, technically, because he still came through the stand every morning for a black coffee with one sugar and she still handed it to him like she handed drinks to everyone else.
But those brief moments through the window didn’t count as seeing him the way she meant it.
Didn’t scratch whatever restless itch had taken up residence in her chest, didn’t satisfy the part of her that had grown used to the sound of his voice lingering longer than a transaction required.
It shouldn’t have mattered, and she knew it shouldn’t have mattered, and the fact that it did anyway made her uneasy in a way she didn’t want to examine too closely.
They had hung out once, just once, in a public park with a shared joint and an easy conversation that had unfolded more naturally than she was used to, and that wasn’t supposed to be enough to leave an imprint; wasn’t supposed to be enough to make her brain replay the memory like it was checking for hidden details.
Yet every time she thought about it, one question rose up again, insistent and impossible to ignore: did that count as a date?
She pressed her lips together, considering the word like it might explode if she handled it wrong, because technically speaking it could have been one depending on how someone defined it.
Socially speaking it might qualify depending on who you asked, and unfortunately the person whose opinion mattered most in that category was Kaylee, who had been the one to invent the bet in the first place.
The problem was that if the park counted as a date, if Kaylee heard about it and decided it met the criteria, then technically the bet would be finished.
And if the bet was finished she wouldn’t have a built-in excuse to keep talking to him, wouldn’t have that playful justification she’d been using to explain why she let him linger at the window longer than other customers.
The realization sat heavy in her chest, because the obvious follow-up question arrived immediately after it, sharp and unavoidable: why did she even want an excuse?
She swallowed, jaw tightening slightly as she forced herself to confront the answer she didn’t want to say out loud.
She knew exactly why, and that knowledge was what made the whole thing feel dangerous, because she knew herself well enough to recognize the pattern forming.
She knew how quickly she could get attached and how abruptly she could pull away, knew how easily she could turn something gentle into something fractured just by mishandling it, and the awareness sat in her like a warning bell she couldn’t silence.
Jace deserved someone steadier than that, someone who didn’t feel like a lit match in a paper room.
Someone whose moods didn’t shift like weather fronts, someone who could accept kindness without immediately wondering when it would be taken back.
He deserved someone better, and the certainty of that pressed against her ribs until breathing felt slightly tighter than it should have.
A car horn sounded in the drive-thru line, snapping her out of the spiral before it could deepen.
She straightened automatically, shoving the thoughts aside and slipping back into the familiar choreography of work.
Cups, lids, syrup pumps, receipts, smiles–those things made sense, those things followed rules, those things didn’t ask her to examine her own feelings too closely.
Kaylee’s voice drifted over from the other window, teasing a customer about their caramel addiction, and Myah let herself relax into the normalcy of it, into the steady rhythm that kept her grounded.
She reached for a cup, turned toward the counter and froze when she saw Jaces’s his car pulling in.
Her pulse jumped, a quick, traitorous flutter that annoyed her even as she felt it, because it wasn’t like he was a surprise anymore.
He came by every morning. She knew that.
She expected it. There was no logical reason for her body to react like this, smoothing her apron and straightening her posture as if she’d been caught off guard.
He didn't usually drive unless he was running late.
He parked instead of rolling up to the window, which made her blink, and then he stepped out and walked toward the counter.
Something in her chest dropped in that strange, weightless way it sometimes did when she realized he was about to be close enough to talk to without glass between them.
“Morning,” he said when he reached her, his voice warm but still a little rough with sleep.
She tilted one brow, leaning her hip against the counter like she had all the time in the world, even though her awareness had narrowed almost entirely to him. “You’re vertical,” she replied lightly. “Didn’t think you were a morning person.”
“I’m not,” he said. “This is the promise of caffeine and determination pretending to be functional.”
She huffed a quiet laugh before she could stop herself, and the sound felt softer than she’d intended, which only made her more aware of the way her chest was doing that annoying warm-expanding thing again.
Before she could say anything, he held out a small paper bag, and her gaze dropped to it before lifting slowly back to his face, suspicion and curiosity tangling together. “…What’s that?” she asked.
“You said you hadn’t eaten,” he replied.
Her stomach flipped, heat creeping up the back of her neck as she remembered the text she’d sent him earlier that morning when she’d overslept and rushed out the door with nothing but her meds and an energy drink.
She’d been half joking, half honest, and she hadn’t expected him to take it seriously enough to do anything about it, which made the gesture feel oddly intimate now that he was standing there offering it to her like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“You brought me breakfast?” she asked slowly.
“It’s a pastry,” he said. “It can be breakfast if you want it to be.”
“That’s still breakfast,” she countered.
“Or a snack,” he said mildly.
Her mouth twitched, amusement slipping through despite her effort to stay composed, and she accepted the bag, her fingers brushing his for a brief second that sent a small spark racing up her arm.
It was ridiculous how noticeable that tiny contact felt, ridiculous how aware she was of it even after their hands separated, and she cleared her throat softly before saying, “Careful. You keep doing thoughtful things like this and people might start thinking you’re nice. ”
“I am nice.” He mocked hurt.
“Allegedly.”
His eyes warmed in a way that made her chest feel heavier, fuller, like something was expanding inside it that she didn’t trust. In her peripheral vision she caught movement from the other window and spotted Kaylee leaning just slightly too far to the side, clearly trying to overhear, which made Myah straighten a fraction and lean closer to Jace instead, lowering her voice so it wouldn’t carry.
“Can I ask you something?” she murmured.
He leaned in without hesitation, attention focusing on her so completely it felt like the rest of the world had dimmed around the edges. “Yeah,” he said.