Chapter 6
Chapter six
The coffee shop Ellis picked was three blocks from Foundation Fitness, between a vintage record store and a laundromat that always had the dryer on the left running unbalanced.
Small place. Roasted its own beans. The mismatched furniture worked the way it works when somebody’s actually thought about it.
Big windows. Afternoon light. The smell of dark roast and pastry hit me the second I walked through the door.
Ellis sat at a corner table, scrolling through his phone. He looked up when the door chimed, and a careful smile spread across his face.
“Hey.” He stood, and he’d dressed up. Not formal. A dark green henley that did something for the color of his eyes, jeans that fit, boots instead of sneakers. “You find it okay?”
“Three blocks from the gym. Hard to miss.” I slid into the chair across from him. Clean-shaven today. Hair slightly damp, the kind of damp that meant he’d showered right before coming. Cedar and citrus cutting through the coffee smell. “You already order?”
“I waited. Didn’t want to be presumptuous about what you’d want.”
Most guys I’d met would have ordered for both of us without asking, or drained their drink before I showed. Ellis sat there with his order untouched, waiting.
We got in line. He insisted on paying despite my protest. I let him because arguing would’ve made this awkward. I ordered an iced coffee with oat milk. He got a cortado.
“Rough day?” I nodded at his drink.
“Long day. Work stuff.” He paid, and we moved to the pickup counter. “IT problems that became everyone’s emergency at four-thirty.”
“Let me guess—someone’s password stopped working, and they blamed you?”
“Close. Someone deleted an entire project file and swore the system did it.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Spent two hours recovering it from backup.”
“Sounds thrilling.”
“It’s a living.” Our drinks appeared, and we headed back to the table.
Ellis settled back with his cortado. “What do you do? For work, I mean.”
“Event planning.” I watched for the reaction. Most people either got too excited or vaguely confused. “Mostly weddings, some corporate stuff. I make sure everything looks perfect and runs on time while the clients lose their minds.”
“That sounds… intense.”
“It can be. I’m good at it.” I shrugged. “I like making things beautiful. Fixing things before anyone notices they were broken. The look on someone’s face when it all comes together. That part is the part.”
“I bet you’re amazing at it.” He smiled. “You’ve got that whole… attention to detail thing. Caught it at the gym.”
“You were paying attention?”
“Hard not to.” Ellis shifted in his chair. “Any wedding emergencies this week?”
“Mother of the bride tried to add fifty people to the guest list four days before the event.” I took a sip, perfect temperature, not too sweet. “Had to explain that physics exists and the venue only holds two hundred.”
“How’d that go?”
“She cried. I didn’t budge. She added them anyway by cutting the cocktail hour short.” I shrugged. “Some battles you just let people lose on their own.”
Ellis leaned back in his chair, cradling his cortado. The afternoon light caught his profile, strong jaw, the hint of stubble from before, those eyes that seemed to shift between green and brown depending on the angle.
He set down his drink. “Tell me more about yourself. I want to get to know you better.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Something about you that I wouldn’t guess from looking at you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s a dangerous question.”
“How so?”
“Because now I’m curious what you think you know just from looking at me.”
“Fair point.” He set down his drink, and his fingers drummed once against the table, nervous, before he stopped himself.
“You’re confident. Probably the most confident person in any room.
You know you look good, and you use that.
You’re charming—like, effortlessly charming in a way that probably gets you whatever you want most of the time. ”
“Should I be offended?”
“I’m not done.” The corner of his mouth tipped up. “You work hard. I can tell from your workouts. You check your phone a lot between sets, like you’re either really busy or really loved, maybe both. And.” He paused. “You’re scared of something, and I haven’t figured out what yet.”
That last part hit like a punch to the gut.
“Wow.” I leaned back, trying to play it light. “That’s either very perceptive or mildly creepy.”
“Sorry. Too much?”
“No,” and I meant it. “I’m just impressed. Most people don’t look that close.”
“I’m a software engineer. I notice patterns.” He took a sip of his drink, giving me time to process. “Your turn. What wouldn’t I guess about you?”
I considered lying. Deflecting. Making a joke, but his honesty made me want to return it.
I set my drink down. “I used to be the smallest kid in my grade. Got shoved into lockers. Pushed around. Made fun of for being gay, scrawny, and existing. I started lifting at eighteen because I decided nobody would ever make me feel small again.”
Ellis’ expression shifted. Not pity. Something closer to understanding. “Is that why you’re at the gym all the time?”
“Part of it. The other part is that I genuinely like it now. The routine, the progress, the fact that I’m the one who decides how strong I get.” I rolled my shoulders. “What about you? You didn’t always lift.”
“How do you know?”
“Your form’s good, but not instinctive. You think about each movement instead of just doing it.”
“Observant.” He smiled. “You’re right. I started about a year ago. Desk job was killing my back, and I needed something to do that didn’t involve staring at screens.”
“And?”
“And I’m still not sure I love it, but I like how it makes me feel after. Accomplished, I guess.” He shifted in his chair. “Plus the view’s gotten better recently.”
The flirtation landed soft but clear. I grinned. “Oh yeah? Someone catch your eye?”
“Maybe.” His cheeks colored, just slightly, but enough. “There’s this guy I keep seeing. Tall, built, wears glitter to the gym like he’s going clubbing.”
“Sounds like a show-off.”
“He is. But he’s also…” Ellis met my eyes. “Interesting. In a way I didn’t expect.”
Something in me skipped, a stupid thing to do over coffee on a Wednesday afternoon, but there it was.
“Interesting how?” I asked, leaning forward.
“I’m still figuring it out.”
After that, the conversation got easier.
He told me about Long Island and parents who still lived in the same house he’d grown up in.
I told him about my mom and growing up Dominican in a neighborhood that hadn’t always made space for people like us.
He asked about event planning, what I loved about it, what drove me crazy.
I asked about IT, whether he actually enjoyed fixing other people’s tech problems or if it just paid the bills.
“Bit of both. I enjoy solving puzzles. Hate the people who create the puzzles by ignoring my initial advice.”
“So, basically everyone.”
“Basically everyone.”
An hour passed. Then another. The coffee shop started to fill with the after-work crowd, laptops opening at every table, the noise level rising.
“We should probably give up the table.” Ellis glanced around. “I think that guy’s been eyeing it for ten minutes.”
“My place is close,” I offered. Too fast, probably, but the words came out before I could stop them. “We could keep talking. I’ve got beer. Or wine. Or…”
“Jett.” My name, soft but firm. “I’m having a really good time. But I don’t want to rush this.”
The rejection stung, even though it wasn’t really a rejection. “Rush what?”
“Whatever this is.” He gestured between us. “I like you. I want to get to know you. But I’m not…” A pause. “I don’t want this to just be physical.”
“Who says it would be?”
“Am I wrong?” Those hazel eyes pinned me in place. “If I came back to your place right now, would we actually just talk?”
No. Absolutely not. I’d have him against the wall within five seconds.
“Maybe not,” I admitted.
“I’m not judging. I just…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I want to do this right. Take our time. Actually, date instead of just…”
“Hooking up.”
“Yeah.”
I should’ve been relieved. This was the boundary that usually made me bail. Too complicated, too much investment, too much risk of actually feeling something.
Instead, something I’d have called hope if I were less cowardly flickered through me.
“Okay.” I leaned back. “Then we date.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, but I have a condition.”
His eyebrows rose. “What’s that?”
“I get to take you out next time. Dinner. Somewhere nice.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” And I did. I wanted him across a table somewhere with candlelight instead of fluorescent coffee shop bulbs. I wanted to buy him a meal and watch him eat it. The whole ridiculous courting ritual I had skipped, on principle, for over a decade. “Saturday night. You free?”
“I am now.”
We stood gathering our empty cups and walked outside together. The sun hung lower in the sky, late afternoon bleeding into early evening, the Brooklyn streets coming alive with people heading home.
“Thanks for coffee, and for being honest about… all of that.”
“Thanks for not running when I said I wanted to take it slow.”
“Night’s still young. I might run later.”
He laughed, real and unguarded, and the sound hit somewhere coffee had no business reaching.
“Text me about Saturday?” he asked.
“Will do.”
We stood there for a beat too long, neither of us quite ready to leave. Ellis shifted his weight, and I wondered if he wanted to kiss me. Wondered if I should make the first move.
Then he stepped back.
“See you Saturday, Jett.”
“See you Saturday.”
He walked toward the subway, hands in his pockets.
Want pooled under my ribs, obvious and demanding. What he’d taste like deeper. How he’d sound when he lost that composure. Whether all that careful control would crack under the right pressure.
Underneath that was the scarier part.
I liked him. Not the surface attraction. The actual person. The way he’d listened. The way he’d clocked my fear without making me explain it. The way he’d held a boundary instead of going along with what I wanted because I wanted it.
Ellis made me want to try, which was the kind of thing I’d talked myself out of for so many years it had become a personality trait.
Terrifying.