Chapter Six Nora
Idon’t know how I ended up outside the café.
The walk here is a blank. I remember leaving the house. I remember standing in the grocery aisle staring at cucumbers until they blurred into meaningless green shapes. And then somehow I was here, on this pavement, in front of this glass.
It wasn’t planned.
I haven’t let myself plan in a long time.
Planning requires hope. Hope invites the promise of something better. And a promise is just a future disappointment, waiting to happen.
So I stopped. Years ago, I stopped looking ahead. Stopped imagining. Stopped letting myself want things.
I live the way I was taught. Quietly. Carefully. With as little room for uncertainty as possible. I keep my world small. I keep my voice smaller. Each day a copy of the day before—that was the safest life I knew how to build.
But these past few months, Julian has shattered that quiet.
He has flooded my life with uncertainty. Every morning I wake up and I don’t know what he will do. Whether he’ll look at me with those soft, searching eyes or finally look away.
Will he keep trying or will he stop?
I don’t know how to exist inside this new reality.
He isn’t hurting me. He isn’t hitting me. He isn’t locking me out. He isn’t screaming in my face or throwing pots across the kitchen or calling me names that live in my head long after the shouting stops.
But his unpredictability is a different kind of violence. It’s the violence of a constant, silent alarm I cannot turn off. The violence of a ceiling fan that might fall at any moment. The violence of a floor that looks solid but gives way beneath your feet the second you stop holding your breath.
My father’s cycle always ended in violence.
I don’t know where Julian’s ends.
I am not afraid of being unloved. I am afraid of being unsafe.
And the longer he refuses to fall back into the old, predictable rhythm, the more scared I get.
I feel myself being pulled back into a life I swore I had escaped—a life on a razor’s edge, always waiting, always bracing for the other shoe to drop.
I’ve walked past this café a hundred times. Maybe more.
Today I stopped.
The paper is taped to the glass. White. Curling at the corners. Black letters.
HIRING: CLEANING STAFF
Apply Inside
My eyes stick to the word.
Cleaning.
I know how to clean. It’s one of the first things I ever learned and the last thing anyone can take away from me.
I’ve known it since I was tall enough to reach a sink.
My father would stand behind me while I scrubbed the kitchen floor on my hands and knees.
If I missed a spot, he’d put his foot on my back and push.
I wipe my sweating hand on my jeans. Then I wipe it again.
I stand there for a long time.
Long enough for three customers to enter and leave.
The first one held a briefcase. The second one laughed into her phone.
The third one held the door for someone behind him and didn’t even look at the paper.
Just walked past it like it wasn’t there, like it wasn’t a hand reaching out from the glass.
Like it wasn’t the first thing in years that had felt like it was meant for me.
I should go home.
Julian will be home in a few hours. He’ll walk through the front door. He’ll call my name. He’ll find the house empty.
I don’t know if I’ve ever done that to him before. Left the house empty.
My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my throat. In my temples. In the tips of my fingers.
I don’t know if I can do this.
I don’t know if I have the right.
I don’t know if a woman like me—a woman who has spent her whole life being nothing, having nothing, wanting nothing—is allowed to walk through a door she chose.
Go home. Go back to the kitchen. You know how to survive that. You don’t know how to survive this.
I almost listen. My weight shifts to my back foot. I could turn around. Be home in fifteen minutes. Wash the dishes. Stand at the counter with a towel in my hands and pretend this moment never happened.
Then another voice speaks. One I haven’t heard in years. One I thought died somewhere inside me, curled up in a corner and went to sleep.
You will not survive being terrified in your own home either.
That is the thought that moves my foot. One foot lifts off the pavement, lands on the first step. Then the other. My hand reaches for the handle. It is cold. It is solid. It does not move away from me.
The bell jingles when I open the door.
I step inside.
The warmth hits me. Coffee and sugar. Voices all around, low and easy. Cups clinking. The espresso machine hissing and growling.
I freeze just past the threshold, my feet stopping before I tell them to.
People are sitting at tables. Talking. Laughing. They don’t look up. They don’t see me standing here with my hands twisted together, trying to remember how legs work.
I’m in the way. I know I’m in the way. The space behind me is empty but I still feel like I’m blocking something. Someone.
No one tells me where to go.
I wait for it. A voice. Move. Get out of the way. What are you doing here?
Nothing.
I don’t know what to do with my body.
I knot my hands tighter. My knuckles go white. The pressure is the only thing keeping me from shaking apart.
The counter. People walk up to it. They speak to the person behind it. That’s what you do in a place like this. I’ve seen it in movies. I’ve watched other people do it.
I move toward it in steps I count without meaning to.
One. The floor is tile. Grey. I notice the grout lines. They’ve darkened near the edges where water pools.
Two. My shoes don’t make sound. I learned to walk without sound. To open doors without sound. To exist without leaving a mark.
Three. The man behind the counter glances up. He looks my age. His hair is messy in a way that probably took time to look effortless. His sleeves are pushed to his elbows, and a dark tattoo curls out from under one—I can’t quite see what it is. A small pin on his apron says Kieran.
He offers a bright, effortless smile. A currency I don’t possess and don’t know how to reciprocate. It costs him nothing. It lights up his whole face. I wonder what that feels like—to smile at a stranger without calculating the risk. To offer warmth without waiting for the blow.
“Hey there,” he says, his voice easy, the voice of someone who says hey there fifty times a day and means it every single time. “What can I get for you?”
I just stare.
My mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
I can feel the shape of the words in my throat. I’m here about the job. I saw the sign. I want to apply. They won’t come up. They’re stuck behind a dam built of years of being told not to speak. Behind a childhood where opening my mouth meant a hand across my face.
His smile stays. But something shifts behind it. He’s not sure what to make of me. I don’t blame him. I’m not sure what to make of me either.
“A… job,” I finally say.
The words come out thin. Barely there. The espresso machine almost eats them.
He blinks. “A… job?”
I nod. Just once. My chin dips and comes back up. It feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
He shifts his weight, the friendly expression now tinged with a puzzled crease between his brows. “Oh. Uh… maybe Maeve posted something? She’s the owner.” He scratches the back of his neck. “I didn’t hear about any openings, but let me check with her.”
He disappears through a swinging door.
I am left alone at the counter.
I can feel my pulse in my palms. I am fighting to keep the tremor from showing, fighting to keep my face neutral, fighting to stay standing when every part of me wants to turn around and walk back out the door and never think about this moment again.
But I don’t move.
I stay.
I wait.
I do not run.
My hands stay knotted. My heart keeps hammering. But I don’t leave.
A moment later, a woman comes out.
She looks to be about my age too, curls escaping a messy bun and a dusting of flour on her apron. She wipes her hands on a rag as she walks toward the counter.
“You’re here about a job?” she asks.
I nod.
“What position?”
“The… cleaning job.” I have to force the words out. They stick in my throat like dry bread. “The posting. On the door.”
“Wait—the cleaning job?” Kieran’s eyes widen. His brows lift. “I thought… I assumed you meant for the counter. Or serving.”
I can only look at him, my expression blank.
I don’t know what he saw when he looked at me. Someone who could stand behind a counter and take orders. Someone who could smile at strangers. Someone who belongs in the front of a room, not the back.
He was wrong.
“I don’t know anything else,” I confess, the truth laid bare in a hushed tone. “I’ve never… done anything else.”
I have never said that out loud before. I have never admitted to another person that my entire life has been reduced to one skill, one purpose, one small circle of usefulness.
The silence that follows is heavy.
I feel it pressing against my skin. I wait for the dismissal. For the polite I’m sorry, we’re looking for someone with more experience. For the awkward glance between them that means what do we do with her.
Maeve’s expression changes. Her eyes lose their edge, turning soft and resolved. Her lips press together. She studies me for a long moment.
“Well,” she says finally. “If you want it, it’s yours.”
My hands stop moving. My heart stops beating.
The world stops.
The espresso machine keeps humming. Someone laughs behind me. A chair scrapes against the floor. But I do not hear any of it. I am motionless. My breath catches in my throat and stays there.
I didn’t know it could be this simple. I didn’t know people could just walk in and get a job. I didn’t know a “yes” could be given so freely, without conditions or consequences or a long negotiation where the other person slowly reveals what they really want from you.
I search her face for the catch. I search her eyes for the trick. My father taught me that everything has a cost. That every kindness is a hook. That every smile is the first step toward a closed fist. I wait for Maeve to say but. I wait for her to add a condition.
The but does not come.
Maeve continues, her tone practical yet kind.
She is already moving forward, already treating this like a done thing, like I am already part of her world.
“It’s mostly sweeping, wiping down tables, taking out trash, cleaning the bathrooms. Morning or evening shifts.
I can put you on mornings if that’s easier. You can start next week.”
Next week. Start. Job.
Words I never let myself believe could be mine. Words I never allowed myself to want because wanting is the first step toward losing. Words that now sit in the air like things that were never supposed to belong to me.
I nod, the motion slow and stiff. My neck is all grit and old rust. I don’t know the correct way to accept a future. I don’t know if I should smile, or negotiate, or seem grateful. I don’t know if I should shake her hand or run out the door before she changes her mind.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Mornings are… good.”
Maeve nods. “Monday work for you?”
Monday. Four days away.
I nod again.
Maeve’s smile is genuine. It reaches her eyes. It crinkles the corners. “Perfect. I’ll get you on the schedule.” She slips back through the swinging door.
I draw a slow, shaking breath.
The air tastes different now. Still coffee. Still sugar. But an aftertaste lingers. A scent that might be mine.
Kieran smiles and offers a small, encouraging nod. A silent gesture that somehow makes me feel slightly less invisible.
I step back outside.
The cold hits my face. I didn’t realize how warm it was in there. My cheeks feel hot. My hands are shaking.
I start walking home.
The same street. The same sidewalk. The same house waiting at the end of it.
But a spark has lit. Small and new and mine.
For the first time in a very long time, I’m not walking toward Julian.
I’m walking toward Monday.