Around the World in 80 Dates

. . . a dead-end job

‘Americano with a shot of oat milk on the side?’

This is the fourth time I’ve yelled out the order to no avail. ‘I said Americano with a shot of oat milk!’

The pick-up counter stays empty for two more minutes. I meet Jane’s eyes and we both call time of death. Then I leave the now very lukewarm coffee on the counter and skulk back behind the bar to get started on the long line of drink orders.

‘Gotta love the lunch rush,’ Jane says as she hands me another ticket.

I let out a large groan as I read it. ‘What the hell is nutless almond milk?’

She bites back a laugh as she turns her back to the customers. ‘I have no idea, but the guy insisted it was a thing. I wrote it down on the ticket just to get him to shut up. Just make it milkless.’

I nod and jump back to work as she slaps on a smile and bounds over to the till. I have to admire the way she turns it on so easily. I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than face customers at peak service.

‘Excuse me?’ a clipped voice says from the pick-up counter. ‘My Americano is cold.’

My neck snaps towards him.

‘The Americano with oat milk?’ I ask.

He nods. ‘Remake it.’

I blow hot air through my nose and clench my fists at his demand.

‘There she is!’ A voice interrupts my impending breakdown.

I turn to see Paige and Sara walking towards me, and feel the tension leave my spine.

‘I’m on lunch!’ I say as I whip off my apron, much to the chagrin of cold-coffee guy.

I grab a Fanta for Paige, three different cakes from the fridge, and make a quick black filter coffee for Sara. I shove the drinks in front of them before pulling up a seat and decompressing from my incredibly stressful morning. I hate half term.

‘Amorie, are you listening?’ Sara asks.

‘No. I haven’t been listening for the last twenty minutes,’ I reply.

Paige throws back her head in laughter as Sara looks on, perturbed.

She glares at both of us, taking time to split her disappointment evenly.

I welcome it unabashedly. Even with her face all scrunched and puckered like that, Sara is an annoyingly beautiful person.

She got our mum’s dark, even skin and round button nose, plus the jawline that me and my guasha could only dream of.

‘What is the point of Sister Sundays if you’re not even going to listen to me? Not much of a catch-up, then, is it? We even came to your work since you couldn’t get the time off!’ she scoffs.

‘Sara, we live together.’ I grab her coffee and take a sip for myself. ‘I’m not the sister that we need to catch up with.’

We both swivel round to Paige, who pauses mid-bite of her carrot cake to happily welcome our stares. She’s not afraid of the spotlight in any regular aspect, and certainly not around us.

‘I had the best sex of my life last weekend.’

Sara gasps. ‘Paige!’

‘Oh, don’t be a prude,’ Paige tuts, brushing Sara’s worries to the side. ‘Anyway, the sex, while great, isn’t the point. The point is that he won’t stop messaging me and now I think I’ve got the ick.’

She flashes her phone at us, scrolling about three times through sixteen messages, at most, of conversation.

‘Way too much, right?’ she asks.

‘Barely enough,’ Sara says.

Paige gasps in response and the two start bickering while I continue to decompress over the chocolate fudge cake. The next time I look up, both heads have swivelled my way, silently awaiting my tie-breaking decision.

‘I mean . . . it seems pretty normal,’ I say, as Sara cheers and Paige rolls her eyes.

I really do hate to side with Sara; she’s the most ungracious winner. I watch as she purses her lips with indignation and triumphantly scoops some of Paige’s carrot cake.

‘This is why it never works out with these guys, Paigey,’ she says haughtily.

‘At least I’m dating,’ Paige sulks.

Sara shrieks. ‘I’m engaged!’

‘I meant Amorie,’ Paige says.

Unlike Paige, I do not thrive under the spotlight of people’s stares quite as much.

Especially when those stares are coming live and direct from my elder sisters’ judging eyes.

They’re both looking at me expectantly, necks crooked in synchronicity as they await my imminent response.

Response to what? I’m not dating. We all know that.

There’s frankly nothing more worth saying about it.

I sigh. ‘I’m still getting over Tom.’

I do my best to pack the sigh with the kind of sorrow that warrants no further questions. But it’s a weak performance from me, with little shake and far too much melancholy.

‘Bullshit,’ Paige says.

‘What she said.’ Sara nods in agreement. ‘It’s been over a year.’

‘And you didn’t even like him that much,’ Paige adds.

‘We were together for five years,’ I say.

‘Because you were too lazy to end it, so you waited long enough until he broke it off with you,’ Sara says.

Paige stifles a laugh as I stare daggers at them both, but they repel my glare with nothing more than a quick bat of their eyelashes. Paige reaches across for some of Sara’s red velvet cake, moving on jovially as if the two of them haven’t just tried to denigrate my character.

‘I wasn’t lazy,’ I say in protest. ‘Lazy’s not fair.’

‘Lazy’ discredits what Tom and I had. I liked him – of course I did – we were together for half a decade.

He got me through my chunk of uni and my big move to London, and he was palatable enough in small doses.

We were comfortable together and we probably could have stayed that way, but for the fact he decided that ‘comfortable’ wasn’t the same as ‘in love’.

Although, I guess he was right given that my heart felt almost entirely intact after the break-up.

I felt a sting, of course – nobody likes to be rejected and I had the shock from not at all seeing it coming, but I didn’t cry.

I still haven’t cried about it, despite it being over a year ago now.

He met me for our regular lunchbreak walk around town, broke it off on our second lap around the area, checked up by text a couple of weeks later and the two of us never interacted again.

‘Have you dated at all since him?’ Paige asks, snapping me back to the present.

‘Of course she hasn’t,’ Sara says, as Paige nods along.

‘Hold on, what do you mean “of course?” ’ I ask. ‘I’m not exactly a recluse. I have friends, I go out!’

Leaving my life in Brighton wasn’t an easy choice, but Tom got a job in London and I’d craved a fresh start.

Plus, if I intended to make it as a journalist, I had to be in the hub of the media landscape.

When Sara got wind of my plan, she offered up the spare room of her flat.

Now I live rent-free in the middle of Shoreditch with an only slightly overbearing landlord.

I had worried about friends and a social life, and refused to centre my life around Tom or my sister, but then I started here at Groundlings – an indie coffee shop just off Old Street – and met a tonne of people in the same position.

Working here comes with a string of post-shift nights out that can get their fair share of wild.

Between that and the anti-social shift patterns, I barely have time to take the hour-long train to visit my friends back home.

‘I wish you were more of a recluse. Or at least, quieter when you get in late at night.’ Sara cringes. ‘But in the love department . . . When was the last time you went on a date?’

I think back. ‘There was that girl a month ago . . .’

Paige interjects. ‘A kiss in a club does not count as a date.’

‘We texted after!’ I say.

‘For like, what? Two weeks? And you never saw each other in person.’ She shrugs.

‘Dating is overrated!’ I change my tactic. ‘And it is certainly not the be-all and end-all. Especially at my age.’

‘Of course it’s not,’ Sara says. ‘But neither is getting drunk six nights a week with your same three café friends.’

I protest. ‘We don’t get drunk six nights a week!’

‘We do.’ Jane skates past to clear a table.

Sara smiles smugly, thanking Jane. ‘Exactly. When was the last time you did literally anything else?’

I glance to Paige for support, but her eyes are fixed forcefully on the three partially demolished slices in front of us.

It feels like karma for not coming to her defence before.

Or perhaps something more intentionally petty from her side.

Either way, it won’t do. I stare directly at her until she can look away no longer.

Eventually she looks up, fiddling with one of her braids as she plots her next move.

‘Have you still been writing?’ she asks, artfully changing the subject.

I spot Sara’s expression perking up at the concept of me doing something remotely productive with my time. It’s sweet, hopeful and would fill me with so much joy if I were not about to shut it down so quickly.

‘Not recently,’ I sigh. ‘There’s just not much opportunity around if you’re not already in the world, you know?’

That should be the end of it. That should be enough to move on – dash the whole topic away, case closed, no writing. But, no. It’s never enough with Sara. I see her eyeroll and feel my mouth go sour.

‘You work in a bank, Sara. You don’t understand what the freelance world is like.’

She shrugs lightly. ‘I get it – it’s hard.’

Then she takes a sip of her coffee and leans back in her seat.

‘Good . . .’ I say hesitantly.

I meet Paige’s equally confused eyes, knowing that can’t be the end of it. The queen of scathing eyerolls and leading questions wouldn’t just let it go like that.

Sara tilts her cup, sipping the last of the dregs, then sets it down authoritatively.

‘But you don’t try.’

I release a loud, low huff. ‘There it is.’

‘Sara,’ Paige says, flitting between our two faces.

But Sara takes no heed from her warning.

‘Am I wrong?’ she asks plainly, before turning back to me. ‘When was the last time you pitched an article? Or networked? Or went to one of those alumni events you’re always getting letters about?’

‘She went to uni for like five weeks, she can’t go to their alumni events,’ Paige says.

‘You’re not helping.’ I scowl at her as she shrugs in defence.