9. Amiyah
Chapter nine
Amiyah
The espresso machine at Beaned & Brew’d screams like it’s being murdered, which feels appropriate for a Wednesday afternoon.
The sound cuts through the shop every few minutes, followed by the violent churn of the grinder and the hiss of steamed milk.
None of it ever seems to stop. Conversations overlap beneath it all, dozens of voices reduced to a steady, indistinct murmur.
The air is warm with the smell of roasted beans, caramelized sugar, and milk heated just past the point where it becomes comforting.
The place is packed.
Of course it is.
Afternoons turn this particular coffee shop into a holding pen for students, freelancers, and people who apparently have nowhere else they need to be. Every table is occupied. Every chair is claimed. The line stretches nearly to the door.
The line inches forward. I inch with it. My phone is in my hand, emails scrolling past my thumb at a pace calibrated to make me feel productive while actually accomplishing nothing.
Weekday volume at Beaned & Brew’d is its own special hell. The grinder goes off every forty-five seconds with the violent enthusiasm of a wood chipper that’s found religion.
My thumb catches on an email—a dark romance book I’ve been stalking has finally dropped. I’m in the Kindle Unlimited app before I’ve fully processed the decision, the purchase confirmed in two taps. I make a mental note to wish the author a happy release day.
The line moves. I move. This is the rhythm of my day: forward momentum measured in half-steps, patience extracted from a reserve that was already running on fumes Monday evening.
A voice behind me says, simply, “You.”
Not my name. Not hey or excuse me or pardon me. Just…you.
I turn.
The fucking fucker that likes to put his knees in my personal bubble is standing there.
Dark hair slightly too long, sharp jaw, those espresso eyes landing on me with possibly the same mild displeasure I’m already feeling, which feels unfair because I was here first and my displeasure has seniority.
He’s wearing a charcoal Henley with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, dark jeans, and… no glasses today.
“Are you following me?” I ask, unamused with his existence.
He blinks like the accusation has physically struck him between the eyes.
“Following you,” he repeats, and his accent makes the word sound heavier than it has any right to.
“No. I live three blocks from here. I come to this coffee shop regularly.” He gestures at the space around us with one hand, a movement that somehow manages to convey both exasperation and a complete unwillingness to justify himself further.
“There are many coffee shops in this area. This one is the best. That is why I’m here. Not because of you.”
The line moves. I don’t.
“Convenient,” I say.
“Not convenient. Factual.”
I turn back around without another word.
He stays in line.
I can feel him behind me—not in a creepy way, not in the way that makes my skin prickle with danger-assessment, but in the way that makes my shoulder blades tense because I know exactly how far apart we’re standing and it’s approximately two inches closer than the social contract typically allows for strangers in a coffee line.
The barista at the register is the one with the nose ring and the purple hair. She looks up at me and her hands are already moving toward the espresso machine.
“Brown sugar vanilla, coconut milk, extra whip?” she asks.
Not a question. A confirmation.
“You know me so well,” I say cheerfully, which annoys me slightly because I didn’t mean to reward this man’s presence with evidence that I’m capable of human warmth.
She nods, taps the screen, and I slide my card.
I leave her a tip and step to the pickup end of the counter.
The space here is narrow, bodies pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, people who are all waiting for the same thing but pretending not to notice each other.
The heat from the espresso machine radiates against the side of my face.
Somebody’s backpack bumps my hip. I don’t move.
Behind me, Jae steps up to the register.
“Black coffee,” he says. “Medium. To go.”
I turn.
“That sounds disgusting,” I say.
He raises his brows.
“Excuse me?”
“Whatever you just ordered. It sounds disgusting.”
“It’s a black coffee.”
“Exactly. You drink coffee like a seventy-year-old man.”
He stares blankly at me.
The barista slides a paper cup across the counter toward me.
Brown sugar vanilla latte, extra whip, the whipped cream already beginning its slow, delicious collapse into the surface of the drink.
Steam rises from the small sipping hole in the lid.
I wrap my hand around the cup and the heat seeps through the cardboard sleeve into my palm, immediate and satisfying.
Jae looks at my drink. Then at me. His mouth does something that isn’t quite a smile but lives somewhere in the same neighborhood.
“And it appears you drink coffee like a twelve-year-old,” he says.
I pick up my latte with complete, unhurried dignity, showing him that his opinion on the matter has the approximate value of a used tissue.
“At least my coffee has character.” I chide, taking an intentionally slow sip, allowing the sweetness to coat my tongue before I lower the cup and walk away.
The shop is, objectively, a disaster zone of occupied territory.
Every table claimed. Chairs pulled from neighboring seats to accommodate groups that have exceeded their original seating allocation.
Someone’s laptop bag occupies a full chair as a territorial marker, the owner nowhere in sight but the message clear: this is mine, I have placed an object here, and that object has more right to this chair than you do, so fuck off.
I scan the room once, my eyes landing on it at the same moment I sense his landing on it too—the one remaining table. A two-top near the window.
We arrive at it simultaneously. His hand reaches for the chair on one side. My tote bag hits the surface of the table on the other.
“No,” I say.
He stops, his hand hovering above the chair back. His expression shifts from determination to genuine confusion in the span of about half a second.
“No what?”
“No, you can’t sit here. Go find another table.”
He gestures at the room. A sweeping, all-encompassing motion that takes in the wall-to-wall density of bodies, the absent chairs, the laptop bag still holding its ground on that chair like a particularly committed squatter.
“There are no other tables.”
“That sounds like a personal problem.”
We stare at each other. Both of us refusing to stand down. The table sits between us like a neutral zone in a conflict neither of us started but both of us seem determined to win.
I sit down. He sits down. The chairs scrape against the floor in imperfect unison.
Silence descends. Not the comfortable kind. The unwelcoming kind.
Whatever, he’s about to see just how unbothered by him, I really am.
I pull my notes from my tote. Color-coded, tabbed, the edges of the pages worn soft from handling. My pink gel pen comes out next, then I set the latte down on the right side of me.
His long elegant fingers wrap around his coffee.
“Didn’t you order your disgusting coffee to go?” I recall, glancing up.
“Do you always eavesdrop on strangers orders?”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was standing in a public space with functional hearing. There’s a difference.”
His mouth twitches. I pretend not to notice.
“I’m Jae by the way.”
I open up my notebook and begin studying the words on the paper.
“Good for you.”
“Your note-taking system is…” he starts.
“Effective,” I finish.
“Intense.”
“Do you always read strangers notes?”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
“I was looking at the colors,” he says. “Not reading.”
“Right.” I mumble.
The silence stretches between us like a rubber band pulled to its breaking point. I flip a page in my notebook. He takes a sip of his black coffee. Doesn’t wince, which is impressive because I’ve heard that the black coffee at Beaned & Brew’d tastes like somebody filtered motor oil through a sock.
“You like pink?”
I sigh, my gaze moving from the paper to his face.
“What gave that away? Truly, I must know.” I say.
He gives me this look that says you have to be kidding me and then glances at my pen, my nails, the light pink cardigan wrapped around my shoulders, then my tote and back to my face.
“Subtle clues,” he says.
“Detective work of that caliber must be exhausting.”
“It is, actually. Ten out of ten, I wouldn't recommend.”
He’s got jokes.
My chest warms but I ignore it. It’s probably just my GERD acting up again.
Flipping to another page, I turn my focus back to studying rather than dignify his joke with a response.
Maybe he’ll catch the hint that the conversation was over like, yesterday.
He does not, in fact, catch the hint.
“So,” he says, leaning back in his chair, “what are you studying?”
My eye roll is automatic.
“Well, nothing because you keep interrupting me.” I huff.
He makes a small “o” shape with his mouth and throws his hand up. “My apologies—” he pauses. “ummm, ma’am.”
He did not just call me ma’am!
“Amiyah. My name is Amiyah.”
“Amiyah,” he repeats, and the sound of my name in his mouth does things to my body that it absolutely should not do. “That’s a pretty name.”
“Thanks. I came up with it myself.”
He laughs, but what he doesn’t know is it’s actually kinda true. After losing my mom to the Grim Reaper and my dad to the justice system, I decided to take on a new name, something that would separate the life I was forced to have from the life I wanted.
Of course, I say none of this.
For a while, the only sounds between us are the espresso machine and the low murmur of the shop.
I study. He drinks his coffee.
I turn a page. He turns his cup in his hands.
Ignoring him is easy.
Except that once I stop thinking about him, I start watching him instead. The way his thumb taps against the side of his cup. The small crease that forms between his brows when something on his phone gives him pause. The way his hair falls forward and he pushes it back without looking up.
It’s annoying to say the least.
I return my eyes to my notes.
A minute passes.
Maybe two.
Then his knee finds mine under the table.
Neither of us moves.
It’s nothing—just warmth through two layers of denim. I keep reading. He keeps drinking. Neither of us says anything about it, which is somehow the thing that makes it impossible to stop noticing.
I shift. He shifts too—not away, just over enough to make room.
I look up and find that he’s already looking at me. His expression is different now. Not the teasing thing from before. Something quieter. Something that makes my heart start beating faster.
I should look away.
I don't.
Then the barista calls someone's name from across the shop, and the moment breaks. Blinking, I look back down at my notes allowing my pen to resume its dance across the page.
Then, without looking up, I say, “Your coffee's getting cold.”
His voice has deepened another octave, “So is yours.”
I glance at my cup.
He's not wrong.
I drink it anyway, and he mirrors me.
Cool. Great. So, that’s where we are now.
The light through the window has gone amber, bleeding gold into the pages of my notebook. There is no reason for either of us to still be sitting here.
But neither of us leaves.
I don't know when it happened, but somewhere along the way, the space between us has stopped feeling like territory to defend.
So, I turn another page and he continues to stay.
And, maybe, I don't mind it too much.