Chapter 4
Four
The espresso machine hisses in its warm-up cycle.
The lights are on but not all of them, just the ones Luca needs to see the counter, to pull the first shots, to start the day.
Everything else is still in shadow, chairs upside-down on tables, the mugs still drying on the rack, the chalkboard with yesterday’s specials still half-erased at the edge.
I drop my bag at my usual table, the one with the wobble Luca keeps promising to fix, and slip behind the counter, my movements practiced enough that I don’t need to think about them. Luca is at the back, counting inventory on his phone, but he looks up when he hears me.
“Jesus, Els,” he says, already reaching for a mug. “You look like shit warmed over and served with a side of existential crisis.”
“Good morning to you too,” I say, and it comes out the right level of normal,.
He doesn’t answer, just starts making my coffee, a large, strong one, with an extra shot and enough milk to make it drinkable before 6:00 AM. He sets it in front of me with a careful, deliberate movement, then goes back to counting stock, giving me the amount of space he thinks I need.
My phone sits face-down on the counter beside me, its screen dark and peaceful in a way I haven’t felt since I opened Daniel’s.
I haven’t looked at our group chat in three days.
The messages started Sunday evening, Luca asking if I was dead or just ignoring him, Harper checking in with a careful “all okay?” that somehow contained the entire emotional range of concern without being pushy, and then Liv, at 11:47, with her usual subtlety: “If this is another one of your accidental depression spirals, please react with an emoji so I know whether to bring wine or a shovel.”
I didn’t answer any of them. The silence stretched through Monday, Luca asking if I’d seen his text, then Harper again, then nothing.
On Tuesday, the chat went completely quiet.
Just the little dots that indicated someone was typing, then nothing.
Not Liv’s rage or Harper’s careful concern, just Luca, watching the chat and deciding not to fill the space I’d left.
That deliberate silence was what finally pulled me here. The knowledge that someone had noticed the absence and decided to wait at its edges instead of rushing to my rescue.
Luca hands me a blueberry scone on a napkin, “the last one, so eat it before I change my mind”, and I take it because it’s easier than explaining that I haven’t been hungry for days.
“You know,” he says, rearranging the pastries in the case, “it’s actually incredibly rude to ignore my very important texts about Barry Manilow tickets. Some of us have dreams.”
“He’s eighty-five,” I say, my voice sounding like it’s coming from somewhere else in the room. “And the tickets aren’t for six months.”
“He’s a legend,” Luca counters, his back still to me as he moves milk cartons from the delivery box to the fridge. “And you’re deflecting, which means something’s actually wrong instead of just the usual Elsie-brand catastrophizing.”
I look down at my coffee, watching the tiny ripples form on its surface from the slight tremor in my hand. “Daniel’s been cheating on me,” I say, the words dropping into the space between us like stones. “Since I was pregnant from what I can tell. Maybe before.”
Luca freezes, one milk carton suspended halfway to the fridge. “Fuck,” he says, very quietly.
“It’s…“ I start, but then the rest comes flooding out in one long, barely punctuated stream, like it’s been waiting behind a dam that’s finally broken.
“I found a Snapchat notification on his phone when I was trying to order nappy sacks because he gets triple points and we’re running low and the preview text was from someone called JazzyGirl asking when she could see him again and thinking about something he did with his tongue and there was a photo attached and it wasn’t me and I checked and there were hidden apps in a utilities folder, utilities, of course utilities, with messaging apps and a hookup thing and three women at least, probably more, and it started when I was pregnant and couldn’t even get off the couch without making this awful noise and he stopped touching me because he said he was worried about hurting me or the babies but really he was just finding someone who wasn’t so fat and then…
“ I stop, take a breath that doesn’t quite make it all the way to my lungs.
“Then I found the messages from when the twins were in the NICU. When Maisie couldn’t breathe right and Milo had jaundice, he was texting some woman about when they could meet up to ‘take his mind off things.’ He sent her a photo from the hospital bathroom.
While I was…“ My voice breaks on the last word.
“While I was watching our babies fight to stay alive.”
I stare at my coffee, unable to look at Luca’s face, suddenly aware that my cheeks are wet. I haven’t cried yet, not really, and now, in the middle of our café, with the espresso machine ticking quietly and the day not quite started, it finally hits me.
Luca is silent for a long moment, which is so unlike him that I actually notice it through the fog of my own mind. When he finally speaks, his voice is carefully measured.
“I need you to know,” he says calmly, “that I could absolutely destroy this man for sport.”
It’s said so perfectly, just what I need to hear that I laugh, a short, startled sound that catches in my throat, and then I’m crying, really crying, the kind that escapes while you’re trying to actively prevent it.
Not the pretty kind from movies with single tears tracking down perfect cheekbones, but the messy, ugly kind that involves snot and red eyes and hiccupping sobs that make your whole body shake.
“I’m sorry,” I say, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes. “God, I’m sorry, this is so…I didn’t mean to…“
Luca is around the counter in a heartbeat, his arms around me before I can finish the sentence. “Do not,” he says, his voice firm, “apologize to me. Not for this.”
He holds me while I cry, just being a steady and strong presence holding me together. After a few minutes, or maybe longer, the tears slow, then stop. I pull back, wiping my face with the back of my hand, and Luca reaches for a stack of napkins, handing them to me without comment.
“I must look like I’ve been waterboarded,” I say, dabbing carefully at my eyes.
“You look like someone who’s having a completely appropriate response to discovering her husband is a spectacular asshole,” Luca corrects, handing me a glass of water. “Drink. You’re dehydrated from all that high-quality leaking.”
I take a sip, the water cool against my raw throat. “I’ve been avoiding the group chat,” I admit. “I can’t…I can’t survive Harper looking at me with pity right now. Or Liv trying to emotionally support me through insults. I can’t pretend I’m fine for one more conversation.”
“Nobody’s upset with you,” Luca says, leaning against the counter beside me. “Harper’s been quietly worried. Liv’s been loudly pretending not to be. And nobody’s forcing you to talk before you’re ready.”
I nod, not quite trusting my voice.
“I’m going to call Adrian,” Luca says, the statement so matter of fact that it takes me a second to process what he’s saying. “He’s not just a lawyer, he’s the best lawyer I know, and he’s on our side. There has to be perks to being married to someone who has to do 60 hour weeks at work.”
“Luca… “
“This isn’t an overreaction,” he interrupts, his voice completely calm. “It’s practical. You need information, and Adrian has it. That’s all.”
I take another sip of water, considering that.
Adrian is Luca’s husband, calm, measured Adrian, who speaks in complete sentences even at 6:00 AM and who once talked a police officer out of giving Luca a ticket for public intoxication by explaining, with perfect sincerity, that his husband was “having a religious experience with a fire hydrant.” He’s also a corporate lawyer with a specialty in contracts and, apparently, a sideline in helping friends navigate the specific hell of discovering their spouses are cheating.
“Okay,” I say finally. “Yes. Please.”
Luca nods, pulling out his phone. “I’ll call him now. Go fix your face. There’s concealer in the bathroom drawer.”
In the small bathroom behind the counter, I run cold water over my wrists and stare at my reflection with the expression of someone who has recently survived something and isn’t sure yet what to do with that.
My eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, my cheeks blotchy with the particular uneven flush that comes after real crying.
There’s a smudge of mascara under my left eye that looks like someone punched me, and my hair is doing that thing where it sticks up on one side and lies flat on the other, like it can’t decide whether to commit to the disaster or pretend it’s fine.
I splash cold water on my face, pat it dry with a paper towel, and apply Luca’s concealer with careful, practiced movements.
It doesn’t fix everything, nothing could, but it helps.
By the time I’ve run a comb through my hair and reapplied my lip balm, I look almost like myself again.
Or at least like someone who might be able to get through the next hour without collapsing.
When I step back into the café, Luca is off the phone, wiping down the counter with more attention than it actually needs.
“Adrian wants to come by,” he says without looking up. “If you’re comfortable with that. Entirely your choice.”
I nod, wrapping both hands around my coffee mug. The ceramic is warm against my palms, solid in a way that helps anchor me to the moment. “Yes,” I say. “That would be good.”
Luca looks up then, his expression careful. “He’ll be here in twenty,” he says. “I told him to bring his own coffee so I wouldn’t have to make it.”