Chapter 3
Nine years later
During my four-hour training shift at Jo Jo’s Coffee and Tea, forced reassurances run through my head on repeat: This is good for you. And for Jo. This is going to be good for you. You needed this change. You’re happy to be here, and this is good for you.
I genuinely believe all of this to be true. I just need to remind myself of that, over and over again, because quitting my teaching job and becoming a barista at the coffee shop my best friend just took over from her now-retired parents feels like a professional downgrade.
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, Jo had told me over the phone, describing her attempt to place a bulk order of more coffee beans. And Macy’s in London. I feel completely untethered.
And so here I am, wiping down café tables.
After four hours of training, I have determined that I need to purchase a real bed after I get my first paycheck.
My back aches, likely because the air was mostly gone from the air mattress by the morning.
When I woke up, my body was fully resting on the laminate floor, except “resting” isn’t really the right word, because there was absolutely zero rest involved.
I bend over to pick up a crumpled napkin from underneath a table, and several of my joints crack.
The other reason for my sleeplessness is that my brain supplied an endless stream of startling and, frankly, unhinged dreams featuring a certain character from my past. An eighteen-year-old boy doing homework with me in the library at two a.m. A nineteen-year-old boy picking up cold medicine from the drugstore when I had the flu.
A twenty-one-year-old boy sitting in the front row of my capstone project presentation, clapping the loudest with the widest grin on his face.
A twenty-seven-year-old man refusing a hug.
Every footstep on my ceiling is a slap in the face.
Every ding makes me wonder if his girlfriend/booty call is texting him.
Every time a door shuts, I run to my window, and I still haven’t decided whether I’m looking outside in fear or anticipation.
And it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since I moved in.
I wasn’t even going to tell him I was in Boston, but now he’s going to know every time I turn on my TV.
Seeing him again is heartbreaking, but am I allowed to be heartbroken if I’m not blameless?
After Harrison left yesterday, I spent the next several hours lying on my floor, cycling from horror to giddy excitement to raw mortification.
There were some tears thrown in there, particularly whenever I heard a noise from above and remembered the thumpthumpthump.
And the whole time, I couldn’t get rid of the sour, guilty taste in my mouth.
“You should have seen the look on his face when he stepped away from me,” I tell Jo, who stands behind the counter reminding me for the third time this shift that I’m overreacting. “All I wanted was a hug, and he looked like someone was asking him if he wanted his cat buried or cremated.”
“Harrison has a cat?”
“No! I am the cat in this scenario. Our relationship is the cat.”
“I don’t get it.”
I don’t respond, because neither do I. My brain can’t be expected to operate at full capacity at the moment.
Groaning, I stretch my arms upward and feel the pull of stiff muscles in my back and my side and—well, everywhere.
“Girl, go home,” Jo says. “Your shift is over.”
I salute her. “Thanks, boss.”
Jo rolls her eyes, chuckling. “Don’t call me boss. That sounds ridiculous.”
“Sure thing, boss,” I say. Jo looks around to make sure no one is watching, then turns her back to the tables and flips me off with a smile.
Walking into the back room, I take off my apron and hang it on my designated hook.
A sticker on the wall spells out my name in beautiful calligraphy with oranges and orange blossoms drawn around the name.
Jo’s name, next to mine, is decorated with apples—probably a reference to her former role as a high school teacher—and another sticker to the right spells out “Rose” with some roses framing the word. Another co-worker, I assume.
I trace my finger along my name, admiring the work Jo put into making this place feel welcoming for me.
It’s only been a few weeks since her school year ended and she took over the coffee shop from her parents full-time.
She grew up here, doing her homework at the tables after school while her parents made lattes and chatted with customers.
When she heard earlier this year that they were going to close up shop, she decided to take over instead.
Mercifully, they were in decent financial shape due to the long-standing relationships they’d built with practically everyone in this part of Jamaica Plain, but their rent had only been going up in recent years, so Jo knows she needs to improve business if she wants this to be a sound financial venture.
The chime on the door rings, and footsteps break my contemplative silence.
“Hey, Jo!”
I freeze.
I see him every three to four months, my ass. That’s the casual greeting of a regular walking into his favorite coffee shop.
He orders an iced latte, and I watch through a slit in the curtain as Jo enters his order. He’s wearing scrubs and carrying a backpack over one shoulder.
They talk casually and quietly, and I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I do see Jo’s eyes darting back and forth between Harrison and the curtain behind which I’m standing. I clear my throat loudly to indicate that Jo needs to come back here to talk to me.
He eyes the curtain. “Is that…” he starts to ask, then pauses.
No way in hell he can recognize me by the sound of me clearing my throat. Absolutely no chance. But his eyes are fixed on the curtain with an alarmed expression anyway, and I step farther back into the room, just in case he has X-ray vision.
“That’s not…” he says again. “Is it?”
“Actually, you know what?” Jo asks, jerking her eyes toward the curtain with an apologetic look. (I’m going to kill her.) “That is her, and she just finished her training shift, and she needs someone to walk home with her. She hasn’t learned the route yet, you know? Don’t want her to get lost.”
“That’s what my phone is for,” I hiss from behind the curtain, and they both look in my direction, Jo with a shut up look and Harrison with another alarmed expression. I clear my throat again. It sounds like I have consumption.
“I’ll be right back,” Jo says. “I’ll give you a large coffee to make sure it lasts you through the walk. Sound good?”
Harrison doesn’t respond before she walks back to where I am, sliding sideways through the curtains so as not to expose me to the outside world.
“That was nonconsensual wingwomaning!” I whisper accusatorily.
“Nuh-uh,” she says, wagging her finger. “Don’t give me that. You’re neighbors and need to learn how to be friendly. I’m doing you a favor. You told me yesterday that you want to fix this.”
“I didn’t mean right now.” I let out a whispered ughhhhhh. “And what happened to ‘I only see him once every three to four months’? Huh?”
She purses her lips. “I do get coffee with him every three to four months. But he also works nearby—and apparently lives nearby—so he’s been stopping in for coffee regularly since I took over.
” She sees me open my mouth to argue, and she cuts me off.
“I stand by my claim. We don’t catch up when he comes to buy coffee.
I literally just make his order, and he goes about his merry way. ”
Harrison clears his throat outside, then says, “I can hear what you’re saying. Just FYI.”
Jo and I exchange a wide-eyed glance. Putting one hand on her hip, Jo points with the other hand toward where Harrison stands on the other side of the curtain. “Go on, then.”
I silently scream, jumping three times like an angry child, then shake it off and walk coolly and casually past the curtains.
“Hi, Harrison!” I say. My voice is oddly pinched and high-pitched.
“Hi,” he says, the words forced through his full-face cringe. He’s wearing scrubs with illustrations of friendly sharks, and he looks like he wants to walk out the door and straight into the ocean.[*1] “You…work at Jo Jo’s now?”
I nod and gesture vaguely toward the espresso machine instead of providing an explanation. “Still drinking iced lattes, I see!”
He nods toward something Jo is doing. “Still drinking iced coffees with oat milk and one sugar, I see.”
I turn around to look at Jo, who is putting lids on two cups. She gives me a thumbs-up and an enthusiastic smile, then hands one coffee to me and one to Harrison. Jo practically shoves us outside, and we stand completely still and silent, staring at each other with equally mortified expressions.
I take a sip of my coffee.
“How is it?” he asks.
I swallow. “It’s good.”
He takes a sip of his coffee.
“How is yours?”
He nods. “Good.”
We stare at each other for another moment, and then I gesture in the direction of our building.
Our building. Damn it. I’m so screwed.
We start our journey home, and when I raise my coffee up to my mouth, I’m horrified to see that my hands are shaking.
“Are you okay?” Harrison asks quietly. This area of Jamaica Plain is slow and residential and calm, but I can still barely hear him over the faint hum of cars and footsteps and the idle chatter of passersby.
“Not really.”
He takes a sip of his coffee. “Me neither, I think.” It doesn’t sound accusatory, but we both know who’s at fault. A pit forms in my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice as quiet as his. “I know you hate me. I hope you know I never intended to put you in this situation.”
Harrison’s pace slows, and he turns to me with wide eyes.
“What?” I ask when he doesn’t speak.
“I don’t hate you.”
He should hate me, actually. After how we left things in college.
It was so, so hard and it still feels hard. Or maybe “tight” is the word. A tightness in my chest that makes it hard to fully exhale when I think about it.