Chapter Text
All kinds of people came into the coffee shop downtown, but the worst were the uptight businesspeople who flooded in before the workday and on their little coffee meetings through the morning and after lunch. They came off Wall Street, out of the offices downtown and in the Financial District, and ordered black coffee or fancy lattes and espresso—it was a tossup, usually, Greg had found. He could never really pin down any one type of person to order any one type of drink.
Greg didn’t know why these people couldn’t make black coffee in their offices, but he supposed if you made a lot of money, five bucks for a large coffee didn’t make much difference.
Most of them ordered in the middle of phone calls or while half-talking to the person they’d come in with, like if they stopped networking for even thirty seconds they might lose a job opportunity. One time a stern woman in a gray suit had fired someone as she ordered a peppermint tea, a contrast Greg laughed about afterward.
He supposed it was good they weren’t a chain cafe. Those places probably got the really angry people, the ones who threw coffee back at you if you got the order wrong. These people were snooty for sure, but a little too classy for that, and so many of them came in with people they were trying to fuck with or fuck over that they generally seemed reluctant to be outright rude to the staff. The worst that had ever happened on one of Greg’s shifts was a middle-aged man who’d taken a sip of his drink, made direct eye contact with Greg, and said it was the wrong thing, only for Greg to confirm that it wasn’t even his in the first place.
But hey, he wasn’t complaining. The place paid well enough, he got free coffee on his days off, and during the workday, outside the coffee meeting crowd, the clientele was mostly tourists and families.
Greg liked it most when the kids came in, and he always set aside for them a screwed-up cookie or some other snack that they were just going to throw away anyway. It made the kids smile, and the hassled parents were usually thankful.
It was a break from the suits anyway.
Greg knew the regulars easy—he worked almost the same hours every week. One of the big-name traders, an older man named Matthew, was the only person who ordered hot chocolate year round. The CFO of that accounting firm three blocks away was a tall blonde woman named Samantha who ordered an Americano every time, unless she was especially stressed, because then she ordered tea and heaped sugar into it. Still other people he recognized and smiled at like they were casual acquaintances, even when he couldn’t remember their names (which was more often than he wanted to admit).
But this man was new.
The baristas made a game of pointing out the customers they thought were attractive. Dani, the college student who worked most weekdays with Greg, thought the yuppie girl who sometimes came in with her banker father was cute, while Jack, Greg’s Saturday coworker, had a thing for the red-haired girl who studied there some afternoons.
“So,” Dani said, leaning against the counter while Greg made the new guy’s drink—Tom was the name he’d given, and the name that was turning around in Greg’s head. “Are, like, white-collar forty-year-olds your type?”
“What?”
She smiled, twisted a braid around her finger, “Mr. Wall Street over there, in the fucking suspenders? Your type?”
“Oh,” Greg frowned and topped off the latte. He wouldn’t have pinned Tom as a latte drinker, and he wondered if this was a regular drink for him. “What about it?”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s hot I guess, in a dad kind of way.”
“Hated that a little bit,” Greg said, not looking at her. He snapped the lid on the cup, set it on the counter, called out “Tom?” a little more tremulously than he would’ve liked, ignoring Dani’s smirk. Tom looked up from his phone, where he’d been furiously texting for the past several minutes. “Here you go,” Greg said, sliding the cup toward him.
“Thanks.” The man took the cup, and before Greg could get out a warning he’d taken a scalding sip, choking and holding the cup away from him like it’d bit him. The snootiest guys always took a sip before leaving the counter. Greg was pretty sure it was so they’d have an easy out if the order was wrong—rich people were always eager to find something to complain about.
The man hid his embarrassment quickly behind an angry frown. Greg smiled—the classic customer service smile, as Jack called it—and said, “Sorry about that. Come back soon.”
Tom smiled back, a tight smile people always gave them when they were rushing off to do ostensibly more important or more expensive things, and hurried out. Greg heard Dani laugh behind him, and when he turned she was looking at him, arms crossed.
“Pathetic. You gonna fuck him?”
“Dude—”
She laughed again and moving back over to the register to take the next order. Greg hid in the back, where he was supposed to be taking stock before the post-lunch rush started.
In general, dating was off the table. Greg’s life was way too precarious to think about letting another person into it; he’d thought about getting a dog, but his apartment was barely big enough for him, and he didn’t have the time to go home and let it out often enough to give a little guy a happy life. Thinking about trying to make time for another human when he didn’t think he could even take care of a dog just felt like too much.
Fantasizing about a customer you saw once and would possibly never see again might be a fun thing to do occasionally, but it was really a waste of time.
And sure, maybe he’d thought Tom was attractive, but he thought plenty of people were attractive. It was just that this time it’d been obvious to Dani, who’d just happened to be paying attention. Greg put the thoughts of Tom the executive at Corporation Unknown out of his mind and focused on not losing count of biscotti boxes.