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By the third time the regular comes in, Michelle has his coffee order memorized.
He’s a nice guy, unassuming and polite, always stammering to string more than two words together at a time. He introduces himself every time he comes in, even though Michelle is competent enough to remember someone’s name after the first time. She doesn’t think he does it on purpose though, just as a way to fill the space between them when he places an order.
“I’m Peter,” he sputters out. “Peter Parker.” He always seems like he wants to say something else, something more, his sentences spiraling and trailing off, but he stops himself every time, resigning himself to his normal cup of coffee.
Michelle watches him the first time he comes in in the same way she watches all of her customers, mildly curious and a little annoyed at their presence. He fumbles with a yellow sugar packet at the coffee station and accidentally spills a mini cup of creamer on the counter. He cleans up the mess sheepishly, his eyes trained on the napkin he pushes around the formica instead of her meeting her prying eyes from across the cafe.
She thinks that he looks a little familiar, but she can’t quite place her finger on it. Maybe someone from her class at Midtown, but she’s spent too much time with her own head down in the hallways to know anyone’s name if they’re not on the Academic Decathlon team or her classes.
She starts doodling his face after the second time he comes in. He manages to assemble his coffee without spilling too much creamer and huddles into the booth in the corner, thick paperback books tucked under his arms. When Michelle goes over to give him a refill, she sees that they’re review books for the GED.
He spends most of that afternoon with his head bent over the pages, fiddling with the ballpoint pen in his hand as he runs through practice problems. Michelle notes that he writes in green ink, and makes a mental note to pick up new pens for herself when her next paycheck comes in.
She takes advantage of his distracted state to sneak glances at his side profile in between menial tasks like wiping down the coffee maker and refilling salt shakers. His features are youthful but pinched, with dark shadows under his eyes and a pair of permanently pursed lips. He has a few healed scars around his eyebrows that match hers, but his seem deeper and tell of violent slashes that couldn’t have been caused by accident.
When she gets home from the cafe that night, she pulls out her journal from her desk drawer and gets to work sketching him from memory, trying to capture the way his jaw flexed when he spoke or how his eyebrow quirked when she’d queued Vampire Weekend on the speakers. By the end of the night, her journal is full of pages of him, his eyes, his hands, his choppy haircut. She shoves the book under her pillow and dreams of swinging through the air, the wind pressing against her face and a pair of strong arms around her.
When he comes in for the third time, Michelle adds the sugar and creamer to his coffee herself before handing it to him.
She doesn’t do it because she likes him, because she doesn’t believe in giving anyone special treatment, and plus that would be super creepy, and she can imagine how weirded out she would be if the roles were reversed. Frankly, she’s tired of cleaning up after him, and watching him spill the creamer for the third time would probably be too humiliating for the both of them.
Fortunately for Michelle, he receives the coffee gratefully, even if he doesn’t come right out and say it. He grins though, wider than Michelle has ever seen anyone grin, and she has to fake cough so that she doesn’t smile back at him.
The next few times he comes in, Michelle notices more and more about him. His laces never match, no matter what pair of shoes he wears, whether that be snow boots or beat-up sneakers. He doesn’t use headphones while he studies or reads, which Michelle takes as his silent approval of her music taste. He sits on the left side of the corner booth instead of the right side, despite the fact that the plastic on the left side of the seat is cracking and the springs are starting to poke out and jab people in the legs. Michelle thinks it's because he can see the rest of the cafe better from the left side. She catches him staring at her a few times, but he always looks away as their eyes meet.
It takes Michelle a while before she realizes that while she’s memorizing things about him, he’s memorizing things about her.
At least, she thinks he is.
She asks Jeannie, the other barista she alternates shifts with if she’s ever seen Peter come in while she’s working. Michelle even goes so far as to bring in one of her sketches of him just so that Jeannie can confirm that she’s never seen him. He seems to come exactly ten minutes after Michelle does, never two days in a row but always in the afternoon. By his fifth visit, he seems to have her work schedule nailed.
She wears a New York Times shirt under her apron one day in lieu of her uniform, earning her a berating from her boss that took up the first hour of her shift, and the next time Peter comes in, he has a copy of the daily paper instead of a review book. She watches him flounder through the crossword for a while before offering one of the answers. The look he gives her in return, one of shock and pride and a little bit of adoration, sends a rush of blood to her cheeks. He starts bringing in a copy with him every time after that.
He starts bringing in a phone charger with him too, but only after Michelle’s phone dies while it’s hooked up to the cafe speaker and they sit in awkward silence for the last half hour of her shift. Her phone always oscillates between a hopeful twenty percent and being totally dead, but she doesn’t bother to bring a charger with her to work because she only has one and she can’t afford to lose it. The next time her phone dies while playing the music, Peter comes to the rescue and slides it across the counter towards her, almost like a peace offering.
“Thank you,” she says, this time holding his gaze for as long as she can. She plugs in her phone and waits for the loading screen to go away before offering it to him. “Play whatever you want,” she says, gesturing to the empty cafe around them.
When he plays “Campus”, Michelle smiles at him in approval. When he’s done adding songs to the queue, she’ll ask him to put his number in there too.