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“Coffee is a great power in my life; I have observed its effects on an epic scale. Coffee roasts your insides. Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring.”
Honoré de Balzac, The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee, 1830s.
He doesn’t actually like coffee, and even if he did his meagre wage wouldn’t stretch to indulging in non-branded beverages very often if he wanted to afford the occasional theatre trip on top of his living expenses. A person has to prioritise after all. Despite this Connor McKinley found himself in the bland little coffee shop a few streets in from the school one sunny afternoon, all due to being a Good Samaritan. His mother always said that he was too kind, his father said too soft but he’d long since got over his father’s micro-aggressions, they were easy to block out once you knew what to mentally avoid.
The dropped wallet was inconspicuous, faded brown leather and Connor had almost walked over it. But instead he’d noticed it. It wasn’t strictly necessary to go into the small coffee shop, he could have handed it over to the police as lost property or he theoretically could have just walked past it, but Connor never avoided a good deed if he could do one. So he’d picked up the discarded wallet; there was no driver’s licence or obvious ID and he didn’t really want to go rummaging through another person’s private property. He ducked into the nearest shop. Logic dictated that the owner had dropped it just after making a purchase after all.
The shop smelt overwhelmingly of coffee, and Connor coughed. The shop was not only overpowering but it was also empty.
“Hello?” Connor knew that when he was inquisitive his voice was almost lyrical – the word stretched over three notes, echoing in the small shop - the children laughed over it in school, but not unkindly, it was good to sing to remind them not to be shy. Although performing was not for everyone, it did no good to embarrass children into keeping quiet, especially in the dramatic arts. Even if they chuckled at his harmonic questions that meant that they were more inclined to sing things themselves. It was a small sacrifice, his dignity for the wellbeing of children, and if he was honest, he sang anyway.
And then suddenly there was a man behind the counter. It was almost as though he’d appeared from mid-air, but the swinging door behind him indicated that he’d been out the back. The door swung on silent hinges, matching the perfect air of the shop and matching the perfect aura of the barista. He was incredibly all-American, it was the only adjective that Connor could think of. The man had an almost artificial smile; it was too white, too clear and far, far too disingenuous to be genuine. Connor’s knees buckled despite himself, even as he tightened his grip on the wallet and on the narrow counter which upheld his dignity.
And then the man spoke.
“Hello, my name is Kevin, welcome to the Coffee Emporium how may I help you this afternoon?”
“Erm, I found this outside?” Connor asked, holding the wallet up between them. He doesn’t know why he asked it as a question. He had found it outside, and his reasoning had been sound and yet he somehow felt that this was the wrong answer.
The man’s smile faltered, only marginally but it twitched into something simultaneously more real and less friendly.
“Okay, fine do your good deed. Are you going to order something or aren’t you? If not leave the wallet and get out, I have actual customers who are worth my time.”
Connor was about to comment that the coffee shop was entirely empty but the two of them, when the bell rang behind him, indicating another customer, one who was actually likely to be here for coffee.
“Fine.”
He felt his face flush, and slamming the wallet down on the counter between them he fled. He had no intention of returning. He didn’t like coffee and why should he force himself to interact with such a self-satisfied and smug man like Kevin. It didn’t mean anything that he’d remembered it the man’s name after a rudimentary introduction. The man was incredibly rude. Clearly.
Four days later he was back in the coffee shop. He’d never even paid any notice to it before, had never even know that there was a coffee shop there, but now each time he walked to or from the school he had turned and glared, as though the very shop had offended him somehow. And that just wouldn’t do. He should just deal these negative feelings through so he could let them go, it wasn’t healthy to keep things all locked up inside.
There was no one in the café but the barista again. It was like Groundhog Day, only the lack of a wallet in his hands denoted that it wasn’t that same Thursday afternoon, that and the growing ire that he was feeling.
He doesn’t often tell his students off, they’re often too well meaning and harmless to cause any real trouble, but he has been taken to the side by the other teachers on occasion for going on tirades about bullying, albeit with a friendly and bubbly tone. Apparently it confused people, especially the children. He employed that tone especially now.
“Look, Kevin, we met four days ago and you were exceptionally rude to me for no reason other than my doing a good deed. I had had a very busy day dealing with upset children at school and it is of no concern of yours at all whether a person doesn’t drink coffee. What beverages a person consumes does not alter their worth, it could be for religious reasons or just personal taste and you have no right to make judgement values.”
Kevin has had the same smug self-satisfied smile plastered on his face since Connor walked in, with one hand cocked on his hip and the other wrapped around a steaming mug. Probably coffee. The whole shop smells like coffee, but then that isn’t really a surprise. One of Kevin’s perfect eyebrows raises, the only indication that he’s been listening to Connor at all.
“And is it religious reasons?” Kevin says, sounding scathing, and one thing that Connor absolutely cannot deal with judgemental atheists.
“That’s a personal question.”
Connor doesn’t talk about religion a lot these days, he finds it safest. He knows what his relationship with Heavenly Father is like and it does not concern other people to know of it.
“You started it.” The smile on Kevin’s face changed with his words, a little less fake and a little cheekier. It was the sort of smile that Connor saw before someone ended up in tears and the little guy with the cheeky smile was acting the innocent.
“You’re very childish,” Connor said, aware that he was still standing pretty much in the doorway of the café, and edged closer to the counter although he couldn’t tell himself why. Maybe because it would be rude to walk out mid-conversation again, but it wasn’t that he was intending to continue the conversation further. Even as he made an open-ended statement.
And like clockwork the grin on Kevin’s face slide into the angelic template of innocence that always denoted trouble.
“You should be used to dealing with children, you’re an elementary teacher. Sir .”
Connor is not blushing, it’s just warm in the café, because of all the boiling water. In an ideal world this would be the scenario into which another costumer would appear to make the growing silence less awkward, because Connor just can’t think of anything to say and Kevin seems satisfied with this reaction. In the end, to break the tension that it’s possible that only Connor is feeling, he orders a hot chocolate and imagines a horribly familiar voice muttering ‘cute’ under its breathe when he gets a whipped cream moustache. He’s not cute , he’s manly .
And he shouldn’t be noticing that at all.
Next time it’s early morning before school and he hadn’t had time to eat breakfast, so he’d grabbed a smoothie with the bare minimum of small talk before dashing out the door, the time after that it had been raining and he’d sheltered soaked to the bone as Kevin had chuckled at him meanly but refused to charge him for his tea and then the next time Connor had had no excuses at all.
Strangely the only constant factor was Kevin.
He was never expecting there to be a first time, let alone a next time, even if he still doesn’t order coffee and Kevin looks like he’s sucked a lemon every time he orders something other than his beloved beverage. Kevin doesn’t attempt to sway him towards coffee, so that’s something even if Kevin is insufferable about many other things.
The coffee shop is rarely busy, perhaps rushes come at lunchtime when Connor is herding children towards their vegetables and attended to scraped knees, but for the most part the coffee shop stays relatively empty when Connor visits. He isn’t overly surprised by its apparent lack of success. It’s not a cosy little nook hidden away from civilization and the stresses of modern life, nor is it a branded chain with a look of uniformed disorder and general comfort. No, instead the Coffee Emporium looks like a mixture between an Apple Store and a medical lab; very open plan and white, and from the outside people might suppose it to be an office. There are no friendly pictures of coffee beans on the walls or magazines left lying around for people to read. The overall impression is of a clinical operation, only the small sign above the shop front and the overwhelming smell of coffee give it away at all.
“It got picked up by the way,” Kevin says handing over the take-out cup as though they’d been mid-conversation before he turned to the till instead of launching into an unexpected non-sequitur.
Connor isn’t exactly late but if he wants to organise the sheet music before class starts he really ought to get going now. But Kevin demands attention even as he schools his face to an uninterested expression, as if it hadn’t been he who started talking.
“Pardon?”
It’s difficult to juggle handing over money, collecting the change with holding the warm paper cup and navigating his shoulder bag but he’d taken dance lessons when he was younger and even though it’s been years since he’d danced he’s retained the element of grace. He doesn’t drop anything and his hot chocolate doesn’t spill. Almost despite himself, Kevin looks impressed. Connor knows that his slice of a smile is a little smug, but he can’t help it.
“That wallet that you dropped off got picked up, about half an hour after you left, businesswoman, very strict not very grateful.”
It doesn’t really matter if the music isn’t organised before the children file in; his first class are a good bunch and he knows that if he asked for volunteers at least three little pudgy hands will shoot right up, he can afford to finish the story. And he is interested. It’s not why he did it, of course, but, a little idle curiosity never hurt.
“Oh, well. I assure she was stressed about it. Did she buy a coffee?”
Kevin huffed, and Connor suspected that knew the answer.
“No, she didn’t,” and there it was, although Connor didn’t expect the continuation of Kevin’s response accompanied by another huff, “- And she tried to give me her number.”
Kevin sounds more offended that she didn’t buy a coffee than about the phone number, but still, it seems odd. It really doesn’t concern Connor at all, no, not at all. People are free to say what they want, to do what they want. But really, it doesn’t seem appropriate.
“And has she been back?” Connor’s voice absolutely does not break.
Kevin hesitates, and the pause has to be purposeful because if Connor has learnt anything about the man it’s that he’s an incredibly flamboyant showman who cannot abide not being in the centre of attention. Idly Connor wonders why the coffee shop is so bland an uninspiring, but then it makes Kevin the most exciting thing in the room.
“No.”
Connor smiles, sure that he shouldn’t be smiling. But it’s okay, because Kevin smiled back.
The shop is empty apart from Connor and Kevin and because Connor still refuses coffee, Kevin is bored, so bored that rather than do something profitable he has seemingly decided to badger Connor, who wants to drink his earl grey latte and regret the life choices that brought him into this café with its devastatingly intense barista in peace.
“So what do you teach?” Kevin sounds earnest at least, it doesn’t sound like the opening to being mocked.
“It varies depending on which grade I’m teaching, I take the little ones in art but my passion is the arts ; drama, dance and singing. Bless them, none of them are very talented – I probably shouldn’t say that- but they enjoy it and that’s what I want to support, I should let them express themselves, the poor lambs.”
“Oh?” Price looks overly invested in this, he has his sleeves rolled up having been doing the washing up and there are soap suds at his elbows. Connor always found washing up a soothing activity. Those bubbles are strangely distracting, but Connor doesn’t think like that, he is an upstanding member of the community.
“And you Mr McKinley -” Connor hadn’t told Kevin his surname, it just hadn’t come up in conversation, you don’t share personal information with almost total strangers even if you have been talking to them for a few weeks, but a parent had happened upon him in the coffee shop one weekend, complete with child who had run up to ‘Mr McKinley’ unashamed of showing affection to a teacher, and Kevin had laughed, and it would have been a wonderful moment if Kevin hadn’t adopted the moniker with aplomb.
“Connor, please, call me Connor.”
Kevin is smiling like the devil again. Lead us not unto temptation…
“-Mr McKinley do you, ahem, express yourself ?”
For a wonderful moment Connor thinks that it’s an opening to talk about his brief foray into amateur dramatics, but then no, context is a glorious thing and Kevin’s smile is far too perfect.
“Oh, no, I’m not like that , I am an elementary school teacher.”
Kevin hums and turns back to his washing up and Connor knows that he’s been dismissed. Even though he knew it was what he was supposed to say, somehow it felt like the wrong answer. But he didn’t have time to start examining those sorts of thoughts, it was a pattern, a script to fall into and Connor was happy with his life as it was. He was.
He doesn’t even greet Kevin with the ringing of the bell, and the moment the door is shoved open to shelter from the rain Connor starts with “So, why did you become a barista?”
And to his credit Kevin doesn’t blink, even though Connor rarely comes in on any reliable schedule, so he can’t have known that Connor was coming in and can’t have been expecting the question.
“Oh, I’m not just a barista, I own this coffee shop, I could have been whatever I wanted to be and I wanted to have the best coffee in the world. Therefore I had to be the one to make it.”
He sounds so smug, and Connor really shouldn’t find it endearing. But despite himself he does.
Kevin – Price, he’s learnt is his surname – is an ass, but Connor likes him regardless. He doesn’t know why. Then again, Connor likes everyone. He was always too soft and too forgiving. But Kevin makes him smile, even if it is in exasperation at times.
It’s become a regular occurrence somehow, once the schools are out he comes in at least once a week he doesn’t know where the money comes from because he hadn’t thought that he could afford the expense and yet he’s there. And Kevin is always there, sometimes there’s someone else, a beautiful black girl called Nabulungi who sings as she works like a Disney Princess or her dorky boyfriend who it transpires is Kevin’s best friend. Now, that had been a surprise.
Connor has to admit that when he walked towards the shop and saw Kevin and a short plump guy having a heated debate through the glass he wondered whether he would have to break it up as he did with bickering children at school. Saying that it didn’t matter who started it but that he was going to finish it and was going to do it fairly. That it was wrong to fight and that there were better ways of expressing our feelings. He kept a spare ‘feelings ball’ in his pocket at all times, it was actually a stress ball but the kids didn’t need to know that. If he told them that they had to be honest and open about their feelings when Mr McKinley tossed them the small pink ball, then the truth came tumbling out.
But when he pushed open the door, readying his shoulders for the discomfort of conflict, the two men were laughing together. Kevin’s face lit up even further when he looked up at the ringing of the little bell.
“Connor! This is Arnold, my best friend!”
It’s the most passionate Kevin has ever sounded apart from talking about coffee. It certainly is a surprise but somehow it works, they complement each other.
Connor hasn’t spoken to his own best friend in years. High school, Chris Thomas, they’d been thick as thieves, where Connor learnt to put other people first when Chris needed him after his sister died and where Chris helped him to stand up for himself. Chris got married three years ago and has a beautiful wife and two bouncing children with a third on the way. They still e-mail, and next time Chris is in the state they’ve made plans to meet up for, well not coffee but to catch up. And before that there was Steve. But Connor doesn’t like to think about Steve Blade any more.
There’s an iced tea waiting on the counter the next Friday when he makes his way into the coffee shop. He appears to have a reliable schedule. It should be dispiriting that his only real social life on a Friday evening is to pop in to irritate and be irritated by the owner of a local business in equal measure. Well, Connor reflects, he never wanted for much in his social life.
There’s a flurry of people, at least seven as he’ll comment sarcastically later to Kevin, so he sits and sips at his drink making a mental note to make sure to pay for it before he leaves while Kevin serves with his fixed smile on his face. Connor has a lap full of badly drawn pictures, and he’s idly looking through them. Art homework is hard to mark at the best of times, but when it’s for the littlest ones his heart is very soft.
Some of the pictures are of dogs, some of houses, some of families, and the most heart-warming of all, some vague pink and orange splodges that have been clumsily labelled as ‘Mr McKinley’.
His heart melts. He loves all of his children, he teaches because he wants to make their lives better. That they love him in return, now that is something special.
“What are you looking at?”
The café has emptied without his knowledge and Kevin has sauntered over to him holding an almost overflowing mug of coffee.
Conner squeaked, it was certainly undignified and probably sounded ridiculous but he could just picture Kevin slamming his mug down on the table and ruining his precious paintings. They were more valuable than gold, to him at least.
“Oh come, won’t you let me see?” Kevin actually pouted, and Connor should be able to resist him, but he just peeled the papers away from the protection of his chest to spread them on the table in front of them making sure to keep them well away from Kevin’s mug.
Connor knows that his smile is ridiculous and dorky when they reach the masterpiece of ‘Mr McKinley’ but he doesn’t actually care.
When Kevin smiles back it doesn’t seem like he’s laughing.
“You must be a good teacher, when I was young I exclusively drew spaceships and cowboys.”
Connor shrugged, but he knew that his immodesty was showing on his face. Was it so wrong to want positive attention and praise from someone who you liked and admired? And Kevin sounded so earnest that the blush on Connor’s face darkened. He must be approaching the portrait of ‘Mr McKinley’ at this point, bright pink and orange. His tie was fuchsia, he must clash terribly.
He tries to be a good teacher, a good teacher has to be good at everything. Has to be a good listener, a good talker and he loves being able to make a difference. He has taught hundreds of children, his voice and his passions will touch thousands of children before he retired and even if that is the only mark he leaves in this world, he will have had thousands of children. He tries to be a good teacher. He tries to be a good person.
Kevin is still talking.
“My parents keep them to embarrass me. I think my mother wants to inflict them on whichever poor person I bring home to meet them ‘officially’. Maybe you’ll get to see them one day?”
Connor is aware that he’s gaping, but in his defence he is thoroughly confused at this turn of the conversation and he finds himself agreeing, nodding and pliantly holds up the picture apparently of himself, for Kevin to take a photo of on his smartphone. He doesn’t know why Kevin wants that picture, although he knows that the original will have pride of place on his fridge until it becomes time to hand them back to the class. After the two weeks it will take to ‘mark’ them. He’s always too generous with his arts marks. He knows that he should give grades on talent, but if a bright blue dinosaur or a ballerina robot makes his students happy then he’s not going to be the ones to tell them no. Maybe he’ll ask Kevin for a copy of his third grade portrait once he has to return it with its B+.
“Why the Coffee Emporium?” Connor asks, idly tracing a raindrop down one of the expansive and spotless windows of Kevin’s coffee shop. He knows that it’s irritating Kevin, having someone muss up his clean windows but he can’t help himself. He feels like a child again, full of wonder at the universe. It’s a good feeling.
There were customers in the coffee shop when he walked in, shaking raindrops from his hair and the memories of a bad day. It hadn’t been awful, but it hadn’t been great and he’d known where he needed to go to feel better. So he had perched at the windows and watched the rain until Kevin came to him.
“I said that I loved coffee, not that I had any imagination about it.”
This, Connor has to admit is true. All of the drinks are named painfully literally and day-in day-out now Kevin has worn the same boring shirt and black tie. Even Connor working within school regulations livens things up with brightly patterned ties – he even has one that lights up – and his favourite salmon pink cardigan. It’s been months and Conner doesn’t think that he’s ever seen Kevin wear jeans, only fitted black trousers. Remarkably fitted in fact.
When Kevin steps closer he accepts the proffered steaming mug with a smile. It’s a hot chocolate, like the first time. The real first time.
“I should have asked Arnold,” Kevin continued, “he’s got a very active imagination, but then again his first recommendation was Kevin’s Kafé to match the fact that he’s called his publishing company ‘Arnold’s Authors’ so perhaps best not.”
Kevin’s words might be scathing, but he’s smiling and Connor has learnt to distinguish between his bark and his bite by now.
“Perhaps not,” Connor says, mentally thinking ‘Connor’s classes’.
Kevin’s best friend Arnold Cunningham is an experience, in an entirely different but equally intense way as Kevin. He is also incredibly loud, normally he’s mitigated by Nabulungi or Kevin, but Nabulungi is serving customers with an easy smile and Kevin is out the back negotiating stock angrily into his mobile phone, so there is no one to press mute on Arnold once he gets an idea in his head.
“He likes you!” Arnold doesn’t have an indoor voice and Connor splutters into his mug out of surprise and shock, he’s still not drinking coffee but this time he’s having tea and it’s suddenly far too hot.
“Excuse me?!”
Arnold actually claps. He doesn’t have a cup of coffee either, he has an apple juice box. He gets apple juice on the table and wipes it up with his sleeve.
“He told me all about it, about this cute teacher who doesn’t like coffee, it’s really annoying him, he’s trying to make you love coffee, and other things.”
It looks like he’s trying to wiggle his eyebrows but instead his face is just twitching strangely.
“I’m not cute. ”
Cunningham smiles widely, and for an instant Connor can understand why Nabulungi is dating him, before shutting that down quickly.
“Just give in to temptation…”Arnold’s voice is suddenly like molten honey and for a moment it is as though he could say anything and Connor would agree without question. As it is Arnold lets the pause grow, and Connor can feel his face flushing dramatically. “… And have some coffee. It’ll be easier for everyone. Once Kevin gets an idea in his head there’s no talking him out of it.”
And then Nabulungi smiles in Arnold’s direction and whatever hypnotic powers he had over Connor filtered away into giggles and hiding in his hands.
He thinks about what Arnold said. He thinks about it a lot.
The coffee shop is empty, Connor supposes that Kevin must come from money because there have never been more than a meagre number of customers for the months that Connor’s been arriving, and yet the business is still flourishing. The Coffee Emporium is more of a hobby than a viable business, and Kevin like a child playing with his favourite toy. But the shop is empty today because it is a Tuesday morning.
The school has been closed because of a minor flood – will they never learn that not supervising break times is a bad idea – and Connor is alternating between grading very short term papers, making edits to the school play and staring at Kevin. He shouldn’t be staring at Kevin, he knows that he shouldn’t but he can’t quite find it within himself to stop. After all, it’s all harmless. If he doesn’t think of it as flirtation, then it isn’t. As he said, he’s not like that. He’s not .
Kevin takes a break from doing nothing and then he’s perched on the edge of Connor’s bench, putting his half-empty, still steaming coffee mug on the table in front of him. Connor doesn’t look up from his laptop, sensing rather than seeing Kevin in his peripheral vision.
“You’re in here a lot for someone who doesn’t like coffee.” Kevin doesn’t phrase it as a question, but there’s still an expectation of an answer. Connor doesn’t even have a drink today, which is probably sacrilege.
“I can’t think why, the company isn’t much,” Connor says, resisting the urge to stick his tongue out. Kevin brings out the worst in him.
And Kevin actually laughs. A few weeks ago that would have got a scowl, but maybe, as Connor has got used to Kevin’s particular brand of self-belief, Kevin has got used to his brand of humour. Maybe they complement each other as well. The thought feels warm inside him, and he imagines that it feels as though he had been drinking coffee.
“Oh, come. Arnold and Nabulungi aren’t that bad.”
“I wasn’t talking about them as well you know.”
“Do I?” Kevin is sitting far closer to him than he’d expected, and looking up from his laptop all Connor can see is Kevin’s face. His lips are very close and very pink. Connor can feel the words against his mouth.
“Now, Connor I know what I want to happen next but I got the impression that you didn’t wa-” Kevin’s smug words are cut off by the sudden taste of coffee exploding in Connor’s senses. Kevin really is a caffeine addict. Connor’s first taste of coffee is sweetened from being his first taste of Kevin as well, and maybe this shouldn’t be what he wants, but he does and he is so, so happy.
He still doesn’t like the taste of coffee, it’s too bitter and sharp but Kevin is smiling against his lips and has brought up his hands to grip Connor’s forearms, and he sighs, breath catching in in delight, embarrassingly enough he can’t hear anything other the heartbeat pounding in his own ears, but really, nothing else matters but that moment now.
Kevin’s coffee goes cold and the battery on Connor’s laptop dies. The bell over the door doesn’t ring, or if it does neither of them hear it.
The next day Connor presses a kiss to Kevin’s cheek at the door of the shop before he turns to the school and when, after a long day which he has been bouncing on the tip of his toes and delighting the children with his laughter, the bell above the coffee shop door rings. He loves that bell, and the greeting that it offers. Kevin’s smile is large and genuine and Nabulungi coos at them when she’s told, and tiny Arnold Cunningham actually picks up Connor with joy. Or at least, he attempts to before jarring his back.
Connor is, without reservation, happy.
And he still hates coffee but Kevin kisses him regardless and pins up his children’s rejected artwork in the shop until it feels more like a shop than an office, and more like a home than a shop, and they go to the theatre together and they double date with Arnold and Nabulungi and Connor is taught how to work Kevin’s prized cappuccino machine and teaches himself to create the shape of a heart in the foam.