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Zoe didn’t mind her life as a barista. If anything, it was rather rhythmic; soothing even, the way of life that was clocking in and filling cups and pumping shots of questionable orders until the sun set. Did Zoe make much from it?
Well, it was meager, she would admit. The two dudes who owned the place lived just up the ladder behind the counter and said they could barely make rent on the months where the cafe was packed for all hours of the day, but were happy to pay her to help run the shop with them. That was partly their fault, because they spent most of their time funneling any and all money to just about any charity fathomable.
Most days she came home exhausted and not a single penny she made went to anything she wished she could spend it on. Well, except maybe her photography class, which was almost unsustainably expensive anyway, so it made it less fun to pay for.
‘Twas the way of life in Capital City, but did it really matter if she had fun?
Did it matter if she got to bring smiles to that tired, widowed old lady who lived across the street who always ordered a coffee with two tablespoons of hazelnut creamer, no more, and no less, and one teaspoon of sugar? Did it matter if she remembered that tired college boy’s occasional order, who came in right before closing the days he pulled all-nighters to fuel himself? Did it matter if she remembered the order of the little girl who came in with her exhausted mom every Saturday, who had made it her goal to try all of Theo’s new pastries at least once before she reached the age of ten?
Did it matter if it meant she got the privilege to lay eyes on the most beautiful girl in the world right there in her own workplace?
Zoe thought that even just seeing her every couple of weeks was enough for her. It paid far more than the minimum wage did. She would come in every three weeks (Zoe counted each time, and that had been the average) at opening time before anyone else could get there, and she always ordered one of their chocolate croissants and a small black coffee. Then she took her spot by the window until too many people came in, and then she left. And her name was Reina. It was so incredibly beautiful of a name that Zoe had single-handedly been influenced to love when the rain battered her cheap apartment window or at work when it poured outside and the people of Capital City had to shelter in their little shop.
But Reina had the most beautiful face, and hair that probably felt like silk, and she always left a sizable tip, so maybe it was Zoe’s delusional way of being thankful for the extra couple of dollars to pocket.
Dear god, she was stunning. Zoe had never been so enthralled with someone before, and it showed. One of the lucky days she got to see her, her boss who also happened to be working the counter loudly said, “Zoe, I’ve gotta do something in the back, can you man the register?”
And then she was suddenly in front of Reina, and she hoped that the blush she could feel tinging her cheeks wasn’t showing too obviously. Reina looked at her with no emotions behind her eyes. She just looked as tired as everyone else who was crazy enough to wake up so early. She opened her mouth, but Zoe already had the chocolate croissant set on a small plate and the coffee poured out into a cup.
“Hello,” she said, trying to be as composed as possible. “That’ll be four dollars.”
“Oh,” Reina said, looking down at her order blankly. Zoe was almost afraid she was wrong, but Reina looked back up and seemed almost impressed. “…I still don’t know how you remember these things. I’m not a regular, am I?”
Zoe took a long second to bask in her sight and to let herself compute. “I try to remember every customer’s order,” she said smoothly, and Reina slid ten dollars along the counter, where their hands brushed momentarily and Zoe nearly died. She pretended to fiddle with the cash register for far too long, reeling, before finally handing Reina’s order and her change to her. “Reina, right? You come in more often than most people.”
And you’re pretty hard to forget.
“…yeah,” Reina said, her eyes drifting down to the nameplate pinned to Zoe’s apron. “Thank you, uh, Zoe.”
She counted through the dollar bills that Zoe had given her back and put three in the top jar, then she took her spot, and Zoe’s boss poked his head back through the doorframe, grinning at her. She was stiff at the counter, frozen as Reina slid into the tall stools lining the window bar out of earshot.
“So romantic,” he said quietly, taking his place by the register again and nudging Zoe out of it. “And a seventy-five percent tip, you lucky duck!”
“On a four dollar order,” Zoe turned to the coffee machines lining the wall as her face burned up, covering her eyes and waving her hand at him so she wouldn’t have to see the way he was looking at her. “That’s like nothing.”
“Yeah, a black coffee,” he snorted, eying her with a glint of mischief in his eyes. “Who tips on a black coffee? I don’t tip on a black coffee.”
“I thought you were supposed to be the generous one, Parrot,” Zoe said wryly. “You, not tipping? The only reason I make no money is because you’re too busy giving it all to charity.”
She paused. “Don’t you just make coffee here anyway?”
Parrot shrugged loosely. “I won’t say you in particular don’t deserve the tip, Zoe. But you, like, poured it directly from the machine and you didn’t even do anything to it.”
He leaned down a little closer and whispered, “I think that means she’s flirting with you.”
Zoe let out a wordless squawk and shoved him away. If she weren’t any more casual with her boss, she was sure he’d fire her on the spot, but he only stepped back and laughed. “I’m teasing, I’m teasing!”
“Well it’s working!” Zoe cried, shooting a glance back at Reina and hoping she wasn’t watching. “Don’t say that! Don’t say that!”
“Nah, bruh, admit it. You needed to hear that today.” He leaned against the register and it popped open, smacking into his back. Parrot gave it a quick scolding before pushing it back in.
As much as Zoe was embarrassed to admit, she did. She was pretty sure that thanks to some (beautiful) stranger’s words that she had the energy to make a thousand cups of coffee running off of pure adrenaline. Reina had talked to her again. She knew Zoe’s name!
Zoe was spiraling into her own little secret admirer hole when Parrot flicked her shoulder blade and said, “you’d better get on the register again. The morning rush is starting. And don’t you dare get too distracted, or I will take the tips that were meant for me!”
“Hold on, hold on, okay,” Zoe sighed, swapping places with him as he passed a neat latte over to the next customer, who she hadn’t even heard ring the door bell.
The customer behind them came up, and Zoe smoothed down her long, washed-out, used-to-be-green-but-couldn’t-afford-the-dye-anymore hair and tied it back into a bun. “Can I take your order?”
Reina started coming back more often. Zoe noticed it because she started coming back every two weeks and one day, on average, and she would sometimes hold more than just an order when Zoe was at the register. She wouldn’t say more than a couple words to anyone else when Theo and Parrot were working the counter, but with Zoe she’d comment on the weather or how good the coffee was there or that she was sort of in a rush and couldn’t afford to stay very long. They weren’t many more words, but Reina didn’t seem to like words that much. Not a lot of words meant a storybook to Zoe.
The particular day that Zoe wore her hair up in bubble braids, thrown behind her shoulders and tied with little white ribbons she’d gotten her hands on, was the day that Reina had walked in eight days ahead of schedule.
Theo was at the register, counting change for the widowed old lady as Zoe handed her the drink, made even before she’d arrived and given with a complementary sample of one of their new pastries, which Theo had insisted on having everyone try, even though everyone already knew that the pastries he made every morning were already going to be good. She turned away with a ‘thank you’, and that was when Theo seized Zoe’s shoulders and set her down right in front. It was far too late for this—lunch time, not six in the morning.
But she was there anyway.
Reina looked up at Theo, then at Zoe, and then at the menu. “I was thinking something a little different today?”
“Y-yes!” Zoe laughed nervously. Why was she so nervous? She had talked to this drop-dead girl before. She had talked to this drop-dead girl many times. This girl could show up any day she wanted, and it was absurd that it was freaking Zoe out. She sputtered as she talked, which she hoped would just come across as her reeling from being fully lifted off of the ground and put right to work. “Of course, what were we thinking for today?”
“A latte,” Reina said, eyes flicking up to the menu posted above their heads. “The ones with the art on top? To go, small.”
“Of course,” Zoe responded automatically. It was a little easier if she pretended that Reina was just a normal customer and not like Zoe didn’t think she was gorgeous and mysterious. She didn’t even know what Reina did for work or for school. Not like the man sitting at the booth across from the door who worked as a teacher at the local elementary school who came to the cafe for a quick recharge every lunch break. Not like the lady who worked with one of the charities that Parrot was donating everything to, who liked to sit in there and claim that she was ‘observing the world holding hands’ or whatever jargon she got up to. Zoe didn’t even know if Reina had a job or if she was going to college.
“Is that all?” She finally got out.
“And the chocolate croissant,” Reina tapped on the little display case where they grabbed them from.
“That’ll be six twenty-five,” Zoe said, already dipping her head to look down into their dingy old register and fish the change she would need for Reina’s ten dollar bill. She slid the four dollars and seventy-five cents back over.
Theo handed her the latte without the design on top. “Thought you’d wanna do it for your little…friend.” He grinned at her, and she just took the cup and set it on the counter with a sigh directed at him.
Zoe took the cream from the counter and swirled it into the drink, watching it gather on the surface in the shape of the little daisy she poured. It was all in the flick of the wrist, and Reina watched with a somewhat starstruck look in her eyes as she handed it back to her.
“I feel a little bad ruining it,” Reina commented, looking down at it.
Zoe giggled. “Go ahead. I’ll be more offended if you don’t, because then that means the coffee tastes bad.”
“Why, it could never,” Reina said with an amused tone, taking a sip that kept the design as intact as possible.
“Hey, right now we’re doing a promotional thing,” she said as Reina turned to go. “Do you want to try part of Theo’s new cheesecake pastry? It’s on the house.”
“Oh, sure,” Reina said, looking Theo up and down as she took it. She looked back at Zoe and cracked a small smile. “I like your hair, by the way. It’s different today.”
“Ha,” if Zoe wasn’t blushing before, she was definitely blushing at that. She just couldn’t help herself as she said, “Thank you. Your hair is beautiful, too.”
They held eye contact uncomfortably for a moment, and then Reina’s smile turned upwards, just slightly more, and she walked out the door, leaving all of the extra change in the tip jar.
Theo and Zoe stood there for just a few seconds longer. Thank god there weren’t any more people in line for the time being.
“Wow,” Theo breathed. “Parrot’s right, you have a big, fat crush. So does she.”
“It’s not—it’s not—you’ve discussed this?!” Zoe turned to him with her jaw agape. “You can’t be serious.”
“Heh,” Theo scratched his chin. “We see everything. Now get back to work, girl!”
Zoe only sighed and took the order of the teenager who had come up a couple of moments prior. She wasn’t sure if her life was ever going to be the same.
Reina didn’t return until three weeks later, when winter had come full-swing and there were flurries settling on the grimy streets, and every day was a battle against frostbite. It was hell walking to work from her apartment, but the coffee warmed (or burnt, on bad days) her hands anyway.
Zoe had hoped to see her sooner than that—she didn’t know why she had expected Reina to return the very next week. She shouldn’t have expected that coffee would be a daily thing for everybody. Zoe wished she could have predicted it, because she would have worn her hair up in braids again if it meant Reina would notice it and like it. She was back to a bun, and the only thing that possibly could have saved her looks was the bangs that fell in front of her eyes.
Reina was wearing as many bundles as the next person, so she nearly couldn’t recognize her, but it was the azure blue scarf wrapped around her neck that drew Zoe’s attention up from the order she was preparing. She let Theo deliver to it the table in the corner as she shifted back to the register. “Can I take your order?”
Reina pulled her snow-dusted hood down, and Zoe couldn’t stop the smile that crept onto her face. She had that customer-service, perpetual smile all of the time, but this one was considerably more genuine. “Can we make the latte the usual? For here.”
Zoe laughed and put her elbow on the counter casually. “Sorry, who are you again?”
“Your new regular, I hope,” Reina tossed the tail of her scarf behind her back. Zoe opened the cash register and already had four dollars and seventy five cents ready for Reina’s order.
“That’s fine with me,” Zoe said earnestly. “You’re welcome here anytime. Nice scarf. Where’d you get it?”
“Good to know,” the words sounded genuine coming out of Reina, somehow. “I knitted it myself.”
Zoe admired it just like the rest of her as the customer waited for a beat and asked, “How come you’re always here?”
Zoe walked back to the counter with the base latte, pausing as she wrapped her hand around the handle of the pot the cream was in. “Me?”
“I’m curious.”
The most beautiful girl in the world bothered enough to ask Zoe about her life. How on earth could she make it sound interesting at all? How could she explain without sounding like a total loser that she worked at a coffee shop all day to afford the classes she took on the weekends?
That wasn’t flattering at all. Was it summer already? How come it was so hot in here?
“I need to pay for my classes,” she said honestly, hoping that Reina was the type of person to appreciate that. “At the community college. This does enough.”
“So your whole life is coffee.” Reina didn’t sound particularly judgmental. Just observant, sort of?
“Pretty much,” she said in embarrassment, nearly messing up the design. “It’s what they call ‘honest work’.”
“I think it’s cool.”
She jerked the lip of the pot backwards too quickly, accidentally vandalizing the design with a pointless splatter of tiny dots.
“Cool?” She peered at Reina, trying to tell if she was making fun of her, all while in the meanwhile, she was packaging up the croissant on one of their little plastic plates.
“Yeah. What classes are you taking?” Reina took the cup and the plate without commenting on it.
“Photography.” Zoe was at a loss for words, but was too desperate to keep the conversation going. “And I take classes to get my English degree.”
Reina nodded. “I’m studying psychology myself over at Capital University. That’s cool.”
“That’s amazing! We should—we should have, like study sessions together or something!” The words slipped through without Zoe’s permission. She clapped a hand over her mouth and said, “never mind. That’s a horrible idea.”
“Why would it be a horrible idea?” Reina asked, sipping her coffee delicately. “I’d consider it.”
She walked away after leaving the whole rest of the change as tip, leaving Zoe in mental shambles. Instead of her usual spot by the window, the furthest she could get from any sort of interaction, she slid into an empty table for two, near to the counter and underneath a painting of spring flowers.
Zoe turned away and nearly ripped out her hair, but she had other customers to attend to. The beautiful stranger who had walked into the cafe for the first time only a couple months ago was suddenly becoming less of a stranger every day.
Zoe couldn’t tell if it was euphoria or terror.
“You know, I was thinking,” Reina was back at the cafe the next day at noon, and Zoe almost hit her head on the top of the cabinet she was scrounging in for materials the next day when she heard her voice. She spun around, hands covered in cocoa powder as she poured it into the contraption Parrot had made that automatically sifted it evenly over a drink. She handed the finished cup to the customer waiting by the window, and joined Reina back at their usual conversation spot. She tried to ignore the fact that both Parrot and Theo were behind the counter with her, both very conspicuously listening in on their exchange.
“About what?” She was already pulling up the change, her heart both soaring and sinking with anxiety.
“Your idea. Study sessions.” Reina slid her usual ten dollar bill over.
“…what about it?”
“It doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.” Reina said, and then said with a blank face, “Can I order your number with my coffee?”
Theo was drinking his own cup of morning coffee while leaning nonchalantly against the back counter, and at this he spat it out in shock. Parrot was too stunned to even yell at him to clean it up.
“Oh, uh—sure!” She said, trying not to sweat as much as she was. “Y-yeah, I can do that!”
Reina shoveled the change up and put it in the tip jar like always. If she was really a college student, how come she was so insistent on tipping all of her change? Couldn’t she buy the stuff she really needed with that collective money?
How much money was she seriously wasting on Zoe?
Zoe prepared her order with shaky hands again. On the label of the cup, where Reina’s name was printed, she took her marker and scrawled her phone number in the margins. She made sure to sign it with a daisy as if Reina didn’t know exactly whose number would be written on the cup.
Zoe might just be the dumbest girl in the world, and this was not one of her brightest ideas. Reina didn’t even know her like that. Reina certainly did not like her like that.
But Zoe wanted to shoot her shot anyway. Plus, who was she to refuse a customer like that?
“…you’re all set!” Zoe said as cheerfully as she could while handing the coffee back, and Reina tipped her head at her and sat back at the table she had been at the day prior.
“I’m gonna go on break,” she told Parrot, mouth dry, and swiveled around to sink into one of the three measly chairs around the table in the back, head in her hands. Parrot appeared a couple of seconds later, taking the one next to her.
“She’s flirting with you.”
“No, no she’s not.” Zoe wrapped her hands around her shoulders. “It’s not like that.”
Parrot stared at her for a moment. “You might be the most clueless employee I’ve ever had.”
“What?”
“She asked for your number! Yes, she likes you! Zoe, I hereby forbid you from coming to work until you schedule something with her.”
“You can’t do that.”
“You’re right,” he snapped his fingers. “I can’t. But I can take the tips meant for Theo and—“
“Alright, alright, I’ll do it!” She cried, and at the same time, her phone buzzed with a message. She nearly dropped it about five times as she fumbled with it, and finally opened it up to a single text. Of course not from any of her contacts. It was one singular text from one singular unknown number. She looked up at Parrot, who nodded back at her and cast a glance into the seating area with a sly grin.
"Well?"
"I don't think I'm ready."
"You initiated it." He had an unfortunate point.
She opened up the message, sucking in a breath.
Hello, It's your new favorite regular.