Loverboy

by Bowen, Sarina

  Uh oh. “Please? It’s for my father. He’s recovering from surgery. I need work, and you need a barista. Let me brush up on my skills tomorrow. I’ll come in here on Monday knowing what a slim chocolate fizz is. Or whatever that lady ordered.”

  “Gunn.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s not that easy. This is a luxury cafe. We have to uphold certain standards.”

  Now I want to roll my eyes, too. The Paxtons are so full of themselves. “Give me one more try. One single shift. That’s all I ask.”

  She sighs. “Fine. One. But only because I really need the extra hands on Monday. If it doesn’t go well, you should really apply for some bartending jobs. Something tells me that alcohol is more your speed. Do you even drink coffee?”

  “On special occasions,” I lie. “Thank you for this chance. It means a lot to me.” Just to keep her off balance, I lean in and give her a quick hug.

  “You’re, uh, welcome.” She shivers. “I don’t know how you’re going to become a barista in forty hours. But I’ll see you Monday before seven a.m.”

  “Seven?” I whine. That’s four a.m. California time.

  “Seven,” she barks. “And don’t be late.”

  “Yes ma’am.” I give her a salute. Then I pull out my phone and take a photo of the espresso machine. And another one of the whole cafe.

  I’d better find this murderer fast. Because I’m going to have a single shift to do it.

  * * *

  After kissing Posy’s (delectable) ass for just a few minutes more, I get the heck out of there. As soon as I hit Mercer Street, I walk a block and then dial Max.

  “Talk to me,” he says.

  “Max, we’re fucked.”

  “Why? She hired someone else?”

  “No. But I can’t do this job. I can’t fake it.”

  “Dude,” Max says sternly. “You broke into a drug kingpin’s safe with nothing but a cell phone and a set of screwdrivers. You hacked into a Russian mobster’s bank account on a first-generation iPod. Don’t even try to tell me you can’t figure out how to work an espresso machine.”

  I groan so loudly that a passing hipster’s rescue pug lets out a yip of surprise. “It’s not just the mechanics. I could probably figure that out. It’s the pretentious coffee vocabulary. I’ve got, like, thirty-six hours to learn how to be a smug asshole?”

  “Don’t trash talk coffee culture,” Max grumbles. “Some of my best friends are espresso products. Take the evening to rest up, and then get your butt into the office at 0900. I’m going to fix this.”

  “What if we rented a room in the building across the street?” I suggest, looking up at the row of old brick facades. “I could stake the place out the old-fashioned way.”

  “We’re trying this my way first,” Max thunders. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Then he hangs up on me.

  4

  Posy

  “I … will ... cats … it,” my five-year-old nephew slowly reads from a book in my lap. Then he squirms on the sofa beside me.

  “What's that third word?” I ask. “Sound it out. What sound does 'ch' say?”

  “Catch,” he says slowly. "I will catch it.”

  "Excellent," I praise him as I turn the page.

  This is a typical evening for me—helping Aaron practice reading, while my sister shoots us worried glances from her seat at our kitchen table. And since I wake up so early, my bedtime is barely later than my five-year-old nephew’s.

  Aaron slides his pajama-covered rear down the sofa, kicks the coffee table, then wiggles himself into a vertical position again. Reading is whole body work, apparently.

  I take a sip of my wine while he slowly reads all five words from the next page.

  The tutoring is a favor I offered to my sister after my father’s latest crack about Aaron's reading skills during one of our rare visits to his mansion. My father is a celebrated restauranteur, as well as a successful businessman.

  He's also an evil shithead. It took me more than twenty years to realize that, and an additional decade to stop caring what he thinks of my life choices. But I'm finally free of him.

  Mostly free, anyway. Ginny and I still struggle sometimes, although with different sets of daddy issues. Ginny is severely dyslexic, and our father never missed a chance to make her feel stupid. She spent her teen years acting out, trying to prove to him that she couldn't be controlled.

  I took the opposite strategy—spending lots of energy trying to please that man so he'd notice me and love me. It didn't work. But it did start me down the path of a career I hated, and also led me to marry the wrong man.

  My ex and I have been apart for a year now. My father refers to my divorce as my "greatest failure." As if my life were a string of them. I graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University! I was a VP at a Fortune 500 company!

  None of that matters to him. He sees me as a divorcée and a failed banker. It was actually daddy’s red-faced sermon over my divorce that served as a final wakeup call. Instead of comforting me, he told me I’d thrown away the only good man who’d ever bother with me.

  That was the day that I finally saw our father-daughter relationship clearly, and it was a real wakeup call. I’d spent my entire life trying to impress men who were not worth the trouble.

  So I started to make some changes. I mostly cut my father out of my life. If it weren’t for Aaron and Ginny, I’d never show my face in his home again.

  That wasn’t my only act of bravery, either. I also quit my dull job, cutting out another thing in my life that made me feel small. Then I opened my pie shop on the ground floor of this building—the one asset I retained after my divorce. The second and third floors were already rented out when I inherited the building. The vacant apartment—spanning the fourth and fifth floors with two big bedrooms and a roof terrace—I kept for me, my sister, and her child.

  We’re a strange little family of three. Ginny is an artist and a yoga instructor. She also works in my pie shop when Aaron is at school.

  As for me, I rarely leave the corner of Prince and Mercer Streets. I get up too early, work too much, and see too little of the sky. But I make all my own choices. And I make excellent pies.

  “THE END!” Aaron shouts. Then he slams the book closed.

  “That was great. One more?” I ask.

  “Nope.” He flings the book onto the coffee table. “Maybe I could have five minutes on your phone for reading super well.”

  “No way,” my sister says, jumping out of her kitchen chair. “Head down those stairs, mister. It’s bedtime.”

  Aaron slides off the couch without arguing. But then he says, "That's a big glass of wine, Aunt Posy."

  Ginny snickers. "It is, isn't it?"

  "Spell big," I demand of my nephew.

  “B-I-G,” he rattles off. “’Night.”

  "’Night, kiddo." I peck him on the cheek as he heads off toward the circular staircase that leads down to the lower floor of our quirky pad.

  While my sister is putting her son to bed, I make a nice dent in what is admittedly a very large glass of wine.

  Ginny reappears as I’m taking a particularly big gulp. I’ve practically got my entire head in the glass when she plops down beside me. “Rough day?”

  “You could say that.”

  “We've got to get you some more help.”

  “Well, what if I told you a guy came in today to apply for the barista job?”

  “Really?” She lets out a whispered shriek. If we sound like we’re having too much fun, Aaron will climb the stairs and demand to know what’s going on. “That's great!”

  “Yes and no. I’m not sure he’ll work out. In the first place, I suspect he’s a terrible barista.”

  “Uh oh. Can’t you train him? Are you going to give him a try?” My sister’s eyes are full of hope. She’s given me as many hours in the kitchen as she can. But I need to hire at least two more people, and we both know it.

  “I’ll give him one shift to sink or swim.” I
shrug, like it’s not that interesting to me. But I’m a liar. “I knew this guy in college. He was a good bartender, but that doesn't mean he can make an espresso that's up to my standards.”

  “Well, they are very high standards.”

  “For a reason.” I squeak. But I have a reputation for being very particular. I’m a little sensitive about it.

  “Who is he, anyway? Do I know him?”

  “I doubt it. He worked at Paxton's that same summer I started on staff.”

  “Wait.” Ginny holds up a hand. “You mean Gunnar?”

  “Do you know him?” My voice cracks for no good reason.

  “Never met the guy. But back then you could never shut up about him.”

  “What? That’s not true.” I feel a flush creep up my neck.

  “Like hell it isn’t. You had a lot to say about Gunnar.”

  “None of it good,” I argue. “He was a huge, arrogant pain in my ass. He drove me crazy. Every time I’d make a suggestion about the bar, he’d make the opposite one.”

  “I’ll bet he’s super attractive.” My sister gives me a smirk. “He is, isn’t he?”

  “Maybe. Why does that matter?”

  “Honestly, that summer you never stopped talking about how much he drove you crazy. I just assumed you had a thing for him.”

  “I didn’t,” I sigh. “Okay, I did. I used to feel a little sweaty every time he even glanced at me. Anyone would. He’s the kind of hot that knows he’s hot. He’s got this irritating smile. I call it the loverboy smile. He uses it as a weapon.”

  “The horror,” Ginny says, grinning. “Which flavor of hot are we talking about anyway?”

  “Abercrombie model hot,” I grumble. “Tousled blond hair, strong arms, legendary butt.” Just thinking about him makes me agitated.

  “Did you ever …” She clears her throat suggestively.

  “No way,” I say a little too quickly. “He, uh, propositioned me a couple of times, though.”

  My sister blinks. “And you turned him down?”

  “Of course I turned him down! I was nineteen. And …” I sigh.

  “A virgin,” my sister finishes. “I forgot about that.”

  Ginny and I weren’t very close during those years. She was busy getting drunk, getting tattoos, and saying yes to the men who propositioned her. I was busy trying to be her polar opposite. We were both fighting our father’s war, but not as allies. We know better now.

  “It was a strange time,” I admit. “Spalding had just shown up in my life. And Daddy liked him a lot. He couldn’t shut up about Spalding.”

  “Is that why you chose him?” She winces.

  “He seemed safer.” I swivel on the couch, squirming under the weight of this conversation. “He was safer, I guess. He wasn’t always asking me for sex.”

  “He was too busy gelling his hair,” Ginny says wryly.

  My ex is vain, it’s true. But that wasn’t our real problem as a couple. We were just wrong for each other. I knew it, too. Even when I was nineteen years old, looking across the bar at Spalding’s preppy good looks, I didn’t feel the pull. There was none of the achy heat that I felt whenever Gunnar Scott placed a hand on my elbow to reach past me for the grenadine or the olives.

  I was afraid of that feeling—that frisson of danger Gunnar gave me. But Spalding seemed more manageable. Easier to control. Whereas Gunnar made sexy offhand suggestions about how we might spend time together, Spalding took a different tack. He’d sit at the bar, order a martini and then politely ask me out.

  “You and I would make a good couple,” he’d said. “We’d be the envy of the Upper East Side.” He’d said it so easily—as if our pairing was something the world needed.

  Even at nineteen—and I was a naïve nineteen—I’d understood that Spalding was a spoiled firstborn son. He had a way about him, as if life was one big gourmet menu he could order from. As if the world owed him praise, and also a cookie.

  I didn’t mind as much as I should have, though, because I was the cookie he wanted.

  Even so, I was a busy girl—too caught up in the day-to-day work at the bar to bother with college boys, no matter how hot or charming. I turned both Gunnar and Spalding down, inadvertently playing coy while I worked my butt off. Who could date when she got off work at two a.m.?

  And who would I even choose? The dangerous boy whose dirty insinuations were probably just mocking me? Or the smooth-talking rich kid who wanted to impress me with a three-hundred-dollar dinner at Per Se?

  In the end I didn’t have to choose. Gunnar kissed me just once, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that I couldn’t possibly handle myself with him, even if I could summon the courage to try. But then he disappeared and never came back.

  And the next time Spalding asked me out, I finally told him yes.

  After long moments of silence, I find myself staring into my wine glass while my sister watches me cautiously. “Psst. Posy!” She whispers. “Where did you go?”

  “No place good,” I grumble.

  “Tell me about Gunnar. Why do you think he won’t last a day in your shop?”

  My shrug is listless. “I don’t know how coffee works in California, but he seemed incapable of operating Lola. Maybe he’s so hot the clients didn’t notice that their drinks were wrong.”

  “Maybe,” my sister says dreamily. “I think I might have to swing by on Monday before work and test out his wares. Are you calling dibs on this guy?”

  “Dibs? No way,” I squeak. “And neither are you.”

  She lets out an evil laugh. “But why not? I could break my dry spell. You don’t care, right?” She pokes me in the elbow and I let out a growl. “Oh wait. Maybe you do!”

  “That ship has sailed,” I grumble. “A smarter girl would have slept with the hot bartender and with Spalding, too. But I was so rigid in my thinking. I wanted to do things in the right order.”

  “But there was no right order,” Ginny agrees softly.

  “No, there wasn’t. I was so young. I should have kissed all the boys and had all the sex. I might have realized that Spalding wasn’t the man for me.”

  “This could be your do-over,” Ginny says. “You can still sleep with the hot barista.”

  “No way. In the first place, he won’t be around long enough for that. I can’t keep a barista who doesn’t know how to make coffee drinks. He probably has a girlfriend now. Or a wife. And it’s all a moot point anyway. He wasn’t actually serious when he used to hit on me.”

  “But what if he was? And what if he tried again?” my sister asks. “Then again, you probably wouldn’t want to take my sex advice. I have a son with someone who’s in prison.”

  “A lovely son,” I say, rushing to Aaron’s defense. I’d die for my nephew.

  “The best kid ever,” my sister agrees. “But nobody points at me and says role model.”

  “I do,” I insist. “You’re brave, Gin. You’re a great mom, too. There is nothing wrong with us. Apartment 4/5 is a hundred percent admirable.” I take another sip of my rapidly evaporating wine.

  My sister kicks her feet into my lap and reclines like a queen on the sofa. “Just promise me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “If the hottie bartender propositions you again, you won’t turn him down.”

  “What? I can’t promise that. He won’t, by the way. But even if he did, I might not be feeling it.”

  “Promise me you’ll consider it,” she pushes. “In fact, I want you to think it over when you see him again. Like, pretend that he’s going to ask you out. And try to imagine yourself saying yes.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because you’ve only ever been to bed with one man in your life. And then that man treated you like crap. You desperately need to broaden your horizons.”

  “I object to the word desperately,” I argue. “And I’ve dated a little.”

  “A very little,” my sister corrects. “Just think it over. I’m the single parent, and I get more action.
You could be out there having fun.”

  “Uh huh.” I hide behind my wine glass. “Something else happened today in the shop. Saroya came in.”

  My sister groans. “Again? I just want to know why your ex’s new girlfriend has to buy all her coffee drinks from you? That is not how a stable person behaves.”

  I have thought this same thing many times. But it’s nice to hear my sister say it, too. “Because I have the best coffee in SoHo?” I give Ginny a weak smile. “But, shit, if I were dating a guy, I’d drink second-tier coffee just to avoid his ex.”

  “She’s obviously a drama llama,” Ginny says, indignant. “Or deeply insecure.”

  “Or both,” I add. “And I know I shouldn’t let it get to me. She always comes in looking like some kind of bohemian runway model, and I’m covered in flour. No makeup. Circles under my eyes …”

  “Because you work too much,” Ginny points out.

  “I swear, she’s the only person who could make me second guess the way I look.” Don’t forget Gunnar, my hormones point out. Maybe we should rethink our work attire. “Anyway, there she is, preening and smiling like she’s just any customer who walked in for a latte. And I pushed Gunnar out of the way, which is stupid. I should have let him make her a shitty espresso. Maybe she wouldn’t come back, right?”

  “That’s a solid plan. Hire this guy. Stat.” She takes the wine glass out of my hand and steals a sip. “Amirite?”

  I give her a wan smile. “Ginny, it was weird today. Saroya …” I’m almost afraid to say it out loud. Because I’ll sound like a nut job. “She asked for decaf.”

  “Oh.” My sister goes very still. “She didn’t.”

  “Yes,” I whisper. And now I know I’m not crazy. Ginny is suddenly thinking the same thing that I’m thinking.

  “It’s just mind games,” my sister says. But her dark eyes look worried.

  “Maybe,” I hedge. “She didn’t go into details. She didn’t say she was—” I gulp.

  My sister flinches. “Maybe she isn’t. Like I said—mind games.”