Page 4 of A Collision of Stars

‘I have a girlfriend,’ the man in front of me says as I push his flat white across the counter. I glance up at him in confusion and the sliver of neck above his starched collar turns pink while he nervously shifts his weight to his other foot. I blink a few times until I catch him pointedly looking back towards the coffee now midway between both of our hands. I’d made a heart with steamed milk and the shape is just starting to shrivel as the bubbles deflate.

‘Would you like another one?’ I ask evenly, gesturing towards the drink.

‘No,’ he says, neck now an indignant shade of magenta. ‘I’m very happy with her. We’re going to get married one day.’

As he grabs the cup and storms away, a sigh rips through me. This is somehow not the first time a man has taken my innocuous latte art as some kind of sordid proposition. A few weeks ago, a customer asked for my number. I declined, because he was a regular and I’d never be able to execute my post-coital escape artist act if I had to keep seeing him once a week at the shop.

While the-one-that-got-away settles into one of the comfy armchairs in the corner, I grab a cloth to clean the surfaces just as something to do during the lull. I move around the shop, wiping reclaimed wood tables and tucking chairs back into place. Theproblem with working the same type of job for years is that you become so efficient you almost bring about your own boredom. The work isn’tfulfilling, but I don’t need fulfilling. I’m content enough working this job and not giving it a second thought after I walk through the door at the end of my shifts.

A surprisingly charming place for its location smack-bang in the concrete corporate catchment zone of the lawyers, accountants and wannabe finance bros of London, City Roast usually sees the bulk of its customers just before nine. Now late morning, the shop’s scattered with laptop-laden students, parents with buggies, and our handful of retired regulars people-watching through the floor-to-ceiling windows that line two of the walls.

I swat a hanging vine out of my way as I head back to the counter. The plants trailing from light fixtures and shelves and sitting in heavy pots are all fake, after a rough patch when we realised a grand total of zero employees had any semblance of a green thumb. My manager thinks they’re real though, which may or may not be because in moments of extreme boredom I water them anyway, and he’s definitely watched me do it. While there are no new customers coming in to rudely interrupt my quiet time, I settle behind the counter to make myself a coffee, watching a single droplet of espresso trickle down the side of the machine.

‘Ava!’ a disembodied voice calls from the back room, knocking me out of my reverie. I catch eyes with my co-worker Mateo, who gives me a grimace in solidarity and takes my place by the coffee machine. I shuffle backwards, taking a deep breath before pushing against the door, preparing to defend myself against whatever affront to hospitality I have no doubt committed.

‘Oh, there you are. I’ve been calling your name for ages,’ my manager says, not even looking up as he peers at the shelves in confusion, a pen in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

Carl is, as always, immaculate, and as always, overcompensating for his height. His salt-and-pepper hair is slicked back with enough product to strike fear into firefighters everywhere, and sun-weathered skin pulls taut across features that were probably very handsome, twenty years ago. Nowadays he looks like someone with limited artistic talents tried to draw Mark Ruffalo from memory.

‘I was serving a customer.’ Desperately trying to mask the passive aggression I am instinctively drawn to expel whenever my manager is in the vicinity, my smile is as false as my excuse.

His chinos are just a fraction too short, exposing the “fun” socks he wears every day to let us know he is, in fact, fun, and anthropomorphic hamburgers peek out around his ankles from astonishingly reflective Oxfords. It’d be nice if he put as much time into helping out around the shop as he evidently does polishing his shoes, but such is life.

‘Your apron’s dirty,’ he accuses, finally glancing up at me.

‘Oh, is it?’ We’ve been open for two hours and my apron is already covered in milk splatters, coffee grounds have migrated under my nails, and a single almond-shaped burn on my left wrist is still glowing after it touched the steam wand earlier.

‘I’m doing the stocktake and have noticed we seem to be missing,’ he pauses and glances down at his clipboard as if to check the numbers, even though I know he already knows what’s written, ‘seven KitKat Chunkies. Do you know why that might be?’

My mind darts back to last night. I’m glad he’s technologically inept, because if he were to review yesterday’s CCTV footage from outside the front of the shop he’d see clips of me cramming chocolate into my mouth with such gusto that a passerby had to stop and check if I was choking.

‘No, no idea at all,’ I say, a picture of innocence. His eyesnarrow just slightly in a way that makes me think he doesn’t quite believe me, but he doesn’t push it. ‘Was that everything, Carl? I think we have customers.’ I push my way out of the room without waiting for a reply.

I’m crouching on the floor by the milk fridge organising bottles in order of expiry date when three men breeze through the door. I stifle a groan before getting up, joints creaking in that mid-twenties way. Who even comes into a coffee shop at four minutes to seven on a Friday evening?

The trio looks like a walking advert for their company’s diversity and inclusion programme. Or maybe a corporate version of The Powerpuff Girls.

‘Hi,’ the tallest one says; dark suit, dark skin, all sharp lines and cheekbones and perfectly proportioned features that briefly make me think of golden ratios and Fibonacci sequences. He drops his voice and appeals to me through thick eyelashes. ‘We would be obscenely grateful if you could serve us three double espressos.’

I’ve never been particularly receptive to male charm, but I force a closed-mouth smile and reply, ‘Coming right up.’

Listening to gossip is one of the few perks of working in the service industry, so as the coffee extracts, I eavesdrop. From my recon, all I learn is that two of them are staying late in the office to work on a project, while the other is helping out as a favour, but their discussion is peppered with tech terms I don’t fully understand. Frankly, it’s nowhere near exciting enough to justify delaying my closing. I tap the till a few times while the final coffee is finishing up.

‘Paying together or separately?’ I ask, interrupting their chat.

‘Together,’ the first man says. ‘Whose round is it? Rory, is ityours?’

‘Nope, it’s Finn’s,’ says Rory, a pale, gangly redhead with more freckles visible than skin and a mouth almost too big for his face, his collar half up and tie slightly askew. He grabs his coffee and knocks it back like it’s tequila, before widening his eyes and panting the word “hot”. Powerpuff Boy number one gives him a withering look that sayswhy are you like this?

The third man comes to the till then—Finn, according to my unparalleled powers of deduction—taking out his phone. Dark curls fall over wire-framed glasses as he leans closer to the card reader to pay, and the slightest grin tugs at the corners of his mouth.

‘You know the facial recognition doesn’t require you to smile, right?’ Powerpuff Boy number one says, sending a sideways glance at Finn.

Finn pockets his phone and takes his glasses off to clean them on his shirt; a baggy olive green number with the sleeves rolled up, more casually dressed than the other two. He’s also the shortest of the lanky trio, probably just shy of six foot and an inch or so taller than me.

‘I’m sure this isn’t in your wheelhouse,’ he retorts good-naturedly before pushing his glasses back up his nose, ‘but have you ever considered that some of us are just happy to be here?’

He has an accent I can’t quite place. It’s as if an English accent has been sanded down at the edges; vaguely American in its cadence, the sounds softer and lazier.

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