“I know.”
“I don’t have anything else to give right now.”
Chapter 37
Carly
The thingabout making coffee is that it’s very hard to cry while steaming milk.
Not impossible, obviously, but it’s hard. There are temperatures to watch, espresso shots to pull, cups to label, customers to smile at like your life didn’t crawl into a gutter four weeks ago and die there.
So I make coffee.
I make oat milk lattes and extra-hot cappuccinos and iced Americanos with light ice. I wipe counters. I restock syrups. I pretend the hiss of the machine isn’t doing most of the work of keeping me from thinking.
Zoe keeps calling me a natural, and that is far too generous and also technically a lie. I was a barista in high school, back when my biggest problems were calculus, curfew, and who I was going with to homecoming. I’m not exactly untrained.
Muscle memory is weird. My hands remember how to tamp espresso even when my brain is busy trying to crawl out of my skull.
“Carly,” Zoe says from the register. “Two vanilla lattes and an oat dirty chai.”
“On it.”
I turn, grab cups, and fill in the labels in Sharpie with hands that barely shake anymore.
Progress, maybe.
It’s late morning, slow enough that the line comes in little waves instead of one long, merciless river. Between customers, I keep my phone open on the counter, job listings glowing on the screen like a punishment.
Junior Designer.
Assistant Apparel Designer.
Freelance Technical Sketch Artist.
Remote Contract Position, six months.
Nothing pays what Sparkks paid. Nothing looks like Sparkks. Nothing feels like the job I had fought my way into before it got tangled up in Grayson and his house and Penelope’s little hand in mine.
I refresh the page anyway.
Because looking for a job is better than hoping for something that won’t happen.
Grayson hasn’t texted since that night, and I haven’t texted him. The one day I managed to force myself to walk into Sparkks to collect my sketchbooks, my belongings from his house were sitting at my desk, and I’d tried not to have a breakdown in the middle of the office as I dragged two suitcases behind me.
Zoe appears beside me with a tub of clean spoons when I’ve finished the drinks and turned back to my phone. “Any luck?”
“Nope.” I click into another listing, skim the requirements, wondering when ten years of experience became entry-level. “Unless I want to move to Omaha and design corporate fleece vests.”
“Omaha might be nice.”
I look at her.She winces.
“Okay. Sorry.”
I huff out something almost like a laugh and reach for a towel. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
