Love You a Latke

Chapter 3

3

Or a lot of extra work. By the time I’d finished leaving messages for all the vendors—because the festival was only a month away and I needed to start planning immediately—it was almost eight o’clock, and I still had prep to do, and I needed to clean, and I ended up falling asleep facedown on a table.

So that meant a hectic morning when my phone alarm beeped me awake. I didn’t have time to shower, just a few minutes to pop upstairs for a quick face wash and deodorant swab before going back downstairs to get the pastry delivery and finish the cleaning I’d abandoned last night.

Which meant that I was extra not in the mood when Seth showed up for his daily pumpkin spice latte with whipped cream, which I was benevolent enough to give him today. “Hey, Abby, are you okay?” he asked when he saw my face, his brows furrowed with concern.

I swear, if he told me to smile, I was going to dive over the counter and waterboard him with his coffee.

Fortunately for him, he continued with, “Do you want to talk about it?” which was still irritating but not worthy of torture.

“No, I do not,” I said. “Have a good day. Next!” I looked behind him. Alas, there was nobody there.

“Okay, so you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay,” he said earnestly. “What if I bought you a coffee so you could sit down for a minute and take a break? You don’t have anyone waiting right now.”

A Category 4 was already tapping at my temples, asking politely to be let in before bringing out the battering ram. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to convince it that I wasn’t home. The scents of cinnamon and coffee and banana bread—today’s bakery special—filled my nostrils, calming me down the tiniest bit.

“You gave me free whipped cream today,” Seth said. “It’s the least I could do.”

My eyes snapped open. “The least you could do? Dude, I gave you free whipped cream because I charged you for it yesterday and then didn’t give it to you. It was bad business that I was correcting. That is all .” I could barely hear the guitar quartet strumming Christmas music from the speakers over the blood thumping in my head. “And thank you for reminding me that I don’t have any customers waiting. I hadn’t noticed how bad business is. I really appreciate it.” The sarcasm was bitter on my tongue. I’d have to wash it down with a sugary coffee once Seth was gone.

Speaking of Seth, his face was dropping more and more with every word. His hazel eyes were almost hidden by those thick dark brows now. Good. He should feel bad. As bad as I did. I continued, “And even without customers to take care of at this moment, I still have so much to do. Too much. Vendors to call back, and cleaning to do, and”— Argh! —“that fucking lightbulb in the bathroom I still have to change!”

My words stopped at the exact moment the playlist overhead paused. The silence rang through the room, bouncing off the twinkling fairy lights I’d strung from the ceiling and the 1950s-era photos on the walls that could plausibly be this place seventy years ago but that I’d actually bought at a thrift shop for ambiance.

Seth took a step back, hands raised in front of him. At some point he’d set the coffee down on a table, like he was worried I’d throw it at him if he put it on the counter. “Sounds like a lot,” he said, and now his eyebrows pinched together in sympathy.

That was the last thing I wanted: anyone’s pity. Despite the roiling in my stomach, I shrugged, then crossed my arms. “It’s fine. I don’t know what came over me. It’s not even that much compared to next month. I’m good at what I do and I can handle it.”

“I know you’re good at what you do. Why do you think I come here every morning?”

Because you get off on irritating people? Or maybe because I’m the only decent coffee shop in a ten-mile radius? I chose to stay silent. Instead, I grabbed a damp rag from the shelf behind me. If I was going to stand here anyway, I might as well wipe crumbs off the counter.

“Life can still get to you no matter how good you are at something.”

Scrub. Scrub. I might actually scrub a hole in the cheap Formica left behind by the previous owner, which I’d never got around to replacing. I ground my teeth. Erupting like that didn’t make me feel better. I felt like I’d scrubbed a hole in myself, and now anyone could just take a peek inside at my beating heart and blood vessels and pulsing lungs and see exactly where they should cut me to make me bleed the most.

“I prefer to think of myself as an open book,” Seth said. “I like talking things out so that they don’t just fester inside my head.”

An open book? Okay, then. I was a locked diary. Or, as Connor had so sweetly put it when he dumped me, We’ve been together for more than four years and I feel like I barely know you.

Fine. Everything was fine. Love was overrated anyway. It had been almost a relief when Connor moved out. Then I knew I was safe, that there was nobody close enough where they could hurt me.

The bell tinkled over the door. Thank. God. I whipped my head up and pasted on my sunniest customer-service smile, lifting up on my toes to see over Seth’s mountainous shoulder. “Good morning!” I trilled extra hard, showing the world and the universe and anyone who happened to be watching that I was totally, entirely fine . “What can I get for you?”

I threw myself into helping the customer pick between a cherry Danish and an almond croissant, a decision that from the wrinkle in his brow would make you think involved the nuclear codes, and by the time I turned back to the customer with his latte, Seth had vanished. So had the other two customers in the store. A relief, as it allowed me a moment to sag against the counter and wipe my forehead with my apron, which left crumbs clinging to my hair. Glamorous.

Off to the bathroom to rinse them out. I only remembered as I was stepping over the threshold that the light was out, which would mean trying to use the mirror would be useless…

…except that, as I automatically flipped on the switch, the light went on, too. So bright it dazzled me for a moment, made me look down at the floor and blink a few times to regain my bearings.

When I looked back up, I noticed the packaging from the new lightbulb, which I kept in the bathroom closet, sitting proudly on the back of the toilet. Someone had scrawled something on it in green Sharpie. I exhaled slowly as I read.

Hope this helps even just a little bit! —Seth

Of course he’d sign with a smiley. He was probably disappointed he didn’t have any i’s in his name that he could dot with hearts or o’s he could fill with little faces. I stood in front of the sink and washed the crumbs out of my hair with the assistance of the light overhead, leaving a big wet splotch on my apron.

And yet still, as I dried my hands on my apron—what was another splotch?—and went back out behind the counter, I had to admit it: the headache had receded. And the day felt just a little bit more manageable.

I sighed. Maybe I shouldn’t have been quite so harsh earlier. Even if he had been extremely annoying. Changing the bulb for me hardly made up for that, I told myself. And almost believed it.

Fine. He could have real free whipped cream tomorrow.