4 Coffees, 12 Months

1: Sebastian and the Inner Demons

Sebastian

January, week 3

        For the first two months that Eve Turner came to the café, she was nameless to me.

        The plumb padded seats and cosy corner booths were mostly taken with the rush of after-school students and builders coming in after a day’s work. I stole a glance at the far right corner booth out of habit, but at that 4:30 moment in time it was taken by a highly-strung eagle of a woman, whose hair was pulled back too harshly for her face, emphasizing her hooked nose and stressed eyebrows as she harped on at her young daughter, who stopped swinging her legs to frown reproachfully at her mother. 

        This wasn’t my crowd. They weren’t the regulars, and to them I was just the guy who makes the coffee, the guy who forgot my cappuccino was Soya and not dairy, the guy who spilled the glass cups that time, the guy who looks too young to be wasted in a coffee shop.

        Whilst I hadn’t spent my childhood dreaming of becoming a barista, I liked it. I liked being able to observe the usuals and think about my own existence in the quiet lull that followed once the after-school flurry had died down. I liked that the café was on a cobbled road which wound off from the main high-street, because whilst it wasn’t part of a big franchise and it wasn’t where the cool kids hung out, the coffee was always good and it always felt like you could breathe again once you sat down.

“Busy today, isn’t it?” A blonde woman in a suit - accountant? - commented cheerfully as I passed her mocha across the counter towards her. Her name was Alice, according to the tag on her striped shirt. I nodded, smiling.

“Not bad considering the weather!” I replied, and she smiled in return, taking her mocha and finding a seat. Outside, rain beat relentlessly against the window, the hiss of the wind sending umbrellas flying onto the path. I checked the next order and set to making a medium hot chocolate with cream, letting autopilot take over as I allowed my mind to wander.

        Eve - although I didn’t know her name in the beginning, because she didn’t wear a nametag - had first come into the café in the first week of January, and had stuck out in my mind because she left a £2 tip. Don’t judge me too harshly; I needed all the money I could get at that point. But I was fascinated by her after that, because every single time she would come in at 5:00, order a skinny latte with whipped cream, and sit down in the right hand side corner booth with a book, waiting until 6:00, when she would leave.

        I didn’t know what she was waiting for, but the way she glanced outside and eyed her watch suggested that she was certainly waiting for something. She was the sort of girl that you looked at and hoped somebody had fallen hopelessly in love with; everything about her demanded love and affection. She was small and gentle-looking, her soft brown hair falling over her shoulders as she read her books desperately, as though those big, dark eyes were starved of words. I’ve always been a good judge of character, and I felt that she was sad, although she was so lovely to anybody that spoke to her I couldn’t help feeling a pang.

        That was her in a nutshell really: lovely. Not breathtakingly beautiful or willowy and wise, but the sort of lovely that only comes from knowing pain and not wanting others to know it as you have.

        So, on Wednesday 18th January, I waited for the chaos to slowly trickle away to reveal the last few washed-up pebbles reading papers or scrolling through newsfeeds. I dried up glass cups whilst Peggy, my boss, darted around picking up used cutlery from the tables, her hips swaying as she moved across the dark, panelled floor. My eyes itched to look at the clock, but I resisted the temptation, because I knew the girl who waits would come in at the same time as she always did.