a little bit of black with a little bit of pink

Make my day like coffee

Where office-worker Jennie meets Lisa in a coffee shop, then proceeds to fake-date her to prove something to her ex, except it doesn't always go as planned, does it?

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Jennie fights a yawn as she walks the short way from her company to the building with a row of shops just beside it. It's already nine in the morning and she is still sleepy, despite the cup and a half of coffee she already had just two hours ago. Tuesdays are weird days. Jennie is left reeling from Monday meetings and alignments coming from the past week, and she has a never-ending project list to go through before the weekends, but at the same time, Tuesday is also the day farthest from yet another Monday. Add to that the odd pacing of the holidays—where projects are both slowed down and rushed—and Jennie is already wishing for Saturday to roll around.

It isn't that she hates her job. She's great at it—she had surpassed her KPIs for the year five months into it so everything else is just icing on the cake—but being a business development head at twenty-five with a little more than two years of working experience, her MBA aside, isn't easy, especially when people think she's handed the role because her last name is on the building.

If there's anything Jennie is good at though, it's proving people wrong, even if—especially when—it's out of spite. It takes some time for people to actually believe Jennie deserves her role in the company. She has found her footing around work though, enjoying certain aspects of it to some extent.

But it gets exhausting, the pace she has set. With a lot of projects and partnerships pending, Jennie has spent the night before going through documents and proposals. Thankfully the 8:00AM conference call she had started on time and ended early, giving Jennie some time to walk her sleepiness away and grab some coffee at the shop near the company.

The Coffee Bean doesn't have the most creative name for a coffee shop and fails in branding as far as Jennie is concerned, but their baristas do make the best coffee in the block. The shop is very cozy, too, despite its over decoration and abundance of motivational murals and signs all over the place. Must be to combat the dullness of the companies around it.

It's a stark contrast to the corporate hum of her office, and that is perhaps what Jennie likes most about it. Sometimes, she brings her laptop to the coffee shop and work for hours until her assistant starts blowing up her phone with calls.

The bell by the entrance rings as Jennie pushes the door open, and a mandatory "Happy holidays and welcome to The Coffee Bean!" is called out by whoever is at the counter. The shop is still a bit busy this time of the morning, but there's less people compared to earlier hours. Some acoustic version of a Christmas song plays overhead. Jennie's phone vibrates in her pocket as she makes her way to the line, and she takes it out to find an email from a potential partner, confirming if—

"Jennie Kim, as I live and breathe," a voice says, and Jennie looks up to find a familiar face that has Jennie breaking into a smile before a sort of dread settles in her stomach.

"Jisoo," she greets, and before she could say anything else, the shorter woman is pulling her into a careful hug, Jisoo mindful of the cup of iced drink she has in her hand. Jennie smells vanilla on her. She gently wraps her arms around the shorter woman and awkwardly pats her back. "What are you doing here?"

Jisoo laughs as she pulls back, a stray dark hair falling over her face. "Good to see you, too."

Jennie blushes a bit at that. Damn it. She was caught off-guard is all. "I didn't mean that."

"I know," Jisoo says with a bright smile. So much brighter than the stupid fairy lights adorning the walls of the coffee shop. "I just had some papers to process with a firm a few buildings over. How are you? You company just nearby, right? Are you alone?"