After I left, I was surprised to find Bryan waiting outside Mystic Landing. He had a cup of coffee in his hand, and the ends of his dark hair were still wet. I was near enough to breathe in that clean, freshly showered scent. “I’m a morning person too. Hope you don’t mind if I share the morning shift with you. Nate’ll sleep past noon anyway.”
“Not at all,” I said as I hunted for the keys in my purse.
He tipped his forehead to my drink. “Must have just missed you at the cafe. Coffee, too?”
I shook my head. “Caramel macchiato. Only frou-frou drinks for this girl.” Then, I leaned in closer to him and dropped my voice to a faux whisper. “I even got an extra shot of caramel.”
He pretended as if I’d just the most scandalous thing in the world. “So decadent.”
“And you?” I asked, because I had a theory that you could tell a lot about a guy by his coffee drink. Any guy who ordered soy, chai, or more foam was going to be high-maintenance. If a fellow asked for the water to be extra hot, he was destined to be cold and emotionless because the water at any coffee shop is already scalding; if you needed it hotter, you had no feelings. When boys wanted herbal tea, I’d run the other way because that meant they’d be far too interested in yoga, new-age crystals and feng-shui’ing my life. I had no problem with those things, but their collective by-product was often not enough showering, and I was a big fan of the just-showered look and smell.
Then there was the man who ordered just coffee. Simple, straightforward, knows what he wants.
Bryan tapped the top of the plastic lid on his cup. “Coffee. Just coffee, nothing more. I like my coffee the way —”
I held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear one of those customary guy jokes. I like my coffee the way I like my women — hot, strong, with cream.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Oh. Sorry. How do you like your coffee then?” I turned away and slid the key into the lock.
He lowered his voice, and spoke in a dark and smoky kind of whisper. “The way they drink it in Paris. Black.”
It was a good thing my back was to him. Because something about the way he said Paris sent shivers up my spine. It was as if his voice was caressing my back. “Have you been?” I asked, because it had been my dream to go to Paris. To wander in and out of boutiques and shops and see all the necklaces and bracelets and jewelry. To be inspired by the designs.
To fall in love, by the river, under the lamplight.
“Only once. But the company I’m starting to work for has offices there, so I’m hoping go back,” he said. As I opened the door, I thought: take me with you, take me with you, take me with you.
We worked the morning shift together that first day, and we clicked with the customers. He’d chat up a pair of vacationing sisters about a coffee table picture book, then hand off to me, and then I’d do the same with a couple considering a serving plate. We had a sort of instant rhythm and sense of how to make a store like this work.
“We’re like a tag team,” he said after I rang up another sale, and I smiled in agreement.
Nate arrived in the early afternoon to take over. As I grabbed my purse from behind the counter, Bryan placed a hand on my arm. “Matinee and popcorn?”
My stomach flipped. I nodded a yes, mumbled a goodbye to my brother, and left the store with his best friend. We walked the few blocks to the six-screen cinema, picked a Will Ferrell comedy, and opted to share a medium popcorn. We went the next day to see a thriller, then the next for a sci-fi picture, and after that we saw a silly film with talking animals in it, laughing the whole time. When the movie ended, I told him it reminded me of a film I’d seen a few years back with my mom, then proceeded to rattle off how it compared to every other talking animal flick, as if I were a too-serious film critic opining needlessly. “But the pig in Babe did set the standard for linguistically-capable animals on screen.”
“You’ve pretty much seen every movie, haven’t you?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say every movie.”
“But most?”
I shrugged. “I see a lot of movies.”
“Why? I mean, besides the obvious. That movies are fun.”
“Isn’t that a good enough reason? Just for entertainment?”
“Totally. So that’s the reason?”
“Sure,” I said, but I was smiling the kind of smile that said there was more to it.
“All right, Kat Harper. What’s the story?” He motioned with his hand for me to spill the beans. “Tell me where your love of movies comes from.”
“I think it’s because of what movies have always meant to my family. All these big events in my life were marked by movies. When Nate was in eighth grade and won the election for class president, we all went to see the re-release of Raiders of the Lost Ark, because it was this great action adventure, and I gripped the armrest when Harrison Ford raced against the boulder. The time I was picked to design the cover of the junior high yearbook we went to see Ocean’s Eleven. That’s just how we celebrated things. I even remember when my grandmother died. We went to the memorial service. I was twelve and I read a poem at the service, and then we decided that we should see Elf. Which probably sounds like a weird thing to do after a funeral.”
Bryan listened intently. “No, it doesn’t. Not at all.”
“It was really the perfect movie to see, because I think we all just needed to not be sad every second, you know?”