Chapter Text
Josselin didn’t call. Meara didn’t call him either, because Josselin hadn’t asked him to.
Three days after Meara’s visit, Danny printed out a new sign for their door, displaying their new hours and announcing they’d go into effect starting the following Monday.
“I really don’t want to raise our prices,” he muttered, just loud enough for Meara to hear over the whirring of the ovens. The timer buzzed and Meara pulled out a tray of cinnamon chip scones.
“We could shrink our menu,” Meara suggested. “Go through and see what doesn’t sell, see if we can cut off some overhead there.”
“Yeah,” Danny sighed, leaning against the table. “I know we could always bring things back, too. Maybe make a few things seasonal? Cost is pretty much the same year round, but, like, people usually only buy the cinnamon scones in fall and winter, and the blueberry muffins sell year round. For example.”
“Mm-hm,” Meara hummed absently as he slid the tray onto a cooling rack and pushed it into a corner. “The coconut syrup doesn’t sell much. And it wouldn’t hurt us if we took the almond mocha off the menu. I only sell a few of those a month.”
“That’s what makes us special, though,” Danny said. His voice was high with tension. “We have flavors the other shops don’t.”
“Like you said, it doesn’t have to be permanent,” Meara said. “We could just slim the menu down temporarily, until the construction stops.”
“How much longer is it supposed to be?”
“About a month and a half. Can we make it?”
Danny hummed in thought and ran some calculations on his phone. “We should,” he said. “I hope. But it’ll be tight.” He punched in a few more numbers. “Maybe if we close one day of the week. We haven’t earned enough to cover next month’s expenses yet.”
“I vote Monday,” Meara said. “We only get a handful of business then.”
“Yeah.” Danny worried his lower lip between his teeth. He didn’t look up when the doorbell rang.
“You keep working on this,” Meara said as he swept past behind him. “I’ll take care of it.”
Meara grinned when he saw the familiar lanky form peering into the bake case. Josselin was back.
“Josselin! How are you?”
“So much better!” Josselin laughed. He pushed his reading glasses up onto his head, clearing his throat a little and flushing in embarrassment when they caught on his hair. He untangled them and settled for slipping them into his shirt collar by the earpiece. A human being had no right to be so cute! That was reserved for things like kittens in bowties and puppies pushing shopping carts.
Josselin smiled.
“Much better now,” he repeated. “A bit of a tickle in my throat I have to clear sometimes, but everything else has cleared up.”
“Good.” Meara’s smile was genuine, all the way up into his bright green eyes. “You going with your regular today?”
“I think I’m going to mix it up a bit, actually,” Josselin said. “Don’t want to bombard myself with too much caffeine when I haven’t had any for a week. So just a black-eye with enough vanilla to --”
“To rot your teeth,” Meara laughed. “No problem.”
“And a blueberry scone.”
Blackeyes didn’t come with foam, so there was no heart to not draw. Josselin had inadvertently given him an out from the awkward latte art flirting situation they’d found themselves tangled up in. If Meara was lucky, maybe the blackeye would become Josselin’s regular.
“For here, still?” Meara asked.
Josselin nodded. After Josselin paid, Meara nodded over to Josselin’s normal spot. “Go ahead and set up. I’ll bring it out. It’ll only be a minute; blackeyes are quick.”
“Thank you,” Josselin said.
And with that, everything went back to routine.
A few customers came through while Josselin worked, a handful came by after. But mostly, business was slow, slower than it had been in a long time. It was that weird in between weather that wasn’t quite hot or cold. Once winter hit, they’d get more business. They always did.
If they made it that long this time.
The last hour, long after Josselin left, nobody came in at all, which only solidified Danny’s decision to start closing an hour early on weekdays.
Meara dumped the tip jar out on the counter as Danny locked the door and flipped the welcome sign to ‘closed.’
“You said we haven’t made enough to cover next months expenses, yet?” he said. Danny nodded and motioned for Meara to pass him the broom and dustpan. Meara did.
“How short are we?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Meara cringed. “Maybe not. But I’m your partner. I need to know.”
“Few thousand,” Danny finally said.
“What, like two, three?”
“A little over three.”
Meara frowned. It was already the second week of September. They couldn’t be late on their bills, or the landlord wouldn’t renew their lease and their power would get shut off.
“We already advertise in the Reader and the Red Eye,” Meara said as he counted through the change. He found a twenty folded in half and his eyes went wide, but his grin faded as fast as it came when he unfolded it and saw it was just a church tract. He threw it out and continued on. “Is there anything else we can do? Like, locally?”
Danny’s mouth twisted as he swept. “I’ll look into it.”
Hidden in the dollar bills and coins was a small piece of paper, folded into quarters. Meara unfolded it, expecting a messily scrawled ‘bring me a cupcake!’ or something along those lines. Sometimes Max and Roxie left them little notes.
But this was in neither Max’s blocky, messy handwriting or Roxie’s curly, careful cursive. It was a script Meara didn’t recognize, and the note said,
Call me sometime. On my personal. We’ll meet up for coffee not-coffee lunch? To talk about your advertising.
Josselin
Underneath his note was his phone number. The last four digits were different from the one on his card. Meara cross checked it to the number Josselin had texted him from a few days back. They matched. Josselin wasn’t messing with him.
Though, why would he? He seemed so genuine and nice. That was one of the reasons Meara was crushing so hard.
Josselin glanced over at his phone, sitting on the table beside his photo collection. It was still silent. He sighed and went back to his laptop and his work, curled up in bed in a nest of pillows and blankets. The TV was on, but so low he couldn’t make out the dialogue. It was more for the background drone of noise than any interest he might have had in watching it. That was what Netflix was for.
Why did he have to tack on that stupid comment about advertising? He wanted a date, not a business meeting, but now Meara would get the wrong idea and it would be his own fault.
Meara would probably be expecting to bring Danny, which was fine and everything, because Danny seemed nice enough. But it wasn’t what Josselin wanted. Meara had said Danny was the business end of things. It wouldn’t make sense nor would it be fair to use Meara as a go-between.
Josselin sighed and dropped his head to his keyboard, then immediately jerked back, deleting the string of characters his forehead had typed into his document. He blew a raspberry to try to relieve some stress, and tried to go back to work.
At about 7:00, Josselin’s phone finally rang. He pounced on it, grinning when he saw Meara’s name come up on the caller ID. He tried not to sound too excited, but he was still a little breathless when he answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Josselin? It’s Meara.”
“Hi!”
An awkward pause. They were really good at that.
“Did you get my note, then?” Josselin finally thought to ask.
“Yeah,” Meara said. “We, uh, we’re closing on Mondays, now, starting next week, so we can maybe meet for lunch then? Or any Monday. Earlier is better than later, though, since Danny has to pick up his kids from school now that they can’t walk over to the café to wait for his wife.”
“Danny has… kids?” He didn’t seem the type, but then, what did Josselin know? He’d only met Danny a handful of times, and that wasn’t enough to accurately judge something like that.
“Yeah, twelve year old twins,” Meara said.
“Twelve?” Josselin asked, disbelieving. “How old is he?”
“Thirty-five?” Meara sounded a little unsure, like maybe he shouldn’t be having this conversation.
“Sorry,” Josselin said quickly. “Not my business. He just looks really young, like, in his early twenties.”
“Oh, no,” Meara laughed. “We didn’t even open the shop until he finished school.”
“Until he finished school? You mean you didn’t?”
There was another pause, and Josselin assumed Meara was shaking his head.
“I didn’t go. Didn’t have the money and didn’t want the debt. We knew what our endgame was, though, so I worked in a bunch of different bakeries and cafés over the years, took some specialized classes on coffee roasting and latte art, things like that, while Danny worked on the business stuff.” He paused again. “You said you went to school for business? What do you do exactly?”
“I’m a translator,” Josselin said. “Freelance. I take jobs as they come, but not a lot of people in Chicago who work as translators are fluent in things like Japanese and Dutch, so I do okay.”
“That’s really cool,” Meara said. “A lot cooler than my lame job.”
“I like what you do,” Josselin said, maybe a little too quickly. He cleared his throat. “And I’m glad you do it. You keep people like me in business.”
Meara chuckled.
They spent the next few minutes making small talk and finally getting to the point, which was their lunch meeting. They scheduled it for the following Monday at noon at a restaurant near Josselin’s apartment, at his suggestion.
“They have a little bit of everything,” he said. “Their pizza is awesome. And they offer vegan stuff, if that matters to you.”
“Awesome!”
Josselin could hear Meara’s grin through the phone. He grinned in response. He didn’t want this call to end, even though he could feel it gradually moving in that direction. He wanted Meara alone, across from him at the lunch table, holding his hand and tracing his palm lines, talking about… anything, really. Meara was the kind of person Josselin could talk to for hours without getting bored, and he had the feeling that behind Meara’s shyness and reserved nature were tons of interesting stories, just waiting to be heard.
“I don’t eat eggs, so that’s good,” Meara said. “It’s easier just to eat vegan when I go out.”
Josselin blinked and frowned in thought. “You don’t eat your own baked goods?”
“What?”
“In the café. You don’t eat the scones and stuff?”
“Oh, that. Yeah, I do! It’s all secretly vegan.”
“Really?”
“Couldn’t tell the difference, right?” Meara laughed.
“No,” Josselin said. He glanced over at his laptop. The clock in the corner read 7:43. They’d been talking that long?
“Well, I have to get back to work,” he said.
“Oh.”
Josselin could almost hear the disappointment in Meara’s sigh. Almost. Maybe. He wasn’t sure. Was he just projecting?
“Yeah,” he said. “But I’ll see you in the café tomorrow, and we’ll have lunch on Monday.”
“Sounds good. Have fun with your work. And… and have a good night.”
“You, too,” Josselin smiled.
They hung up and Josselin made a note in his calendar, although he knew he would never forget.
“Wait, why are you inviting me on your date?” Danny asked. Meara sighed and leaned against the wall, cradling the phone against his cheek.
“Because it’s not a date. He went to school for business and wants to see if he can help us out, and you do all that stuff, so you should be there. I’m not going to be your go-between.”
“Fair enough.”
Meara sighed heavily and ran his hand through his hair. He started to push his glasses back up his nose, but his fingers groped at empty air. Oh, yeah, he’d taken them off, hadn’t he? No wonder everything was blurry.
He grabbed them from the small shelf beside his bed that doubled as a table and slipped them back on again. Better.
“Do you want me to find a reason to skip out early? Or be late? Give you two some alone time?” Danny stretched out the ‘o’ in alone until it was almost four syllables. Meara laughed.
“Maybe if you could skip out early? I don’t think being late would reflect very well on either of us.”
“Well, Max has a checkup for his arm, so I can just leave a little early and say it’s that?”
“Thank you, Danny,” Meara said. It felt a little dishonest, but… Meara was so bad at this dating thing, and he didn’t know how else to go about it. If it went anywhere, he’d come clean. But for now it could be just between him and Danny.
“I got you, bro,” Danny laughed.