If You Don't Know Me by Now

by A. L. Michael

Imogen shook her head, jaw clenched. What a piece of work. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but –

  ‘Ella!’ Agnes yelled from the office. ‘What have I said about touching your hair on duty! Wash your hands and get in here.’

  Ella shrugged, smirking, and walked off.

  Emanuel watched her go, then turned back to Imogen, still standing there shell-shocked. ‘What the hell was that about?’

  ‘That was about trusting someone to keep a secret, a really important secret,’ Imogen said faintly. ‘And that person telling it to someone who wants me out of the way.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Emanuel looked with disgust at Ella, her back to them as she faced Agnes’s Health and Safety wrath.

  ‘Because he’ll always pick her,’ Imogen sighed. ‘Because I could be prettier, or smarter, or kinder or everything he wanted, but she always wins. And she knows it.’

  Emanuel’s face dropped as he looked at Imogen with concern. She felt a sick feeling in her stomach and a headache swept over her like a wave. There was no point fighting this battle any more. She came to London to be a writer, and that was what she’d done. Declan helped her, gave her inspiration, made her feel special. And he’d screwed her. He’d taken the most important thing, the one thing in London that had given her purpose, and had handed it to Ella. Because he was blind. Imogen felt her nerves eating away at her stomach lining. She could get sued. She’d lose her job and her flat. Even if she gave up Dec, Ella would have that to hold over her for ever. She’d be covering shifts and taking orders and doing whatever that girl wanted, all just so she could continue working for minimum wage at BeanTown.

  She turned to Emanuel. ‘What do I do?’

  He bit his lip in panic. ‘Fight for your man? Punch her? Tell him off? I don’t know, Imogen, I’m sorry.’

  ‘No,’ she said faintly, ‘what should I do here? Restocking? Cleaning? Give me something to do so I don’t have to serve with her for the rest of my shift.’

  Emanuel shook his head. ‘We’re quiet. Just tell Agnes you feel sick and she’ll send you home.’

  Imogen gritted her teeth, her eyes narrowing. ‘Nope. She wins that way.’

  Emanuel nodded. ‘Sampling. Go give out free samples of that coffee frapshake. Wander all the way down the street. Should take you a while, if you’re telling everyone how great our store is.’ Emanuel squeezed her arm, still not entirely sure what was going on, but knowing that Ella had been trouble ever since he’d known her.

  Imogen walked into the sunshine with a tray of drinks, smiling a fake smile as strangers approached. That was definitely the one thing she’d learnt from BeanTown – how to wear a fake smile when you’re crying inside.

  *****

  Miss ‘I’m Too Good For This’

  Baristas have to stick together. We are the dregs of society, the coffee monkeys on the lowest rung of the ladder (or perhaps just one up from the Mcjob monkeys. They have to deal with hot oil instead of hot coffee). We are here to take your yelling and your screaming and your sarcastic comments and every other dehumanising thing you can throw our way, because you want a freaking cup of coffee.

  We’re a team. We stick together with the anonymity, the true facelessness of a customer-service employee. We are one.

  But sometimes, someone doesn’t want to be part of the team. They blame another barista for a mistake, they don’t pull their weight to help others. They endanger other baristas with their actions. We’re a pack; we’ve got to defend our own against the hyenas waiting at the gates at five a.m. before we open. We must keep calm as one, snarl as one, attack as one.

  So when you hear a barista say ‘Oh, that wasn’t my fault, that other barista got it wrong’, you know you’re in the presence of an absolute tool. At the risk of sounding like I’m in a mafia movie – you don’t snitch. You protect the guy you’re with. Because, God knows, no one else is going to stand up for you when you’ve made a triple-shot, skinny, extra-dry cappuccino two degrees too hot.

  *****

  Imogen finished her shift, pacing like a lion as she decided whether or not to confront Declan. She was trying to find a balancing point. Of course he’d told his friend. Of course he hadn’t purposefully meant to put her career in jeopardy … But her resolve hardened. She’d been putting up with his bullshit for way too long. Oh, Ella’s just a friend. Oh, Ella’s just a friend he occasionally fucked, but there was nothing going on. Oh, Ella was his oldest friend, who probably had nothing to do with his emotional issues. Imogen found herself clenching and unclenching her fists, and had to relax her jaw because the grimacing was making her face hurt.

  If Dec had just listened to her about Ella in the first place, if he’d bothered to notice his own fucked-up behaviour when it came to her … maybe she wouldn’t be stuck standing on the precipice, staring out at a shitty existence. One that involved losing her first real writing job, losing her London job, probably losing her London life, and having to go back up north, just when she’d started figuring it out. All because he couldn’t separate his dick and his head. Yup, that was it. She was confronting him. The arsehole.

  She felt her heart race as she knocked loudly on the door, doubting they’d hear it over the clash of drums and guitars coming from the living room. Nothing. She waited for the song to end, allowing a millisecond to notice that they were sounding good, and then pounded on the door again, yelling, ‘Declan!’

  A few seconds later, Dec arrived at the door, sweaty and smiling, his face lighting up as he saw her, and then slowly falling as he noticed the expression on her face.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ he said, standing aside and watching as she marched up the stairs, making the floorboards wobble.

  Imogen heard him tell the others he’d be back in a minute, and the childish sniggers of the band, cooing ‘You’re in troooouble!’ and laughing to themselves.

  Imogen stood in his bedroom, fingertips pounding on her crossed arms as she waited for him to enter. He stood by the door, and she nodded at it. ‘You’d better close that.’

  He did, lips pressed together. ‘Okay,’ he sighed, ‘what’s this all about?’

  She felt herself bubbling up with anger, but tempered it into a simple sentence.

  ‘Did you tell Ella about my blog?’

  He frowned, head tilted, and then smiled. ‘Oh, is this all it’s about? Yeah, she thought it sounded really cool …’

  Imogen felt her eyebrows rise so high they were lost in her fringe, as she looked at this man she’d thought was so cool, so smart, so different. Nope, just an idiot.

  ‘Right … so you didn’t think you might be, oh, I don’t know … betraying my confidence when you told her?’ she said pointedly. ‘Especially considering how panicked I was about no one finding out? Considering how much is at stake if people do find out?’

  Dec shrugged. ‘It’s just Ella. Thousands of people read your blog. I was saying how good you were, and she wondered where she could find something you’d written.’

  Imogen felt herself explode with fury. ‘How can you actually not see that you’ve just given her ammunition? You have given the one thing that will lose me both my jobs to the person who wants me gone! Why the fuck would you do that?’

  ‘Why would she want you gone?’ Dec yelled back. ‘Why are you always so crazy jealous about her? She’s my friend! She’s been my friend for years! You’ve been around for five minutes!’

  Imogen recoiled, staring at him. ‘Are you really so stupid? You can’t see the pattern? Spend a couple of months with a casual girl. Ella beckons, and you come running. She dumps you, you find another casual girl … she beckons again. She wants what she can’t have!’

  ‘You don’t know that, you don’t know her!’ Declan frowned. ‘How can you possibly know anything about that?’

  Imogen shrugged, holding her hands open. ‘Okay, who was the last person you slept with before me?’

  Declan paused. ‘That doesn’t mean –’

  ‘How many m
onths did the casual girl before me last before Ella came calling again?’

  Declan let out a frustrated snort, clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘It’s not … I mean …’

  ‘How long did she last?’

  ‘A month,’ he conceded, staring at the floor.

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘Ella was having a hard time, and she missed me, and …’

  ‘And she wanted to know if she’d made a terrible mistake … and you fell for it again,’ Imogen said. ‘How close am I?’

  Dec nodded, defeated.

  ‘Well, I’ve lasted pretty long in comparison,’ she said sarcastically, looking around the room. ‘Shame it’s cost me my writing career.’

  ‘Don’t say that, she wouldn’t ever –’

  ‘– threaten to expose me if I didn’t give you up?’ Imogen said lightly. ‘Really? Because that’s just what happened to me this morning. She saw you come in and kiss me, and suddenly I had to choose where my priorities lie – with you or my writing.’

  ‘You probably just misinterpreted …’ Declan tried weakly, sitting on the bed, head in his hands.

  Imogen growled, throwing her hands up in frustration. ‘There is not even a fucking point trying to get this through your skull, is there? She’s been taunting me for weeks! How I’m not enough to be a threat, how you always come crawling back to her, how you two were so great together and I’m just a blip! How good you are in bed and how I am just like every other casual fuck you’ve had.’

  Declan turned and opened his mouth, but Imogen cut him off.

  ‘I swear to God if you say she isn’t capable of that I’m going to walk out of this room and you will never see me again.’

  Declan nodded, and spoke quietly. ‘She really said all those things?’

  ‘Yes!’ Imogen exhaled. ‘Finally, he gets it!’

  ‘THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU FUCKING EVER SAY ANYTHING?’ he exploded at her, the bed bouncing as he moved.

  ‘Because it’s taken this long for you to not see me as a jealous crazy person! Because she was your friend, and she was having a hard time!’ Imogen said childishly, using air quotations.

  ‘Well … she had been asking a lot about us, about whether I was happy and if I thought it was going to last …’ he admitted. ‘And there was that text about how bad her new boyfriend was in bed, and whether it was normal for her to just lie there and think about other things …’ he said cautiously.

  ‘And you DIDN’T THINK that was INAPPROPRIATE?’ Imogen wanted to smack her head against the wall. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you have no idea of how real friends actually communicate?’

  ‘I guess not,’ he shrugged, angry. ‘How lucky you’re here to point it out.’

  Imogen felt herself rising again. ‘Well, believe me, I don’t have to be. I just wanted to thank you in person for putting me at her mercy, as now she has me under her thumb as long as I work for BeanTown. I’m going to have to leave. I’ve got no choice.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Declan said absently. ‘We can find a way to …’

  ‘I don’t think you get it, Dec,’ she said slowly. ‘She reveals who I am, BeanTown comes after me. They’ve done it with other bloggers. They don’t want the brand smeared. I lose my writing job, I get sued, I have to go back home.’ She tried not to get tearful, but he didn’t seem to understand. ‘You’ve just given away my life to someone, because you don’t have boundaries.’

  ‘Hey, come on. That’s …’

  ‘Not fair? Is it fair that because you picked me, because you wanted to date me, and you couldn’t tell some girl that you didn’t want to sleep with her, that I have to lose everything? Everything that I saved for for years, worked for for years, just so I could get here? Yeah, don’t talk to me about fair.’

  He screwed up his face. ‘Yeah, yeah I get it, I’m an arsehole, I don’t know how to talk to people, I’ve ruined your life. Melodramatic.’

  Imogen looked at him like he was a stranger, the anger flooding from her and being replaced only by sadness. He looked ugly, all full of anger and indignation. Like he had anything to be angry about. ‘Wow.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Okay, don’t do that, I’m sorry. I just … you run in here and –’

  She held up her hand, shrugging. ‘Nope. Don’t worry about it. I knew you were always going to go back to her. I was just kidding myself thinking that anything else might be a possibility.’ Imogen shook her head at herself. ‘Stupid, stupid girl. Head full of fairy tales.’

  ‘If you honestly thought that, why did you stay with me?’

  ‘Because I’m an idiot,’ she said sadly. ‘Because I missed you when you were gone, and you made me laugh, and I felt special. But I knew all along I’d get hurt. That’s what this shit does. Opens you up to getting hurt.’

  Imogen looked around his room, taking the time to memorise every space, because she knew, she suddenly knew, how this had to come to an end. She’d been running around like a puppydog idiot for months, waiting for him to give her a snippet of truth. She held his secrets like a glass bowl, stashed away inside, wrapped carefully, never to be brought out for the occasion. He’d made such a big deal of sharing his past with her, of trusting her. Maybe she should have been more careful with her own secrets.

  ‘Look, it doesn’t have to –’ He tried to step forward, reach for her hand, but she moved back.

  ‘It does. I always knew that the minute you open yourself up, you get hurt. Those are the rules, Dec, we both know that. I should have been more careful who I was sharing my secrets with,’ she said, then shuddered a little in irritation. Things end, people get hurt. Just like she’d known her whole life. ‘It’s just a shame my career got caught in the crossfire. I hadn’t realised I’d be gambling with that.’

  Imogen felt close to tears, the sudden repetition of ‘What am I going to do?’ going round and round her head. Dec would have been the one she’d run to, before. She’d have launched herself at him, rested her head on his shoulder and he would have told her everything would be all right. He would have told her he could fix it. But he was the one who’d broken everything. And she was the one who was left shattered.

  Imogen exhaled slowly, needing to feel strong. She looked at him, memorised the lines of his arms and the dark of his eyes in that little room with the curtains drawn.

  ‘So long, Dec.’ She tried for a smile. ‘Good luck with the gig.’

  ‘Will you be there?’ He stood up, unsure of whether to pursue or step back. He bounced on his heels. ‘The gig?’

  Imogen tried not to roll her eyes. ‘I hadn’t thought about it. I’m meant to be helping Keith. I’ll probably stop by.’

  He nodded, looking at her feet, and she walked over to the bedroom door, pausing as she held the handle.

  ‘Dec, just a bit of advice. Decide if you want her, or make it clear. I’d hate for you to be trapped in this over and over again. I’d feel sorry if another girl got stuck in this mess. But I feel sorrier for you.’

  And she walked out before he could answer, smiling sadly at Earl as she walked down the stairs, his plate of chocolate biscuits outstretched. She shook her head, and managed to choke out ‘You guys are sounding really good’ before making it to the front door and escaping.

  As she marched down the high street, Imogen decided she was going to buy herself something nice for dinner, with a decent bottle of wine and a funny movie. She reminded herself that the fairy tales she loved were the ones with strong women, who made their own stories, and that even a little bit of not-quite-nearly-almost heartbreak made people stronger and more interesting. But mainly, she just told herself it had always been inevitable, and waited until she got home before she allowed herself to cry.

  *****

  I know, I know, I’ve been away. I’ve been a bad angry coffee monkey. And you know the reason, the terrible problem that has caused this lack of ranty-shouty blogging? Work’s been pretty nice. People have been pleasant, drinks have been simple, life ha
s been good.

  But luckily, that’s all coming to an end. Because the rich people who fucked off on holiday to exotic places to annoy baristas in expensive resorts in probably very poor countries … have returned. So now they want Vietnamese cold coffee, or Turkish coffee, or Greek coffee. The only thing to remedy this problem is to make my own coffee Irish.

  So yeah, the entitled pain-in-the-backsides have returned, and I’m sure we can all shout ‘Hallelujah!’ because now my job sucks again, I can moan to you good people about it.

  Let’s start with Mrs Overreaction

  Lady: Why are you charging me that amount? I’m not eating in, I’m taking away!

  Barista: Oh, I’m very sorry, madam, you’re right. Here’s the correct change.

  Lady: This is outrageous! What terrible service! This has happened before! It has! I want your card!

  Barista: My card?

  Lady: Write your name down for me! I want your name written down! This is ridiculous!

  No, what’s ridiculous is the fact that you haven’t had a heart attack yet. Or how you manage to deal with actual trauma. Kind of terrified to think what her response would be to stubbing her toe, or missing the bus. AAAAAAAAHHHH THE WORLD IS FUCKED! AAAAAAH!

  Mrs I Could Teach You a Few Things

  Woman: I want a cappuccino. A wet cappuccino. That means that there’s more liquid and less foam. Okay? Can you do that?

  Hey there, Grandma, here’s how you suck eggs. And while you’re at it, here’s how you fuck off and let me do my job. You can ask for a wet cappuccino, you can ask for a cappuccino with less foam. But do not try and give me a coffee-based vocab lesson. That’s just dumb.

  Little Miss I’m Not Listening

  Barista: Are you ordering a frapshake?

  Girl: Nope.

  Me: What drink can I get you?

  Girl: A chocolate cream frapshake, please.

  Gah.

  Mrs Clearly Do Not Need Caffeine

  Me: Hi there, what can I get you?

  Her: I’ll-have-a-grande-decaf-skinny-extra-hot-cappuccino-to-takeaway-and-a-grande-skinny-wet-extra-hot-latte-please. And-two-babychinos-but-the-larger-size-not-the-small-ones-and-hot-chocolate-that’s-less-hot.