The Perfect Blend

by Allie Pleiter

  “I’m thinking store number twenty-six just got a whole lot more bearable,” Nate says with a grin.

  You know, I was just thinking the same thing.

  Carter’s Coffees—store number twenty-six—was a treasure trove of information. For example, your average coffee-bar employee stays on the job about eight seconds. No, not really, it’s more like 1.5 years, but it feels like eight seconds. Turnover is a big issue in this business. You’ve just gotten someone trained and they go off to law school or Microwhatever to get their real job.

  Nate Oliveira and I became better friends as the week went on. Very cool guy. Artistic spirit, friendly, witty, loves coffee and—drum roll, please—committed Christian. Kindred spirit indeed! Thanks, God.

  I mastered store number twenty-six in the first four hours. I admit it, the bank’s business classes are giving me an advantage here. I grasp the bigger picture better than most of the new employees (and lots of the old employees, for that matter). I’m feeling supersmart and my manager treats me very well. Should I be impressed with myself that I was managing a shift in my first week? Or unimpressed with Carter’s standard for management material?

  In any case, when the time came to do my equipment worksheet for class, I had it all right here in the manual. I used their list as a template, upgraded in a few places, lost the boring tableware and the nasty logo aprons, and turned in my assignment early. Early! Even Will’s secretary, Bea, had her mouth open at that one. She gave me three peppermints out of her jar and a very approving look.

  Why the promptness, you ask? Because the big bad brewing corporation wouldn’t give me Wednesday night off no matter what I said. My beloved auntie could have been on her deathbed, gasping to bequeath her millions to me with her final breaths, but unless I’d already accrued two hundred work hours, I’d still be stuck slinging coffee.

  So I missed class.

  After I’ve missed enough class already.

  I suppose, then, that I shouldn’t have been surprised when his lordship showed up at good ole store number twenty-six at the end of my shift. Looking supremely British and supremely agitated.

  “You are here. Brilliant.”

  I wiped the surprise off my face while wiping down a table. “No kidding. Why so stunned?”

  Will swipes a hand down his face and looks around. “Well, when Bea handed me your assignment and your note, I’m ashamed to say I didn’t believe her.”

  Points for honesty. No points for tact. “You thought I was cutting class?” Of course, right after I said that, I realized he had every reason to think I was cutting class. I cut class before for pure vanity. Cutting for something else—anything else—should be easy to believe.

  “Maggie Black unable to attend class because she’s taken a job at Carters? A giant corporate chain coffeehouse?”

  “You said it would be a good idea,” I counter.

  “My point exactly. You don’t have a history of agreeing with my good ideas.”

  Nate comes out from the back room with a box of napkins. “Friend of yours?”

  Now, how would you answer that question? I decide not to. “Nate Oliveira, this is William Grey.”

  Nate extends a hand. It looks odd: artsy Nate shaking hands with suit-clad Will. “Pleased to meet you, Nate,” says Will. Nate just nods.

  “Come to get Maggie off her shift?”

  “Well…”

  What do you know? Inscrutable William Grey actually flusters.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The decent or the messy?

  I turn the lock and punch in the store security code while Will practically stands guard over me at the store’s back entrance. “I didn’t expect you to track me down at work.”

  “I wanted to make sure you really were here and not…well…not avoiding class because we’d argued last week.” Will pinches the bridge of his nose again. I think he’s done that six times in the ten minutes it took me to close the store.

  “We didn’t argue.”

  He raises that suspicious brow at me.

  “Well,” I revise, “we sort of discussed. Several topics. Faith and business and how never the twain shall meet or something like that. But I told you where I was going to be.”

  “And can you see, perhaps, why I was surprised and not entirely convinced?” Will points to my Carter’s apron. I snatch it off, annoyed. “You took my advice.”

  Do I detect astonishment in his voice? “Not really.”

  “I suggested it would be a good idea for you to work in a corporate coffeehouse setting for a while before opening up your own shop. You took my advice.” Is it really necessary that he look so stunned? Do I come off that uncooperative?

  “You and lots of people. Internet guides, books, magazine articles. There was a general concurrence on the subject.”

  “How is it going?”

  I lean back against a tall planter on the corner. The sun is glinting off Elliott Bay nicely tonight and there’s no threat of rain. The low-slung clouds reflect an orange glow over the city. A lush, priceless remnant of late summer still determined to hang in the air. “I’m learning a lot,” I reply, “about people. Business. How gardeners will come by asking for your grounds and homeless people will come by asking for your leftovers.”

  “Interesting.” Will is tall enough to take a seat on the far end of the same planter I’m leaning on. “What else are you learning?”

  “About how a profitable store should pull 300 drinks per shift during peak periods. That sixty percent of people will add a baked good to their order if you suggest it. How was class?”

  “You know,” Will says, crossing his arms, “it seems our conversation factor goes down by a good fifty percent without your presence.”

  “I am sort of mouthy in class. Sorry about that.”

  A smile sneaks across his face. “I haven’t yet decided if it’s a bad thing. Class wasn’t nearly as interesting without the discussions you tend to stir up.”

  Now I’m smiling. I didn’t see the flecks of auburn in his hair before now. Is there something on my shirt? He’s staring at me. My hair must look like it’s on fire in this light. That’s bad, right? No one wants to converse with a flame torch.

  We stumble into a silence for a moment, both finding the bay a safer place to look. Will clears his throat. I fiddle with my handbag. A car drives by with thumping grunge music blaring out the open windows. “Your assignment was well done,” he says when the noise settles down. “And early, even.”

  “I thought it might be nice to surprise you.” I laugh a bit but it comes out all wrong. This is one of those moments where you wish life came with a Control+Z—you know, the undo key combination on your computer.

  “I was. Surprised, rather. Not that I didn’t think you capable—quite the contrary. I think you made excellent choices in where to invest and where to cut back. Risky but bold decisions. Perhaps I’d rethink one or two but I…” he sputters to a stop. “I can’t ever say anything clearly around you.”

  I hoist myself up to sit on my end of the planter. It’s surprisingly warm for an early fall night. Crisp and clear, but still summery enough to lure you outside. The tree in the planter hangs onto the last few of its leaves, its branches casting scattered lines of shadow across the ground. We’re about two feet apart, but I’m not sure if it feels like two inches or two miles. I notice little details about him, like the smattering of freckles above his cheekbones. The way his eyes crinkle up when he smiles (or grimaces). His cuff links. When’s the last time you saw a guy wearing cuff links? Who wasn’t in a rented tux? “How’d you get here?” I ask.

  Will brushes the fallen leaves off the planter edge. They tumble around each other as the evening breeze pushes them down the sidewalk. “You told me which store number. I could guess the neighborhoods you’d be willing to work, so a quick Internet search pulled up the store.”

  I giggle. “I meant how did you end up in Seattle?”

  He flushes a bit and his mouth tightens aroun
d the edges. Oh, no: wrong question. I can tell in an instant. He doesn’t answer right away, but finds more leaves to clean off the planter.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I backpedal, “that’s probably none of my business.”

  “No, no,” he replies quickly, and I see a flash of something dark behind his eyes. “It’s just that I was trying to decide if I should give you the quick, decent answer I give my mom or the far messier true version.” He gives a halfhearted, almost embarrassed laugh and uses a small twig to dig dirt out of a crack in the planter.

  I don’t know what to say. “How about both? Then I can pick the one I like.”

  Will takes a deep breath that seems to erase all the banker out of him. Suddenly, he’s not a banker or a teacher or anything like that, he’s just a person. A person, I suddenly realize, who is thousands of miles from home. I can’t imagine what that feels like. I’ve been surrounded by home and family from my first breath.

  “I tell Mom,” he says, sticking the twig resolutely into the planter’s bare soil, “that an international résumé is important in today’s financial market and that I’m gaining vital business experience.” It sounds rehearsed. Dry. Forced. Something twists in my chest.

  “And when Mom’s not around?”

  After a moment, Will folds his hands and says very quietly, “It was the most distance I could put between my father and me.”

  Ouch. I turn to look at him, but he seems unwilling—afraid, maybe—to stare anywhere but straight ahead. I notice his fingers are laced together in a tight, tense knot. “What did you fight about?” I ask carefully.

  Will shakes his head and attempts to laugh it off, but his words have far too much edge. “Everything. Life. Religion. Money, mostly.”

  “All families fight.” I angle myself to face him. “Not all families need an ocean between them. What happened?”

  “Do you always pry like this?” His tone is defensive, but you can just see in the way he holds his body that he needs to talk about this. It’s eating at him, plain as day.

  “Hey, I got three brothers. I’m an expert.”

  Will’s shoulders are so rigid he looks ready for battle. “Dad was what you Americans would call an idea man. Mom called him a dreamer. All I could ever see out of him were schemes.” There is enough bitterness in his words to taint all of Puget Sound. He waits for the rumble of a passing bus to subside before he continues. “My Mom came from money, from a good family. Respectable. My Dad did, too. Everyone thought they were such a smart match until Dad began to run through nearly every dime they had. Strings of sure-to-succeed ideas that proved only to be expensive failures.” Will looks out over the water, but you can tell he’s seeing England in his eyes, not Seattle. “I imagine he’s hard at work on his latest as we speak.” He picks up the twig he planted earlier and snaps it in half.

  “You don’t talk?” It seems obvious. I don’t know why I asked.

  “Mom and I stopped discussing Dad after I left. We only argue when we talked about him anyway.” Will throws the twig halves onto the sidewalk. “I send her money every month. The checks keep getting cashed, so I can only assume Dad’s still…at it.”

  I fight the urge to put my hand on his shoulder. Actually, I’m afraid to move; Will has let me in much further than he was planning to and the moment is alarmingly fragile.

  “You know,” he says, his voice losing some of the cold edge I just heard, “I believe that’s the first time I’ve spoken of him since I moved here.” He turns to me for the first time in our conversation, his eyes steel and sapphire—sharp and deep. “Do you do that to everyone?” he says, but there’s not an ounce of teasing in his voice. He’s dead serious. Intensity personified. “You are…so—” he seems to struggle for the right word “—surprising.”

  Oh, my.

  “Yeah, well that’s one way of putting it. I’ve heard it put…shall we say, in a less kindly manner?”

  “Such as?” A hint of lightness returns to his voice, and his stance softens a bit.

  “Weird. Odd. Creepy. Strange. With three brothers, I’m a walking thesaurus of annoying-sister adjectives.” I shoot him a sideways glance. “Do you always drive people to make up lists of words?”

  Will shrugs—an honest, almost boyish response that is neither banker nor teacher, but something of the rugby player shooting up through all that formal business demeanor.

  “Hey,” I venture, “you want to go get a burger at Dick’s? You can’t get more uncomplicated American than that.” Visualize the quintessential drive-in all-night burger stand and that would be Dick’s. It’s a Seattle institution: grease, beef, cheese and pure deliciousness. One of those places that’s at its best late at night.

  It would take a dozen pages to describe the look on his face. Warmth and reserve and caution all warring in those eyes. Does he realize he’s practically falling off the planter?

  He wants to.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The lamest, most adorable waste of whipped cream

  For a heart-stopping moment I watched Will teeter on the edge of his reserve, but then that man shut down so fast I was waiting for an audible alarm to go off.

  “I’m not so sure that would be a good idea, Maggie.” His voice is completely controlled, a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn from where he was mere seconds ago. Instantaneous male lockdown. How do they do that? “I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “No,” I counter, “that’s not true. I’m glad you came. I’m glad we talked. And it’s late. I need to get home anyway.” I fumble my words, duped by the emotional whiplash I didn’t see coming. “My cholesterol and my hips should both thank you for your sensibility. Diane says I’m always doing stupid stuff and staying out too late and…” Oh, great. Now I’m rambling. Like this isn’t awkward enough as it is.

  Will stands. “Let me make sure you get to your car safely.”

  My car is, um, twenty feet away. “Sure.” I grab my apron and handbag and we walk for six, maybe seven seconds. “Yep, I’m here, all safe and sound.” What a ridiculous thing to say.

  “Indeed.” Will laughs, sort of.

  I am cringing in gargantuan proportions on the inside, smiling entirely too widely on the outside. “Thanks for the escort.” Oh, I should just stop talking altogether. I’m making it worse with every word.

  Will’s still laughing softly. I picture him writing home about the crazy American woman he has to teach who won’t stop talking and has absolutely no sense of decorum whatsoever. “At your service.” He says. How come he can be clever and I just get to be stupid? “Good night.”

  “’Night.”

  I stopped banging my head against the steering wheel after I counted to twenty. My brothers were right: weird, odd, creepy, strange.

  “Hi, Aunt Maggie!” Cathy and Charlie come into the coffee shop just after 3:00 p.m. Charlie, freshly sprung from school, still looks like a bundle of energy. He pivots upon entering the store, showing off his shiny new backpack with six-year-old pride. Cathy shuffles in behind him, looking like she wishes her bundle of energy still took naps. Charlie tears across the floor to launch himself onto a stool and plant his elbows on the counter. “You work here now?” His spanking-new white sneakers swing wildly on his chubby legs.

  “Yep.” I lean across the counter to give him a big kiss. “Your usual, Mister Big-time First Grader?”

  “They got it here?” he marvels. Charlie always gets Aunt Mags’ hot cocoa and a chocolate chip cookie at my house. I’m pretty sure I can tweak the corporate version to his liking.

  “Hi, Maggie,” Cathy calls as she slips onto the stool next to Charlie. We make some small talk while I gather my ingredients. Suddenly, Cathy cracks an odd smile. “So…um…hey, little sister, what’s the strongest tasting decaf you can whip me up?” She gives “decaf” extra emphasis.

  “Decaf? Since when do you…?” I stop cold. There’s only one reason in the world my big sister would forgo her favorite caffeine and her grin gives her away in two second
s. I’m tearing around the counter to hug the stuffing out of her when Charlie yells “I’m getting a baby sister Aunt Maggie!”

  “So I figured out!” I call out from the tangle of arms and legs that is hugging Cathy and Charlie together. “Cath, that’s great. When?”

  “February.”

  “Near Valentine’s Day,” spouts a ridiculously proud Charlie from over her shoulder.

  “Well,” I reply, making no attempts to keep my enthusiasm down to corporate standards. “We gotta whip us up some special drinks for a special occasion like this.” I wink at Charlie. “But, first graders always come first. “And up!” I hold up a mug, beginning the hot-chocolate ritual I share with each of my nieces and nephews. Like I said, I was born to be doing this kind of thing.

  “And in!” Charlie replies as I pour a huge portion of chocolate syrup into the mug.

  “And in!” I add the milk. Whole milk. None of this skim stuff for my kiddos.

  “And under!” Charlie shouts, making his own version of the cappuccino machine’s trademark whoosh sound as I steam the milk. Once it’s hot enough (but never too hot), I set the mug down in front of him and we stare at each other for a long, anticipatory pause.

  “And now…” I say quietly in my best suspense-filled voice.

  “And now…” Charlie echoes loudly.

  “And now…” I draw the whipped-cream canister like John Wayne at a shoot-out. “On top!” I start with a sensible dollop of whipped cream.

  “Oh, no!” Charlie yelps, on cue.

  “Oh, no!” I reply with mock alarm. “It’s broke!”

  The whipped cream canister, as I’m guessing you’ve figured out by now, suddenly malfunctions, leaving Charlie with a drink that is more topping than beverage. I don’t put a saucer under that mug for nothing—it’s oozing over the top long before I’m done. Charlie’s squealing with delight.

  Works every time. Let’s just say I go through a lot of whipped cream at my house. I take my most-favored aunt status very seriously.