The Solid Grounds Coffee Company

by Carla Laureano

  And his optimism, which had been so high only days before, began to plummet.

  It wasn’t only that this was harder than he expected; it was that he couldn’t figure out what he was doing so differently between his apprenticeship and his own shop. He pulled some of his coffee books off the shelf in the office and scanned the passages about roasting in the hopes that something would jog an idea loose.

  “Pretty intense look you’ve got there.”

  Bryan jerked his head up and found Ana standing just inside the front door, holding a paper bag. She took his lack of greeting in stride and plunked the bag down on his desk. “I thought you might like some dinner.”

  “Dinner? What time is it?” He twisted around and checked the clock.

  “Five thirty. I understand it’s a little early, but I was hoping to make a class at my gym later tonight and I hate working out on a full stomach. You like Lebanese, I assume?”

  Bryan straightened and put aside his books, unable to deny the sudden lift of his mood at Ana’s appearance. “I can’t say I’ve ever had Lebanese specifically, but I like most Mediterranean food.”

  “Well, this is the best, and it better be, because I had to drive all the way to Aurora to get it.”

  Bryan chuckled. Aurora was an eastern suburb of Denver, only about twenty minutes away without traffic, but it might as well have been a different planet as far as most downtown dwellers were concerned. “If it’s imported, that makes it all the better.”

  Ana laughed and pulled up a chair on the other side of the desk. “Did you have a chance to look over the web content I sent you?”

  Bryan made a face. “So that’s what this is about? A bribe to make me let you use that?”

  “Oh no, this is just dinner. You don’t have a choice with the content.” She began unpacking containers from the bag. “What’s wrong with it anyway?”

  “It makes me sound . . . heroic.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but I just told the bald-faced truth. If it sounds heroic, that’s because it is.”

  He made a face and peered through the clear lid of his container. “Steak?”

  “If you’d prefer the chicken, I’m happy to swap. I’ll eat either.”

  “No, steak’s good.” He lifted the lid and inhaled the aroma of Middle Eastern spices. In addition to the sliced grilled steak, his plastic plate was heaped with creamy hummus, tabbouleh, and saffron rice. He took a plastic fork and stabbed a piece of meat, hoping that if he had his mouth full, Ana would cease with the direction of the discussion.

  “It’s a good message, Bryan. It’s got ‘think global, act local’ all over it. And it’s even better because it’s completely authentic. It wasn’t concocted by someone like me. I was thinking we should shoot a couple of short videos for the site and social media, have you talk about Colombia and what the drug trade has done to the farmers, why you wanted to help.”

  He kept chewing and didn’t look her in the eye.

  “You know I’m not going to go away just because you’re not looking at me, right?”

  Bryan choked on a laugh, his mouth still full. He chewed and swallowed before he could speak again. “I was hoping maybe you’d get the hint.”

  She stabbed her own piece of chicken and chewed placidly, purposely drawing out the time before she answered. “You want to make a living at this? You take my word for it. This is the way to do it.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you can find another marketing expert, but they’re just going to tell you the same thing.” Ana shrugged. “People pay me tens of thousands of dollars to craft this sort of opportunity for them. If you don’t take it, you’re an idiot, and I don’t do business with idiots.”

  “Ouch. Just be honest with me, will you?”

  Ana smiled sweetly. “I always am.”

  “Well, if we’re being honest, then I guess you should know that we may not even have a product to sell.”

  Ana sobered immediately. “What? Why? Something wrong with the equipment? The beans?”

  “Only the ones up here.” Bryan tapped his temple and then told her about all his failed batches that day. “I just can’t seem to grasp whatever intangible is interfering with the roast. I’m using similar beans, the same profile, and it’s not cooperating.”

  “It’s tough translating processes and recipes to a new place.” Ana forked tabbouleh into her mouth and chewed, her expression thoughtful. “I remember when Melody and I moved to Denver and she got her first pastry job. I thought she was going to lose it. She was so confident in all her recipes from San Francisco and Paris, and then she had to adapt them all to Denver. The humidity and the altitude wreak havoc on baked goods.”

  Bryan stared at her. “What did you say?”

  “I said Melody’s recipes didn’t work here.” Ana frowned. “Why?”

  Bryan tipped back in his chair, his jaw slack. “I’m a total idiot.”

  Ana blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Roasting beans. We’re baking them. The process of roasting requires a Maillard reaction to caramelize the sugars and brown the beans, just like baked goods.” He leaned forward. “It’s the altitude, Ana.”

  A smile started on her face. “That would make a difference, wouldn’t it?”

  “Without a doubt. I’ve lived here all my life, but I’ve never roasted here. I didn’t even think about it.” He started to laugh. “You’ve just saved me.”

  “Well, technically, I think it’s Melody who saved you.”

  “Nope, definitely you and your well-timed Lebanese takeout.” He went back to his meal, but his foot was tapping impatiently as he thought through the adjustments he would make to his next roast.

  “You’re dying to try something, I can tell.” Ana smiled. “It’s okay. Pretend I’m not here.”

  Bryan jumped up and rushed to the roasting room, where he turned on the flame to preheat the drum. His laptop woke up as soon as it started receiving input, already charting the minute rise in temperature. Then he went back to the office and pulled a yellow pad from his desk drawer, almost forgetting that Ana still sat there, watching him curiously.

  If he compensated for the ten-degree difference in the boiling point, that meant he was getting to first crack much sooner than he should, leading to the underdeveloped flavors. Which meant turning down the temperature for the first phase of the roast . . . He scribbled figures on the page for each point of the roast and then drew a time-to-temperature curve so he could visualize how he was going to plot it in the software.

  Ana was craning her neck to get a look. She glanced up at him with a sheepish smile, and only then did he realize that she was surprised.

  “What, you didn’t think I could do math?”

  She shrugged, a bit of pink coloring her cheeks. “You’re just so relaxed about everything all the time. I honestly don’t know what you’re capable of.”

  “Until recently, maybe I didn’t either.” He paused. “You want to hang around for a bit, see how this all shakes out?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. I want to see if this does the trick.”

  “Okay.” He smiled at her and returned to his food, polishing it off in minutes and then tossing the container back into the bag. “Am I mistaken or is that baklava in there?”

  Ana pulled the container from the bag and scooted it out of his reach. “It is, but it’s dessert. Which you can earn by figuring out your roasting problem.”

  “You’re mean.”

  “I’m good at motivation.”

  She was, but it was more her presence and the fact he didn’t want to fail in front of her that was driving him to get this right. That and the need to prove this was not the risky, impossible venture his father seemed to think it was. He was betting his life savings on the four thousand pounds of beans in the storage room, and so far he was too afraid to break into them for anything more than a sample roast.

  Ana finished her food and added her own container to the
bag, then pushed herself to her feet. “Okay. Are we going to do this then?”

  “Yep. It will take a few more minutes to preheat the drum, and then we can get going. Come on, I’ll let you weigh the beans.”

  “Oh, goodie,” Ana said, but the excited glint in her eye spoke of anticipation. She threw the paper bag in the trash can and followed him from the office.

  “There’s the scale,” he said, pointing to the table that held the plastic tub of opened beans and a gram scale. “We’re going for nine kilos.”

  “I feel like I’m involved in an illicit operation. You know, Americans don’t use kilos for anything but drugs.”

  “Something you know a lot about, do you?”

  “Only what I see in movies.” She scooped beans from the tub into the container on the scale, watching the digital readout carefully until it showed 9,000 grams. “What now?”

  “Showtime.” He pointed to the computer, which showed the drum temperature, much lower than where he’d been starting his roast. Starting at a lower temperature would soften the rate of rise on the rebound, leading to a longer first phase and, hopefully, a better result. He just prayed that he had it right this time.

  “Do the honors. Pour them in that hopper there.”

  Ana moved to the roaster and poured the beans in where he indicated, though she had to stretch on her tiptoes to do it. Without her high heels, he realized how tiny she really was; he towered over her and he was just a hair above average height. But that was not what he should be focusing on now. He turned his attention back to the computer and gestured for her to look at the software, which was now plotting the temperature curve in real time, sampling the drum every thirty seconds.

  “Why does the bean temperature drop like that?”

  “The drum temperature drops. Just like when you drop pasta into boiling water and it stops boiling and then it gradually comes back to a simmer? Same thing. The pasta—and the beans—are continually rising, but it takes a while for the drum to heat up again. We’re just looking for a nice steady curve here.” He pointed back at the line, which had immediately begun to climb.

  He peeked at the flames, fiddled with the air mixture, and pulled a sample with the small cylindrical trier. The beans were starting to get a nice, even color. No black spots.

  “Smell that? That bready phase indicates a Maillard reaction. That’s basically when amino groups start getting rearranged into different flavor compounds. As the caramelization process begins, it’s going to start breaking down sucrose, which contributes to the acidity of the final coffee.”

  Ana looked up at him, her expression hovering somewhere between curious and admiring. Her mouth opened, but she obviously thought better of it and shut it again.

  He didn’t pursue what he saw in her eyes, not now, going between visual inspection of the beans in the roaster and his software. Finally, he heard the first telltale pop, followed by a cacophony of cracks as the others split open. A quick check of the color, a sniff of the beans, and he decided he was done. He pulled the lever and spilled the beans from the drum into the cooling tray, which immediately began churning.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.” He checked the time. Much longer than it had taken him to get to first crack before, but he was optimistic that the beans were far better developed than the first short attempts. Just inhaling the aroma of the finished product gave him the sense that he’d gotten it right.

  “And then we need to wait eight hours?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to come back at 2 a.m. But I will make you a cup of coffee first thing tomorrow if you come by.”

  Her eyes shone with excitement, picking up on his optimism. “Deal. I’d venture to say you’ve earned your baklava.” She pushed herself away from the table, disappeared into the office, and returned with the plastic container.

  “Your prize.” She flipped the container open and offered it to him. He selected one of two pieces of pastry, sticky with honey, a dusting of chopped pistachios falling off onto the floor.

  He took a bite and chewed. He didn’t particularly like baklava, even though this was a good one, crispy and flaky and sweet. Ana, on the other hand, sighed with pleasure at her first bite, rolling her eyes.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve had this,” she said. “I don’t usually do pastry. It’s so bad for you.”

  “So is coffee.”

  “Bite your tongue. Coffee is life. I would inject it directly if I could.”

  “There’s a product line we could think of expanding into. Do you think it would catch on?”

  “If it were legal, absolutely.” She licked the honey off her fingers, and he barely restrained himself from suggesting that he help with the process.

  “I guess now would be the time to tell you I don’t really like baklava?” He held up his half-eaten pastry, dancing it in front of her face. “I think you should eat it.”

  She lifted her eyebrows at him. “Because you hate me and want to see me pay?”

  “You know, not everything enjoyable has to be bad for you.”

  Two little spots of color surfaced in her cheeks, and he realized she’d taken his comment as innuendo. A smile played at the corners of his lips and he moved the baklava closer. “Come on, you know you want it.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, but when he put it to her lips, she took a bite. “Okay, so it’s totally worth it.”

  “Totally,” he agreed, stepping closer before he even realized what he was doing.

  Her eyes widened a fraction as he got closer, only a few inches between them, the air suddenly charged with energy.

  “You’ve got something right there,” he murmured, swiping away a tiny piece of pastry from the edge of her mouth. Her lips parted, her eyes locking with his, but she didn’t move away.

  Part of his mind whispered that what he was about to do was stupid; the other half whispered that he’d be stupid not to. He put down the baklava and rested one hand on her waist, slowly drawing her closer to him. She came along, seemingly unable or unwilling to pull away as he dipped his head toward hers.

  The first soft touch of his lips to hers brought a quiet exhale, a barely perceptible softening against him, which he took as assent. He kissed her slowly, carefully, tasting honey and pistachio and something that had to be her alone, holding her so lightly she could have drawn free with a breath. And then he broke the contact, lifted his head to look directly into her eyes.

  Ana was staring at him with an expression halfway between shock and wonder, as if she couldn’t believe it had actually happened. She took a deep, shuddering breath for the count of three. And then she slid her hand behind his neck to pull his lips down to hers again.

  * * *

  She was kissing Bryan.

  The thought broke through for a bare second and then disappeared just as quickly, pushed out by all the other sensations she’d rather focus on: the soft brush of his lips against hers and the pressure of his fingertips on her back, holding their bodies so tightly together she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began.

  No, she was kissing him, and all she could think was that this felt right. That she was made to be kissing him. That they were puzzle pieces that first looked to be incompatible but fit together in both the strangest and most logical way. And then she wasn’t thinking about anything, because she couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t get enough of him, drinking him in like she hadn’t known she was dying of thirst.

  He lifted her onto the table to level their heights, his mouth never leaving hers for a moment. And then something penetrated her fog of desire. “Wait,” she whispered against his mouth.

  He lifted his head a bare inch. “What? Too fast?”

  Ana shifted and pulled out the object she’d been sitting on. “No. Clipboard.”

  Bryan laughed, surprised, and grinned at her before bending down for another kiss. She let herself fall into it for a minute before she pushed him back a bit. “Wait, Bryan.”r />
  “I know there’s not another clipboard under there.”

  She laughed and dropped her head against his chest. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Too fast? Too . . . me?”

  Ana jerked her head up, hearing the thread of insecurity in his voice. “No. It’s not that. It’s just . . .”

  “We’re friends and we’re working together?”

  She smacked him in the chest, but only succeeded in stinging her hand. The guy was chiseled from rock. “Will you shut up a moment and let me think?”

  “Sorry. Shutting up while you think.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, grinning down at her like she’d done something amusing.

  “Who said you could let me go?”

  “Has anyone told you you’re bossy?”

  “Is that a problem for you?”

  “No, not considering you want me to keep holding you.” He slid his arms around her waist and pulled her to him again. “Is this helping you think?”

  She laughed breathlessly. “Not really. It’s just . . .”

  He dipped his head and kissed the corner of her mouth. “It’s not that complicated, Ana. I like you.”

  “I like you too; it’s just that . . .”

  He kissed the other corner of her mouth. “Our friends will find out about this and have us married by the end of the month?”

  “That’s one thing . . .”

  He nuzzled her neck and whispered in her ear, “We’re just kissing, Ana. It’s not a proposal and it’s not a proposition. And you can tell me to get lost at any time.”

  And put that way, she couldn’t think of a logical objection to what was a much better way to spend an evening than going to the gym.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ANA SHOWED UP at the roastery at precisely nine o’clock the next morning, feeling giddy and ridiculous. She’d left late, never making it to the gym, instead waking up early and powering though two classes in an effort to deflate some of her buoyancy. It didn’t work.