Sweet on You

by Carla de Guzman

  “A-te,” Sam huffed, blowing stray strands of hair away from her tanned face. Ah, the long suffering sigh of being the youngest. Sari was not familiar. “That’s clean, duh.”

  “I was kidding. Barako?”

  “Hot as the devil, sweet as sin, and acidic like my heart, please.”

  Sari smiled, because Sam always said that, and Sari liked that she always said that. Some things, at least, she knew she could trust. Sam, a clean countertop, a good pull of espresso, and that a little bit of brow gel and great lipgloss could fix anything.

  But as much as there were things she could trust, there were things she definitely couldn’t. Her parents, who in their own ways never really grew past their teenage years, the guy who tried to sell her ice cold water for three euros when she’d been wandering the hot streets of Rome on vacation, and the bakery next door. The bakery next door where she could hear the slow cadence of “Thank God It’s Christmas” clashing over the sweeter melodies of “Bibingka,” and she hated it.

  “And anyway, who opens a business just before Christmas?”

  “Oh, we’re still talking about the bakery?” Sam almost sounded bored from where she was sitting, and the thing was, Sari was aware that she was being boring. But she couldn’t help herself. She was just so...perturbed. Perturbed by a bakery next door.

  “It’s bad business practice. I’m sure there’s a feng shui rule against it.”

  “We’re not Chinese, and Christmas doesn’t count in feng shui.”

  “And yet you insist that the foot of your bed shouldn’t point to your bedroom door.”

  Sari turned to the percolating coffee maker—barako was traditionally made on a stove, but she wasn’t a traditionalist, and prioritized using a blend that had Liberica beans, instead of whatever alternatives other coffee brands were touting these days. Their grandmother, who had always been a scion of propriety and had banned the use of red lipstick among her granddaughters until they were married, had been known to drink heaping cups of the country’s strongest, punchiest coffee. A bit too strong for Sari, but Sam’s favorite. Sari held up the coffeepot, ready to pour, when it happened.

  The bell to the shop rang, a bright, tinkling sound that cut through the music while Sari carefully poured Sam’s coffee and stirred in a spoonful of brown sugar. Sari heard her staff politely greet the customer as they came up to the counter, heard the opening of a box as they studied the menu. Sunday Bakery, the box announced in big, bold, black and gold letters. Ugh. Their packaging was nice. Pretty enough to be eye-catching, enough for anyone who happened to see it to guess that there was some luxurious, sinful treat inside.

  The customer was telling her cashier about the baked good she’d just purchased next door, looking for suggestions as to what she could drink with it. And the world moved in slow motion as she tore the hot pink sticker with a flick of her thumb and opened the box. Sari inhaled. She smelled the usual culprits—butter, sugar, chocolate, all deep and rich and much stronger than any baked good she’d ever smelled. But then there was an unexpected scent that lingered in the air. Was that...banana?

  Her head shot up from where she was standing behind the counter. The scent had been subtle, but it came to her nonetheless, like a disturbance in the Force. Unexpected. But then again, did anyone ever really expect bananas?

  Barako would go perfectly with the customer’s cookies. A punch of strong coffee would cut through the sweetness, maybe a bit of milk to soften up the contrast between the cookie and the coffee. The combination reminded her of road trip snacks, ones they’d always had on hand when the drive from Manila to Lipa used to take four hours instead of two. Their mother had been on a health kick, so it was all banana chips for their girls, until their father gave up and got them Jollibee. Their mother had gotten angry and yelled, and their father yelled back, all the way to Lipa. It was the kind of yelling that made Sari press her hands to her ears and shut her eyes, wishing she could click her heels and just fly away somewhere else. Anywhere but where her parents were.

  She shook her head, because she refused to feel anything about a baked good that wasn’t even hers to begin with.

  The customer smiled and ordered an iced Americano, which wasn’t a bad choice either. Without prompting from her store manager, Sari got to work, using their finer, more floral Selene blend to match the scents in the air as the customer took her seat, smiling at Sam. Sari’s hands were moving in sync with an invisible beat as she pulled the espresso, poured it into a mug with ice before adding the water to make the Americano. She knew this fruity blend would work well with the customer’s pastry the same way she knew how to pull espresso from her beans.

  She was about to put the coffees on the serving table when she heard the customer eat...whatever it was. Crunch.

  Really, this was getting ridiculous. Sunday Bakery next door had been officially open for one day.

  “Iced Americano for Leala,” she called a little too loudly, placing the ceramic mug with her logo on the serving counter. She wanted to fight baked goods with coffee, even if it was all in her head. “Barako for Sampaguita Corazon Tomas!”

  The customer was a little dazed as she looked up, and Sari could see the crumbs she brushed off her skirt. Tiny, innocent little things that were now in her territory. Must remember to sweep the floor, even if it wasn’t her job, even if she didn’t have to.

  “What is that?” Sari asked the customer when she came to retrieve her coffee, and it sounded more like an interrogation than it did friendly conversation. Sam, who was reaching for her own coffee, flattened her lips into a thin line to stop herself from laughing. “In the box?”

  “Banana chip and cacao cookies,” the customer said hesitantly, clearly confused. “They’re from the bakery next door.”

  “Of course they are,” Sari grumbled, and turned her head to the wall she shared with Sunday Bakery, glaring at it like it was going to crumble if she glared hard enough. She certainly endeavored to try.

  To her customer, (or to anyone else, really), it may have looked like she was seething, and she was, just a tiny bit. Give her a backwards baseball cap and a flannel shirt, and she was Luke the diner guy from Gilmore Girls. She was already dispensing the coffee anyway.

  “Uh, can I have my coffee to-go instead?” her customer asked, edging slowly away from the counter and looking desperate for someone else, anyone else to attend to her needs. Sari opened her mouth to acquiesce to the request when Sam crossed the counter, took the customer’s cup of iced Americano and deftly transferred the contents into one of the robin’s egg blue paper cups, popping a biodegradable lid on and handing the customer her coffee.

  “Here you go, have a great day, and merry Christmas!” Sam chirped, giving the customer a polite but unnecessary bow. She smiled back, taking the cookie and its scent away with her.

  Sari felt her shoulders drop, and she hated that they did. She briefly wondered if her great, great grandmother, Cecilia Tomas, had ever felt like this. She was the one who started the Tomas Coffee Co. right here in Lipa, seeing herself, her farm and her staff through wars and natural disasters to make sure it was passed on to her granddaughters. Cecilia had had her husband at her side to help her learn how to properly cultivate and care for the coffee, the side Sam had taken to like a fish to water. Sari’s grandmother Rosario had their grandfather to help her learn how to truly expand the business, selling to big chains and groceries in Manila and Batangas, the part of the business that Selene now looked after.

  The specialty coffee blends and the café? They were all new, all Sari’s. Sure, they used to have the café across from the Cathedral, but that was mostly just because Lola Rosario’s friend had owned the building and needed a renter when they fell on tough times. The first version of Café Cecilia had been an afterthought, until Sari told her sisters definitively that it was the part of the business she wanted.

  Selene still said that it was on
e of the few times she’d ever seen Sari so decisive.

  She was supposed to be better than this. She’d owned this place for three years, with coffee that her family has been serving for generations, but with decor and blends that were all her own. Sari wasn’t going to fail just because a bakery opened next door.

  “Do you...do you want to talk about it, Ate?” Sam asked, always the most sensitive among the three Tomas sisters.

  Sari wanted nothing more than to curl into a little ball and tell her baby sister that she was a little worried about it, but quickly decided against it.

  “No,” she said primly before she grabbed a tray and started to load it with mugs and a little jug of locally produced fresh milk, a rarity in the Philippines. It was one of the reasons why Sari had loved the idea of opening her café here, where she had access to fresh, local ingredients without having to think about the logistical nightmare it would have been if she were in Manila. “I’m all right.”

  “You’re always all right,” Sam muttered under her breath, and Sari pretended not to hear.

  “I have to go upstairs and prep for barista class.”

  “Need help with that?”

  “No.”

  “Cool.” Sam shrugged as she and Kylo followed Sari up the stairs to the coffee lab/her office on the second floor. Juggling a tray of coffee mugs and milk, Sari nearly fell back when Kylo wriggled between them and reared up on his hind legs to scratch at the door.

  “Oh my God, Sam, your beast—”

  Sam pulled Kylo’s collar back and opened the door for Sari. The big black dog squeezed between the sisters and bounded into the room with zero regard for the expensive things inside and flopped on the daybed by the window, a throw pillow between his paws to drool on. Sari watched the dog resume his nap with a wistful sigh before she walked over to her work station and placed her precarious tray of things on the counter.

  “Your dog is too big,” she told her sister.

  “You love him.” Sam closed the door behind her.

  “Don’t you have a farm to tend to?”

  “The coffee beans literally grow on trees, Ate. There’s not much to do at the moment.” She shrugged, and Sari frowned, immediately going into big sister mode. Sure, Sam was in the café most days, but the way she said it made Sari wonder if her sister was trying to say something else. The thing with being an older sister was that over the years, Sari had learned to read her siblings as easily as she could a list of instructions, even when they tried to be inscrutable.

  “Are you excited about the Christmas party?” Sam asked, getting up from the table to walk around Sari’s space, picking up the mister and misting the plants. “I mean, I know you and Ate Selene dominate the karaoke contest every year, but you really have to give me and Kira a chance, she’s super determined to win.”

  “I make no promises.” Sari grinned, because her Christmases had fallen into a familiar and comforting pattern, and winning the Annual Christmas Party Karaoke Contest was just par for the course.

  She briefly wondered how the Sunday Bakery’s attendance at the party would change up the dynamic. Not much, if she had anything to say about it. She was determined not to let her new neighbor mess up her Christmas joy, no matter how good their browned butter mamon had smelled.

  Chapter Two

  If the café was like Sari’s living room, the lab here on the second floor was her bedroom. Not exactly the best way to describe one’s office, but it brought that same feeling of safety and comfort to her. Sari liked that she could leave a window open and let the cool air from outside waft in. Liked that she knew where everything was, and where it had to be.

  There was a wide assortment of manual coffee makers, gleaming and waiting for her to use and play with. There was a sink for cleanup, a tiny office, and a daybed by the window, her favorite spot, with shelves overflowing with books and an assortment of plants in jars. Coffee books on the left, historical romance novels on the right. She had a tabletop coffee roaster to bring out delicious flavors from the beans, where she worked out how to make the tricky, tougher robusta bean into something that blended perfectly with the lighter arabica. Then there was a bigger roaster in the back for when she roasted beans for the café every Thursday, and for specialty clients of Tomas Coffee Co. The bigger roasters were over on the farm in Sta. Cruz, where they also packed the beans before shipping to Manila.

  There was the grinder, ready and waiting with today’s blend—the Rosabaya Robusta, perfect for the basic barista class scheduled for that afternoon. A single-group machine, bright and gleaming in the middle of the room, still in that pale blue she loved, with red letters showing off its fancy Italian name. The whole space only smelled slightly of coffee, just a barest hint of the many flavors Sari had been able to pull here.

  With practiced hands, Sari flipped switches, and the station came to life, whirring softly and humming in anticipation. With a press of a button, perfectly roasted beans were ground into her waiting receiver, and Sari started to move through the motions that every barista knew within their soul. It was a dance, one she could lose herself in easily, fueled by knowing exactly what came next, when to turn, when to wait, when to hum.

  This, she couldn’t mess up, or fail, or lose.

  Deep liquid gold poured from the spout and into the espresso glass waiting below. Grabbing one of the now warm mugs that she’d placed top down on the machine, Sari poured her newly extracted espresso into it, taking a quick sniff of the Rosabaya’s fruity notes, the way the addition of their family’s robusta beans punched through. Arabica snobs would scoff at the Tomas family’s dedication to bringing fine robusta beans and blends to the masses, but they had been in business across three generations. They were doing just fine.

  Sari added milk to a little jug and plunged the steamer wand into it, letting hot steam rise like a witch’s brew. Then she poured the frothed milk into her mug, tilting, swirling, coaxing until she had a pretty tulip pattern in milk and foam.

  Behind her, Sam snorted as she leaned against the countertop.

  “Show-off.”

  “Not my fault you never learned,” Sari pointed out.

  But this was the agreement the siblings had forged very early on, when Sari needed it. One of the things Sari had always been grateful for was an older sister like Selene, who saw that her grandmother’s business was failing at the negligent hands of their parents, and spoke to her sisters, asking if they were willing to take over. After Lola Rosario died five years ago, Selene had become the head of the family, taking charge when she needed to, taking over, the operations, the marketing, the...other things (Sari honestly had no idea). Selene’s determination and her belief in her siblings had been what eventually convinced Sari and Sam to pick up their roles and responsibilities. And one of the main reasons why the business worked out was because their jobs were so separate yet intrinsic to the whole thing, and one sister knew better than to overstep the other.

  Well, at least, Sari and Sam did. With Selene, it remained to be seen.

  “Ate,” Sam said very suddenly, her voice serious as she sat facing Sari on the bench, and Sari felt her sister’s gaze fixed on her. Sari’s heart thumped in her chest irrationally, the way only an older sister’s would whenever the baby of the family had something serious to say. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Aren’t we already talking?”

  “Ate.”

  “Sam.”

  The look on her sister’s face made Sari pause. Sam was the family’s baby, the least serious of the Tomas sisters, and when she was, something was wrong. Sari’s sister instincts went into overdrive, and started to think of all the things that could come out of Sam’s mouth. Knowing her sister, it could be anything from “Kylo is dying” to “I need a haircut.”

  “I’m moving out.”

  Sari’s heart immediately dropped into her stomach, so sudden and so quickly t
hat she was surprised that she was still standing. She opened her mouth, closed it again, and words just absolutely refused to come out.

  Selene had always joked that Sam was going to be the death of her two older sisters, but Sari never thought that could literally be possible until she pulled the rug out from under her. It hit her all at once, and ugh, it made her stomach hurt. She hated it when her stomach hurt. It reminded her of overroasted beans on a rainy day. Reminded her of her seventh birthday, when her mother had showed up with the perfect cake, caramel with buttercream roses that looked like a basket of flowers, days after she’d been nowhere to be found. I needed a break from you, darlings, she’d said. Was that why Sam was moving?

  “Where...where are you moving to?” Sari managed to keep it together long enough to ask.

  “To the farm,” Sam said, wringing her hands the way she did whenever she was nervous. “You...you remember when I took over, I told you guys there was still a lot of land that we weren’t using?”

  “Yes,” Sari said slowly, wondering what this had to do with the rest of the conversation. The Tomas farm was in Sta. Cruz, not too far from the heart of Lipa City. Her grandfather had purchased that land after the original family lands were lost in the shuffle of Lipa relocating from one place to the other over the years, and that was where the new Tomas Coffee Co. set up their farmland and processing facility.

  When Sam took over, she told her sisters that the land was actually much bigger than they thought, and explained that she wanted to start growing their own food—vegetables, fruits, maybe even a dairy farm. Apparently all of those expansion plans were in motion already.

  “I was walking through the property with some of the farm hands, and we found cacao,” her sister continued, her eyes sparkling like they’d stumbled upon treasure. “Trees and trees of it. I mean, masukal pa rin, it’ll take some time to clear it up. But I want to be there to supervise all of it. I want to set up a training department, keep my head farmers in tip top shape, make sure the interplanting is going well. I keep thinking about all the things I have to do, and I lie in bed at our house and I feel...trapped. Stuck, which is nuts, because the farm is only fifteen minutes away if there’s no traffic.”