Story - Smell the Coffee

 

Swallowing the last bit of toast, he threw the still too-hot coffee in after it and got himself out the door.  Checked his watch, ran, made the bus with about fifteen seconds to spare.  And breathe.  Or as well as he could behind a mask.

It was one of the rare days when he had to go into the office, and ten months of working from home had dulled his early morning abilities.  With no routine to fall back on any more it became an adventure of uncertainty every time, an exercise in skin-of-the-teethness.  It was becoming harder and harder to remember how he used to do it, and now his getting ready reflexes felt atrophied and clunky.  They'd gone the way of other olde worlde skills like thatching roofs and drystane dyking.  Welcome to the 2020s.

He started to think about how he used to be.  Organised, slick, in the groove.  Pre pandemic days, a period that increasingly felt like a lesson from history.  By the time he went for the bus he'd have got himself groomed and suited and had some cereal, joined the queue in plenty time, and was early enough to get off two stops early to take in his favourite coffee shop and a bit of a walk along to the office.  He missed that coffee shop.

He missed the coffee, so much better than anything his crappy kitchen machine could churn out.  He missed the croissant he always had with it, fully justified by the wee bit walking that followed.  And, he had to admit, he missed the service.  He missed Keri.  He missed her smile, her shiny black hair, her constant jollity.  He missed her.

They'd never spoken beyond the usual exchanges and pleasantries she seemed to have for every customer.  There'd never been a suggestion that the customer-server link could ever become anything more than that.  Except that the suggestion was there, inside his head, a link into a fantasy world that escalated from coffee to a date, a date to the best sex of his life, the sex to marriage, the marriage to children, the children to a comforting slippered old age together.  His fantasies didn't have an edit function.

He'd never voiced this to anyone.  Probably never would.  Least of all to Keri.  The times he'd contemplated doing something about it he'd ended up sweating and panicking so much that he'd skipped his morning treat out of fear and embarrassment.  

Would the coffee shop reopen when lockdown ended?  Would Keri still be serving?  Would his job go back to being office based?  So many unknowns.  All he did know was he missed his coffee.  And croissant.  And that smile.  But at least he still had his fantasies.