The Meeting Point by Olivia Lara

Forty

I take a shower, get dressed and when I go into the living room, Celine is already putting on her pumps. Ethan is nowhere to be seen.

“Good morning,” she whispers. “Mr. Writer is still asleep.”

I smile and nod and we quietly get out of the house and head over to the café.

“You’re quiet,” she says when we’re making the first coffee pots and about to open.

“I am?” I ask.

I’m dying to tell her. Dying. I hate lying to Celine because I’ve come to like her in the short time since I started working here. I remember Alisa’s words and calm down. I can’t just tell her what’s going on. It’s too risky. I have to think things through.

I wonder when I’ll be seeing Ethan again. Tonight? I hope he’s not so uncomfortable with me in the house that he decides to move out or something. If I don’t have access to him, this will be much harder. And it’s already hard.

Our morning regulars come in and I spend a few minutes talking to Gaby. Gabrielle is her actual name. In her early forties, she recently went through a trial separation that turned into a divorce. Every morning she seems to be on the verge of either crying or having a meltdown and yelling at us. Both instances happened in the last two days. After each outburst, she apologized profusely to both Celine and me, and told us she’s under a lot of pressure. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is trying to take their daughter away, accusing Gaby of working too much and not being a good mother, and she might also lose the apartment. The apartment she paid for and made a home for the three of them.

“He cheated on me. He cheated on me and he still finds a way to make me feel guilty about everything,” she complains when I ask how things are going. “Hit me up,” she says as she props herself up on the counter and I know it’s time for a triple espresso with ice and lots of sugar. “Nothing to eat today?” I ask, still trying to convince her to have something. She looks like a ghost, skinny, with dark circles under her eyes. “I’m not hungry, thanks, Maya.” Gaby is a smart, educated, well-traveled woman with a good job and a lot of bad luck. Celine told me this will be her third divorce and if it wasn’t for the child, she doesn’t think Gaby would take it so bad. The house, the money, she’ll recover. But now she has a three-year-old daughter and things are different than they used to be.

“She loves that little girl and dotes on her,” said Celine to me. “Her name is Annalise and she’s adorable and so well behaved. I have no doubt her husband is a leech who married her for money and now he’s using the child as leverage to get as much as possible of it.”

“That’s so sad,” I say.

Celine nods. “Gaby owns a couple of fashion stores in the Bay Area and is doing excellently. She just makes bad decisions when it comes to her love life.”

“Don’t we all?” I say and judging by the look on Celine’s face, I know I’ve hit a sore spot.

“Divorces are nasty,” she says. “Ethan was lucky to get out unscathed. Isabella just signed the papers, got her check and left. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky…”

I don’t know what I’m shocked most about. That she’s divorced or that he’s divorced. Wikipedia said he was still married. You can’t trust anything anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

“Not something I want to remember,” she says.

I don’t know what happened, but it obviously still hurts.

It’s maybe ten o’clock when I see Ethan coming in. I feel nervous. He’s here and I can talk to him, but how? How do I do this?

He smiles from the door and waves before going behind the counter and making his own coffee. Then he heads straight for a small table by the window, takes out a laptop, and starts typing.

I look at Celine, she looks at me, and she bursts out into laughter.

“Good morning to you too. By that ruffled hair of yours, I’d say you just woke up,” she says to her brother.

He groans and plasters a barely visible smile on his sleepy face.

His face changes when he smiles. It’s not a full-blown smile; it’s more of a shadow. Just like in the photo. It makes him look less like a manly man and more human. Pleasant, almost.

“He’s not a morning person,” says Celine. “I usually give him a couple of hours before I ask anything that needs an answer longer than one syllable.”

Two hours later, the line isn’t getting shorter, and Ethan hasn’t looked up once. I know, because I watched him. He’s wearing headphones and seems absorbed in whatever he’s writing. Unless it’s solitaire. As long as it’s not another story about me, I couldn’t care less.

I’m cleaning a table next to him—on purpose or not—and looking at him. He must’ve felt my gaze because he raises his eyes from the computer and looks straight at me.

He takes his headphones off with a sudden movement and accidentally pushes the coffee mug with his elbow to the edge of the table. He tries to stop it from falling, fails, but I manage to catch it at the last possible second. Luckily, it’s empty, otherwise, this would’ve been messy. Our hands touch for the briefest of moments; a second, less than that, and he pulls his hand back like I threw boiling water on it. I wish I’d pulled my hand away first. Instead, I just stood there like a rag doll.

What’s with the awkwardness on my part? Just act normal, I tell myself.

“Nice catch,” he says, straight-faced.

“Thanks,” I respond with a smile. “How’s the writing going?”

He stares and doesn’t even answer. OK. Here we go again with the staring.

“Do you want a refill?” I ask.

“No, I’m good,” he says. “I have to make it myself. I have to earn it, you see, otherwise Celine will make me pay for it or throw me out.”

“Oh, yes, she’s pretty scary,” I say.

I hope he got the joke. Straight face. Nope, he didn’t get it. Awkward.

“If she sees you talking to me, you’ll get in trouble,” he says. “Relationships with the staff are strictly prohibited.”

My face is on fire. I feel embarrassed as if I’m doing something wrong.

“Just kidding,” he says.

Alright. We have a sense of humor mismatch here, ladies and gentlemen. That’ll be fun.

When we get back home, at the end of the night, Celine takes me aside.

“Can I ask you for a big favor?”

“Of course.”

“Could you possibly open the café tomorrow morning?”

“Sure. All good?”

“I need to go to San Francisco for a meeting.”

“Everything OK?”

“Yes. Of course. I won’t be long. Just a few hours.”

“No worries. I’ll make sure everything runs smoothly. Take your time.”