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The first time Chloe Beale met Beca Mitchell, she barely remembered anything except the coffee order.
“Large Americano, two shots, room for cream,” Chloe recited back without looking up, fingers already dancing over the touchscreen. “You got it. Anything else? Muffin? Scone? My number?”
There was a quiet choking sound on the other side of the counter.
Chloe looked up, smile already poised, ready to disarm some middle-aged lawyer or fluster some baby queer in a beanie. Instead, she met nervous dark blue eyes beneath messy dark hair, headphones draped around a slender neck, leather jacket too big across narrow shoulders. The woman stared at her like Chloe had just suggested a joint bank account instead of a flirtatious throwaway.
“Uh,” the woman said eloquently. “I … uh. No. Just. Coffee.”
Chloe’s grin widened. She lived for this. She lived for the little stutters, the blushes, the way people came to this café three blocks from downtown just to see if the redheaded barista would aim her spotlight at them today.
“Well, ‘just coffee,’” Chloe said, pen hovering over the cup, “this is a name-for-the-cup situation.”
The woman blinked. “Oh. Right. Beca.”
Chloe scrawled it with an unnecessary flourish, dotting the “a” with a tiny heart she knew the woman wouldn’t see until she picked it up.
“Nice to meet you, Beca,” she said, letting the name roll off her tongue. “I’m Chloe. I’ll be the one fueling your mysterious brooding today.”
Beca’s mouth twitched like it was trying to become a smile and didn’t quite know how.
“I don’t brood,” she muttered.
“Sure,” Chloe said. “Tell that to your jacket. And your headphones. And your whole… vibe.”
She waved a hand vaguely up and down, and Beca dipped her head, cheeks flushing pink. Chloe felt that little flicker of satisfaction: another successful tease, another harmless little spark tossed onto the giant bonfire of her social life.
It wasn’t personal. It was just… her.
Chloe flirted with everyone. Boys in suits, girls with nose rings, older women with kind eyes, exhausted parents with toddler spit-up on their shoulders. It was her default setting, the way some people chewed gum or tapped their foot. Compliments came as naturally as breathing. She liked watching people light up and straighten their shoulders like maybe the day wasn’t so awful after all.
She didn’t mean anything by it.
By the time Beca moved down the line to wait for her drink, Chloe had already turned to the next customer, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I love your blazer. Is that navy? It’s giving ‘secret agent who just discovered feelings.’”
The woman laughed, flirted back, and Chloe, as she always did, let her attention drift from one flame to the next.
She completely forgot about Beca.
She remembered her two days later.
“Large Americano, two shots, room for cream,” Chloe said automatically as the next customer stepped up, the familiar order rolling through her muscle memory like a song she’d heard on repeat.
She looked up and froze.
It was the same dark-haired woman, same headphones and jacket, but today there was a faint determination in the set of her jaw, like she’d practiced coming here in a mirror.
“You remembered,” Beca said, surprise mixing with something like shy gratitude.
“Of course I remembered,” Chloe said without missing a beat. “I only forget the orders of people who break my heart.”
Beca blinked. “That seems… inefficient.”
Chloe laughed, delighted. “You’re right. I should forget them immediately, huh?”
“Probably,” Beca agreed solemnly.
Chloe slid the card machine toward her. “What’s got you back in my domain today, Beca-with-a-c? Did the other coffee places finally admit they’re not worthy?”
“I’m working around the corner,” Beca said, fumbling her card just slightly. “Studio. My friend said this place has ‘the good caffeine and the hot redhead.’ I… assume she meant you.”
Chloe beamed. “Please thank your friend effusively. And tell her she has excellent taste in both beverages and women.”
Beca’s ears went pink.
Chloe shot her a smile and moved on to her next customers, smile still spread across her face.
Customers. Plural. Chloe moved easily between them, a practiced hostess orchestrating a party. A teasing remark here, a wink there, fingers brushing someone’s hand as she passed over change. She flirted with the world, and the world generally flirted back.
Still, she noticed something new as she rang people through. Every time she turned away from Beca, she felt the tug of someone’s gaze on her profile. When she looked, just for a second, Beca would be watching her from her seat in the corner, eyes flicking away as if caught staring at the sun.
Cute, Chloe thought, almost as an afterthought. Very cute.
She drew another heart on the cup she was holding for Erik with a k. Automatically.
But her mind was elsewhere.
Beca started coming in regularly.
At first, Chloe figured it was the caffeine. Then she figured it was proximity to whatever mysterious studio job she had. Then, as days turned into weeks and Beca’s visits synced almost suspiciously with Chloe’s shifts, she entertained the possibility that some part of it might be her.
She didn’t make a big deal of it. She didn’t make a big deal of anything like that. Flirting was like a game of catch. She threw, they caught, they threw back, everyone laughed. No one lost.
“Hey, Beca,” Chloe greeted one Wednesday morning, leaning against the counter like she was leaning against a bar in some dimly lit movie. “You’re early. Trying to impress me?”
Beca looked extra cute today in a red tartan kilt and a black sleeveless blouse.
Chloe had noticed the brunette had been upping her style came over the last couple of weeks.
She appreciated it
Beca glanced confusedly at the clock. “It’s ten past nine.”
“Exactly,” Chloe said. “Most people don’t reach the maximum level of adorable until eleven.”
Beca huffed out a laugh. “I have to record a choir at ten thirty. I need to reach maximum caffeine first.”
“Choir?” Chloe perked up. “So you’re like, a choir whisperer?”
“Sound engineer,” Beca corrected, shifting from foot to foot. “I record. Mix. Tweak. Make people sound better than they do in the shower.”
“Ooh, secret superpower,” Chloe said. “Do you do magic on yourself too, or are you one of those stubborn ‘I don’t like my own voice’ people?”
Beca looked startled. “I … how did you…?”
Chloe tilted her head, assessing. “You’ve got musician shoulders,” she said. “And musician headphones. And the way you tap your fingers when you’re waiting? That’s someone who has a beat going in their head pretty much all the time.”
Beca smiled then, small and sharp and so bright Chloe had to pretend she was polishing the countertop just to give herself something to do.
“You’re very… observant,” Beca said.
“Nah,” Chloe said lightly. “I just pay attention to people I like.”
Beca’s gaze caught on hers, caught and held. For a beat too long, it felt like they were the only ones in the bustling café. Then someone behind Beca coughed, and the moment broke.
“Coffee,” Beca said, sounding breathless about it in a way that had nothing to do with caffeine.
“Coming right up,” Chloe replied, pretending her heart hadn’t just done an odd little flip.
She flirted with three more customers while Beca waited. She complimented a guy’s tie, cooed over a woman’s earrings, teased an older man about his insistence on exact change. She slipped back into the current, into the easy rhythm of it.
But she noticed … really noticed now … the way Beca’s eyes tracked her every move.
How those eyes widened when Chloe flipped her hair back. She caught the brunette’s eyes on her legs as she watched herself being watched in the mirror behind the counter.
Two could play the sneaky spy game, Ms. Beca Sound Engineer.
One Monday afternoon, the café was almost empty, rain streaking the windows and the usual rush thinned to a few laptop warriors and one elderly couple sharing a muffin. Chloe was restocking the pastry case when the bell over the door chimed.
“Hey, stranger,” she sang out, already recognizing Beca’s footstep cadence. “I was just saying to myself, ‘You know who I haven’t seen today? My favorite coffee goblin.’”
Beca, halfway to the counter, paused. “Goblin?” She was closing her umbrella, but some droplets of rain had still caught in her hair. It made her look like something out of one of the trashy romance novels Chloe was secretly addicted to. Ones with names like “Forbidden Fire” or “The Lady Wore Lace and Leather.”
“A very cute goblin,” Chloe amended, standing up and brushing crumbs from her apron. “One that hoards espresso instead of gold.”
She smiled inwardly as Beca’s eyes tracked her hands dusting pastry remnants of her sides, dangerously close to her chest. Which she knew looked pretty damn good in her Joan Jett tour tank top. Yes, Chloe might have also changed her fashion game a bit since Beca had become a regular, putting her collection of music related attire into a heavier rotation. Chloe liked music. Sue her.
Beca shook her head, but there was a smile tugging at her lips. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And yet you’re here,” Chloe pointed out. “So what does that make you?”
“An enabler?” Beca offered.
Chloe laughed and punched in the usual order. No other customers waited. There was space here, suddenly, in the hush of rain against glass and the low hum of the coffee grinder. A little pocket of quiet just big enough for the two of them.
“So,” Chloe said, leaning on the counter with her chin in her hand, “tell me something about you that isn’t about coffee or music.”
Beca looked alarmed. “There are… other things?”
She nervously fiddled with the peter pan collar of the “looked very new and being worn for the first time” deep red knee length dress she was wearing. Very well. Chloe had seen said dress in the shop window of a very chic store a block away from the coffee shop recently. And may have talked about it with one brunette caffeine goblin in a fleeting conversation they’d had last week. Funny how it showed up being worn by the very person Chloe had casually mentioned “that she’d seen the cutest dress that she was sure Beca would rock” to only a few days earlier.
“Yes,” Chloe said gravely. “Do you, I don’t know, have hobbies? Collect stamps? Knit overly long scarves?”
Beca hesitated, then shrugged. “I like movies. Bad ones. So-bad-they’re-good. I run a tiny podcast about them with my best friend.”
“Podcast?” Chloe perked up. “Am I talking to a celebrity?”
“Absolutely not,” Beca said quickly. “We have, like, twelve listeners. One of them is my neighbor who doesn’t know how to unsubscribe.”
Chloe grinned. “I’d listen.”
Beca’s eyebrows jumped. “Seriously?”
“Sure,” Chloe said. “I want to hear what makes you laugh.”
That, she realized belatedly, came out a little more sincere and a little less flippant than she usually allowed herself to sound. But Beca didn’t seem to clock the difference. She just ducked her head again, that blush shining through.
“You’d probably make fun of us,” she mumbled.
“Oh, 100%,” Chloe said cheerfully. “But in a supportive way. Like, ‘Wow, listen to these nerds talk passionately about exploding sharks, I love them.’”
Beca laughed, really laughed, and Chloe felt warmth blossom in her chest.
She flirted again, because that was what she did. She traced a heart on the cup. She told Beca she had “podcaster voice - very sexy, would definitely trust you to narrate my emotional breakdown.” She watched the way Beca glowed under the attention.
She told herself it was fine.
This was what she did. This was how she interacted with the world. She flirted, people felt special for five minutes, then they went back to their lives. No harm.
No expectations.
The day everything shifted, it was Beca who threw the spark.
It was a Friday. The café was slammed, a rush of lunch-break suits and freelancers desperate for an outlet and oat milk. Chloe was in her element. Hair pulled up in a messy bun, sleeves shoved to her elbows, laughter fizzing out of her like soda. She complimented a woman’s lipstick, told a harried dad he had “serious superhero energy,” slid drinks across the counter like she was dealing cards.
She almost didn’t register Beca at first, just clocked her as another body in the line. But then Beca shuffled forward, pushed her headphones down to her neck, and Chloe’s peripheral awareness sharpened into focus.
“There she is,” Chloe called over the hum of conversation. “My favorite chaos raccoon. You’re late for your daily flirting appointment.”
A couple in line snickered. Beca’s eyes went wide.
“I, uh, got held up,” she said, voice a little louder than usual to be heard. “Client. Long story. But I figured if I missed you, my day would be… you know. A tragic husk.”
A tragic husk.
The phrasing was ridiculous. It was also clearly an attempt … a clumsy, endearing attempt … to play along. To throw the ball back.
Chloe’s practiced reply … something about “don’t worry, I do make house calls” … died on her tongue.
Because Beca wasn’t just smiling. She was looking at Chloe like the flirting meant something. Like it was possibly the highlight of her day. Like this wasn’t just a game for her.
And then, like she’d stepped off a cliff without realizing how far down the ground was, Beca continued.
“I mean,” she said, throat working around the words, “it’s, like, the best part of my day? When you, uh. Call me a goblin. Or whatever.”
More laughter from strangers. The couple behind her looked amused, watching this little scene.
Beca swallowed. Her fingers flexed on the strap of her backpack, knuckles white. She lifted her chin half an inch.
“Plus,” she added, trying for casual and landing somewhere around devastatingly vulnerable, “it’s nice when the pretty girl at the coffee place remembers your order. And your name. And your… everything.”
There it was.
Not implied. Not hidden beneath layers of sarcasm. Bare, offered up in a trembling hand.
Flirting back.
Chloe froze.
The noise of the café rushed in, suddenly too loud. The grinder whirred, milk steamed, someone’s phone rang, and Chloe just… stood there, staring at the girl who’d been her favorite five-minute daydream and realizing that, oh.
Oh.
This wasn’t a game for Beca.
Her smile faltered. Just slightly, but enough. Beca’s eyes flicked to it, saw it, flinched. The hopeful brightness shuttered to confusion.
“Oh,” Beca said quickly. “Sorry. That was … sorry. I didn’t mean … just. Coffee. I’ll just get coffee. Ignore me.”
It was like someone had knocked the wind out of Chloe. But the line behind Beca inched forward, and muscle memory grabbed hold of her.
“Large Americano, two shots, room for cream,” Chloe heard herself say, voice much too chirpy. “You got it.”
She rang it through. She asked for payment. She mumbled something she hoped passed for one of her usual jokes. She avoided Beca’s eyes.
Beca paid, hands a little shaky, and moved aside without another word.
Chloe flirted with the next customer. She flirted with the one after that. She did it too brightly, too mechanically. Her lines felt hollow, the laughter around her tinny and far away.
Every time she risked a glance toward the pickup counter, she saw Beca: shoulders hunched, headphones clutched in one hand instead of worn comfortably around her neck, eyes fixed on the floor. When the drink appeared, she snatched it up and slipped out without looking back.
Chloe watched the door swing shut behind her and felt something inside her twist.
She’d broken the game.
And worse, she didn’t know if she’d just broken something in Beca too.
Chloe sulked so hard on her break that her coworker, a lanky college kid named Paul, actually noticed.
“You’re not flirting with your lunch,” he observed, leaning in the doorway of the back room as she poked at her salad. “Should I be concerned?”
“I don’t flirt with food,” Chloe muttered. “That would be weird.”
“You flirted with the espresso machine yesterday.”
“That was different,” she said. “We have a history.”
Paul snorted. “What’s up, Beale? You seemed off at the counter.”
Chloe opened her mouth to say nothing, to brush it off with a joke. Instead, to her own surprise, she said, “Do I flirt too much?”
Paul blinked. “Is that a trick question?”
“Just answer it,” she said, picking at a crouton in her salad.
He scratched his head. “I mean… that’s kind of your thing, right? People love it. We literally get Yelp reviews about ‘the flirty redhead with the sunshine smile.’ Why, did somebody complain?”
“No,” Chloe said quickly. “No one complained. I just. There’s this regular, and she… I think she thought…” She trailed off, frustrated with herself.
She didn’t know how to explain it. How to say that for the first time in a long time, someone had taken her light-hearted banter and handed it back to her like a confession, like a gift she wasn’t sure she deserved.
How to say that the idea of hurting Beca made her stomach-ache in a way that was distinctly un-fun.
Paul shrugged. “If someone likes you, that’s not exactly your fault,” he said. “Unless you, like, promised them your firstborn and then ghosted.”
Chloe groaned, dropping her forehead onto the table. “You’re useless.”
“Thanks, I live to serve.” He hesitated. “Hey, seriously though? You’re a good person. You don’t lead people on. You’re just… friendly. Excessively. Like a labrador with great hair.”
Chloe snorted despite herself.
“Just be honest,” Paul added. “If someone’s catching feelings, either you’re into it or you’re not. You’ll figure it out.”
That was the problem, Chloe thought.
She wasn’t sure which one it was.
Beca didn’t come in the next day.
Or the next.
Or the next.
Chloe told herself it was a coincidence. People got busy. Schedules changed. Maybe the studio gig wrapped. Maybe Beca had discovered she could, in fact, survive without coffee.
Her chest ached anyway.
By the fourth day, she found herself staring at the door so often that Paul grumbled, “If you’re gonna keep doing that, we should change your job description from barista to professional moper”
“I’m fine,” Chloe said, a little too quickly.
“Sure,” Paul said. “And I totally didn’t watch you draw a heart on a cup and then erase it like it was a crime.”
She stuck out her tongue at him. He rolled his eyes.
When the bell finally chimed and Chloe looked up to see Beca in the doorway, it felt like the world snapped back into focus.
She looked… smaller, somehow. Hoodie instead of leather jacket, hair in a messy bun like she hadn’t bothered to style it. Back to her first day slightly disheveled yet adorable look. She hovered near the door for a second, indecisive, before the line behind her nudged her forward.
Chloe’s heart pounded. She was already mentally rehearsing three different versions of an apology that made light of it and took it seriously at the same time, trying to mend something she wasn’t sure was broken but she was sure felt dented.
Before she could pick one, someone else slipped into the café behind Beca: a tall blonde in a sharp navy blazer, heels clicking on the tile.
“Becs!” the blonde called, cutting the line and striding forward like she owned the place. “You started without me, how dare you.”
Beca turned, relief flooding her features. “Aubrey. Hey. I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”
The blonde, Aubrey, gave her a fond, exasperated look. “As if I’d pass up the chance to pry you away from your editing cave. You need vitamin D. And social exposure. And possibly a haircut, but we’ll talk about that later.”
Beca made an offended noise. Chloe couldn’t help but smile. Whoever this Aubrey was, she clearly knew Beca well.
“Hi,” Aubrey said briskly as they approached the counter together. She flashed Chloe a professional smile. “Two drinks, one for me, one for my audio goblin.”
“Audio goblin?” Chloe repeated, delighted. “I’ve been calling her a coffee goblin. We’re converging on a theme.”
Beca groaned softly. “Why do you people talk about me like I’m not here?”
“Because you make funny faces when we do,” Aubrey said sweetly, then turned back to Chloe. “I’ll take a medium chai latte, and she’ll have…”
“Large Americano, two shots, room for cream,” Chloe said automatically, meeting Beca’s eyes.
There it was again. That tiny flicker of warmth, of wonder, like every time Chloe remembered her order she was performing a miracle.
Except this time, layered under it was something more cautious. Guarded.
Chloe swallowed.
“Coming right up,” she said, forcing her voice to do its usual light dance.
She flirted with Aubrey, because that was what she did. Complimented her blazer, teased her about calling Beca an audio goblin, asked if they were “a matched set or available individually.” Aubrey rolled her eyes and shot Beca a look that said, See?
Chloe almost missed it, but not quite: the way Beca’s shoulders tensed whenever Chloe turned her brightness on Aubrey too fully.
Guilt thudded through her. She wasn’t used to feeling guilty about being herself.
She wanted to pull Beca aside. To say, I didn’t mean to freeze. I just didn’t realize until it was too late that maybe I’d been playing with something fragile.
Instead, the line surged, and she was swept back into the flow.
She didn’t see Aubrey again for almost a week.
Then Aubrey showed up without Beca.
It was a Tuesday, slow and gray, the kind of afternoon where time seemed to stretch like gum. Chloe was wiping down the tables when the bell rang and in walked the blonde from before, alone.
Chloe straightened automatically, smile sliding into place. “Hey, audio goblin’s handler. Back to file a complaint?”
“In a way,” Aubrey said.
Something in her tone made Chloe pause.
Up close in the quiet, Aubrey looked different. Less brisk. There were faint lines of worry etched around her eyes. Her posture screamed “competent professional,” but there was a tightness in her shoulders that had nothing to do with spreadsheets.
“What can I get you?” Chloe asked, stepping behind the counter.
“Tea, please. Just regular black.” Aubrey slid a bill across. “And… a minute of your time, if you’ve got it.”
Chloe’s instincts prickled. She’d had exes confront her before, girlfriends of people she’d accidentally charmed, customers who took her banter as a promise and got angry when she didn’t deliver. She knew the preamble.
“Okay,” she said cautiously. “I’ll, uh, make your tea and then… talk?”
“Thank you.” Aubrey gave her a tight smile.
Chloe made the tea with careful movements, heart thumping, mind spinning. She glanced around. The café was nearly empty. Paul was in the back doing inventory. It was just her, Aubrey, and a guy in the corner with headphones big enough to double as earmuffs.
She slid the tea across and leaned on the counter.
“Look,” she started, trying for defensively breezy. “If this is about the flirting, I swear I’m not trying to steal your girlfriend or … ”
Aubrey choked on a sip of tea. “My what? Oh my God.” She shook her head, eyes widening. “No. No, no. Beca is not my girlfriend. She’s my best friend. I’m very gay, but I’m also very married to a woman who has very strong opinions about wormholes and carbon offsetting. This isn’t… that.”
“Oh,” Chloe said weakly. “Okay. Cool. Great. Sorry. I just…people sometimes … ”
“People sometimes think you’re flirting with their girlfriend, boyfriend, whoever” Aubrey finished. “Yes. I can see that.”
Chloe winced. “Guilty.”
Aubrey set the tea down carefully. When she looked up, her gaze was sharp and assessing in a way that made Chloe feel oddly exposed.
“I didn’t come here to yell at you,” Aubrey said. “Or to accuse you of anything. I came because Beca won’t stop talking about you, and I am… concerned.”
Chloe’s stomach dropped. “Talking about me?”
Aubrey nodded. “About the ‘flirty redhead at the coffee place,’ about how you remember her order and make her feel like she’s the only person in the room for five minutes every day. About how you call her a goblin, and she pretends to hate it, but she doesn’t. About how you… flirt with everyone.”
The last part was gentler than Chloe expected. Not accusatory. Just observant.
“I mean, I do flirt with everyone,” Chloe said, defaulting to a shrug. “It’s just how I … ”
“Beca’s not like everyone,” Aubrey interrupted softly. “She’s… a little socially awkward. A lot emotionally cautious. She doesn’t have a dozen crushes at once. She doesn’t collect banter the way you do. When someone like you aims all of that at someone like her, it doesn’t read as ‘fun game’ to her. It reads as…” She searched for the word. “Possibility.”
Chloe swallowed, mouth dry.
“I didn’t promise her anything,” she said, hearing the defensiveness in her own voice and hating it. “I didn’t ask for her number, I didn’t… I don’t know, lead her on on purpose. I just… talk like that.”
“I know,” Aubrey said. “I’m not saying you’re a villain twirling a mustache. I’m saying she noticed when you went quiet. When you stopped.”
Chloe winced.
“She came into the studio after that,” Aubrey continued. “She was… embarrassed. She thought she’d misread everything. That she’d made things weird with the one person who makes her feel like she’s not invisible when she’s out in public. It hurt her, Chloe.”
Something hot burned behind Chloe’s eyes.
“I’m not here to tell you to stop being yourself,” Aubrey said, her voice gentler now. “But I am asking you, as someone who loves her and has seen how hard she works to pull herself out of her own head… please. Don’t break Beca’s heart. She’s a special person. If you don’t feel that way about her, let her down easy. Don’t keep doing this halfway thing where she thinks you might mean more while you flirt with everyone else the same way. She deserves clarity.”
Chloe had never wanted the counter between them to disappear so badly. She wanted to pace. To run. To do something with the guilt thrumming through her veins.
“I didn’t realize,” she whispered.
“I believe you,” Aubrey said. “But now you do.”
Silence stretched between them, filled with the distant hiss of the espresso machine.
Chloe stared at her own hands. “What if I don’t know how I feel?”
Aubrey tilted her head. “Do you think about her when she’s not here?”
“Yes,” Chloe said immediately.
“Do you look for her every time the door opens?”
“Yes.”
“Do you flirt with her because it’s fun, or because it’s the only way you know how to say ‘you matter to me’ without risking anything real?”
Chloe looked up, startled.
“That… felt like a very targeted question,” she said weakly.
Aubrey smiled, a little sadly. “I used to be worse than you,” she admitted. “Ask Stacie sometime. The point is, if you care about her? Really care, beyond the game? Then maybe it’s time to stop hiding behind the flirting and actually say something honest.”
“And if I don’t?” Chloe asked, voice small.
“Then for the love of God, step back,” Aubrey said. “Smile, be friendly, but don’t keep dangling this… spark in front of her like it’s nothing. She feels it. She’s not imagining it. Don’t make her feel foolish for that.”
Chloe swallowed hard.
“Please,” Aubrey said quietly. “I’m asking you. Again. Don’t break Beca’s heart.”
She picked up her tea, nodded once, and left Chloe standing there feeling like someone had taken her carefully constructed persona and shaken it until all the loose pieces rattled to the floor.
Beca didn’t come in the next day.
Chloe spent her entire shift with a knot in her chest, replaying Aubrey’s words.
Stop hiding behind the flirting.
Honest.
She didn’t know who she was without the flirt. Without the easy deflection, the winks and jokes and the safety of never having to show her real cards.
But she knew this: the idea of Beca avoiding the café because of her made her stomach churn.
On Thursday, halfway through the morning, the bell chimed. Chloe looked up, heart in her throat.
Beca hovered in the doorway, fidgeting with the strap of her backpack. She looked like she was about to bolt.
Before she could, Chloe stepped out from behind the counter.
Paul shot her a startled look. “Uh, where are you … ”
“Bathroom,” she lied. “Probably. Maybe. Cover for me.”
“Wait, what…”
She was already moving.
“Beca!” she called.
Beca flinched like she’d been caught stealing.
“Oh. Hey,” she said, trying for nonchalant and landing on anxious. “I was just…if you’re busy, I can…”
“I’m not busy,” Chloe said, even though she absolutely was. “Can we… talk? For a second? It’s not about your order, I promise.”
Beca blinked. “Did I… do something wrong? Is this about the time I tried to joke and it came out weird? Because I can just…”
“No,” Chloe said quickly. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I did. Or… I sort of did. Can we sit? Just … over there? Away from the espresso machine, which is currently judging me?”
Without waiting for an answer, she gently guided Beca toward an empty corner table. The guy with the giant headphones glanced up, then back down. The café noise ebbed and flowed around them, a buffer of sound.
Chloe sat. Beca perched on the edge of her chair like a bird ready to flee.
“So,” Chloe said, then immediately realized she had absolutely no idea how to start.
Great. Fantastic. Ten out of ten.
Beca twisted her hands together. “You can just say whatever you need to,” she mumbled. “If this is where you tell me you’re not actually flirting and you’re like this with everyone and I’m a doofus, I can handle it. I’ll just. Start going to the place on Sixth. Their coffee sucks, but I’ll … ”
“Hey,” Chloe cut in, heart cracking a little. “Don’t call yourself a doofus. That’s my job.”
Beca’s laugh was short, wary.
Chloe took a breath.
“I am like this with everyone,” she said slowly. “I flirt a lot. With customers, with coworkers, with the mailman. It’s… kind of my thing. But that doesn’t mean you imagined the way I act with you. It doesn’t mean you’re stupid for reading into it. Because … ”
She stopped, cheeks flushing. Scary truth hovered just out of reach.
“Because,” she repeated, forcing herself forward, “you’re not just another customer to me.”
Beca’s fingers stilled.
“I’m not?” she asked, voice very small.
“No,” Chloe said. “I mean, at first you were. I flirted with you because you were cute and you made funny little squeaks when I did. But then you kept coming back, and you told me about your podcast and your choir people and how you can’t make toast without burning it, and I started noticing when you weren’t here. I started looking for you every time the bell rang.”
Beca stared at her, eyes wide.
“I didn’t realize,” Chloe went on, voice wobbling a little, “that flirting is… different for you than it is for me. For me, it’s like… small talk with jazz hands. For you, it’s… something more. And when you tried to flirt back the other day, I freaked out because suddenly it wasn’t just this safe, silly thing anymore. It was real, and I didn’t know what to do with that.”
Beca swallowed. “So you… pulled away.”
“Yeah,” Chloe admitted. “Which was crappy. And cowardly. And I’m sorry.”
Silence stretched. Chloe gripped the edge of the table, desperate to read anything in Beca’s expression: anger, hurt, relief.
Finally, Beca said, “Aubrey talked to you, didn’t she?”
Chloe let out a little huff of laughter. “She did. She was very polite about it, in a terrifying lawyer way.”
“She’s not a lawyer,” Beca protested automatically, then added, “She just… sounds like one sometimes.”
“Well, whatever she is, she loves you,” Chloe said. “She asked me not to break your heart.”
Beca flushed scarlet. “Oh my God.”
Chloe leaned forward, willing her to see the truth in her eyes. “I don’t want to. I really, really don’t. That’s why I needed to talk to you, instead of pretending nothing happened and letting you slowly redirect your caffeine addiction to Sixth Street.”
A tiny smile tugged at Beca’s mouth despite herself.
“So what are you saying?” she asked quietly. “Do you… want me to back off? Should I stop… whatever this is in my head?”
Chloe’s heart pounded.
She could, right now, choose safety. She could say, “Let’s just be friendly,” and go back to winks and jokes that meant nothing. She could protect her aura of breezy untouchability and pretend the hollow feeling in her chest was indigestion.
Or she could do the scary thing.
“Aubrey asked me to let you down easy if I didn’t feel anything,” Chloe said. “But the problem is, I do feel something.”
Beca’s breath hitched.
“I like you,” Chloe said simply. The words felt enormous and clumsy and perfect. “Not just in a ‘yay, repeat customer, good for business’ way. In a ‘you make my day better when you walk through the door’ way. In a ‘I want to hear your bad movie podcast and argue about it’ way. In a ‘I haven’t actually flirted with anyone else in, like, a week without feeling weird about it’ way.”
Her face was on fire. She powered through.
“I don’t know what that looks like yet,” she admitted. “I’ve never really… done this. The honest thing. But I want to try. With you. If you still… want that. After I handled it so badly.”
For a moment, Beca just stared at her like someone had turned the world upside down.
“Are you serious?” she asked at last, voice hoarse. “You’re not just… being nice so I don’t slink away in shame?”
“If I wanted you to slink away, I would not be doing this in my workplace where people can see me turn purple,” Chloe pointed out. “I’m not… confused about whether I’m attracted to you. I am. I’m confused about how to do it without hiding behind my usual… sparkles.”
Something like hope bloomed slowly across Beca’s face, cautious and beautiful.
“Okay,” she said, after an eternity. “So… we both like each other. Cool. Great. Terrifying. What now?”
Chloe let out a breathy laugh. “Now, I go back behind the counter before Paul has an aneurysm, and you order a coffee, and then maybe… when I get off my shift? We… go somewhere that isn’t this café, and I try flirting with you like a normal person.”
“There’s a normal person version of you?” Beca teased, the light back in her eyes.
“Rude,” Chloe said. “I meant, like… less scattershot. More focused.”
“So, like, you flirt with just me instead of the entire tri-state area,” Beca said.
“Exactly,” Chloe said. “Think you can handle that much concentrated attention, Mitchell?”
Beca’s smile, this time, was slow and sure.
“I’ve been handling the diluted version for weeks,” she said. “I think I’ll manage.”
Chloe grinned, relief washing through her so strong she felt almost dizzy.
“Okay,” she said, standing. “It’s a date. Kind of. If you want it to be. You can also call it ‘two people sitting near each other consuming beverages while trying not to panic.’”
“Aubrey will definitely call it that,” Beca said dryly. “But… yeah. I’d like that. A lot.”
Chloe hesitated, then held out her hand.
Beca looked at it, then slid her fingers into Chloe’s. For a second, just that contact: warm, real, no joke masking it … felt more intimate than any of Chloe’s practiced lines.
“Cool,” Chloe said, voice a little breathless. “Great. I’m gonna go… be a responsible employee now. Come up when you’re ready to order. And, uh… thanks. For not giving up on this.”
“Thanks for… taking it seriously,” Beca replied.
As Chloe walked back behind the counter, she caught sight of herself reflected in the glass of the pastry case. Flushed cheeks, bright eyes, a smile that wasn’t for the crowd, but for one person.
When Beca stepped up to the register a minute later, Chloe didn’t go for the rehearsed jokes.
Instead, she rested her elbows on the counter and met Beca’s gaze.
“Hi,” she said softly. “What can I get for you, Beca?”
Beca’s lips curved. “The usual,” she said. “And maybe… your number, this time?”
Chloe laughed, delighted, the earlier fear dissolving into fizzy joy.
“Now that,” she said, scribbling on the cup, “is how the game should be played.”
She drew a heart next to her phone number and slid the cup toward her. An invitation, this time, not just an automatic flourish.
As Beca walked away, Chloe could feel Aubrey’s eyes on her from the street outside, where she was clearly lurking with a tea in hand and “casually not spying” written all over her posture.
Chloe caught her gaze through the window. Aubrey raised an eyebrow in question.
Chloe lifted the pen she’d just used, miming drawing a heart, then pointed at Beca and gave Aubrey a small, earnest nod.
Aubrey studied her for a beat, then smiled - genuine, relieved - and nodded back before turning to go.
Chloe exhaled, suddenly lighter.
She still flirted with the next customer. It was who she was. She told the woman her scarf was fabulous, asked a guy if his beard had its own Instagram account.
But when Beca came back to the counter to pick up her drink, Chloe leaned in, dropping her voice just for her.
“See you at six?” she murmured.
Beca’s fingers brushed hers deliberately as she took the cup.
“Yeah,” she said, eyes bright. “See you at six.”
For once, Chloe wasn’t sure which part of the day she was looking forward to more. The usual five minutes of banter, or the hours that might come after.
Maybe, she thought, as she watched Beca push open the door and step into the afternoon light, flirting didn’t have to be a game she played to avoid feeling anything.
Maybe, with the right person, it could be the first step toward something real.