Page 48 of Nine-Tenths

"You're an asshole and I hate you!" I call after him.

"No, you don't!" he calls back, raising one hand in a fond salute.

Chapter Fourteen

"Wipe the cardamom honey around inside of the glass, okay, now the espresso, good, and now the foam," I say, talking Dav through assembling a latte for some influencer-type waiting impatiently at the end of the service counter. Hadi is needed in the kitchen to make more scones, so Dav's joined me in manning the machines.

"There you are," he says to the influencer, and all her irritation vanishes when he turns on his charm. She winks.Myirritation spikes. As soon as the latte is out of his hands, I tug on his belt loop to get his attention, and peck a quick kiss off his lips.

Dav's Customer Service Charm melts into something besotted. I send a catty glance at the influencer, because I'm a possessive bitch, okay?

But she just says "cute", and takes the last empty club chair by the front window to give her latte a glamour shoot. It's gonna be cold before she takes a sip, but that's not my problem.

Every new social media post is free advertising for us.

Predictably, my back pocket vibrates about five minutes later, when I catch her actually drinking her latte out of the corner of my eye. I've got the Beanevolence accounts on my device today, because Hadi couldn’t keep up. Prepping to add the influencer’s post to our stories with one hand while I pull espresso with the other, I nearly drop my phone into the compost bin when I actuallylookat the thing. The first photo of the series isn't of the coffee, or even the café itself.

It's me and Dav.

Kissing.

I send her another glare and she winks again.

Fuck if it isn't a good pic, though.

It's a dramatic angle, the lower edge of the photo framed with the beaten-copper counter. Dav's hair has been color-corrected to match it, both of them gleaming. The kiss itself is light, like that optical illusion of the silhouettes nose-to-nose so it looks like a chalice in the negative space between them. Except there's no chalice, just the steam rising from the espresso machine like fairy tale fog. Dav's profile is classic: the carved-out lips, the beaky British nose, the groomed eyebrows, the classic swoop of hair. I look like an exhausted trash goblin: weak chin covered in scruff, unravelling yarn ball-esque hair, the knobby nose I inherited from my nan, the perpetual bags under my eyes that moved in at the start of my first-year exams and never packed off.

But I look happy.

Iamhappy.

Dav looks happy, too.

I hope he is.

I waffle for a second—my kisses don't need to be all over Beanevolence’s social media feeds—and then I think,What's wrong with putting a little happiness out in the world?, and hit 'repost'. It's not like there isn't a rainbow flag sticker right above the door handle. If showing two men kissing on our feed loses us some customers? Well, we don't want homophobes in our café in the first place, anyway, thanks very much.

Then I get back to the rush of making complicated coffees and 'accidentally' bumping into Dav whenever I get the opportunity.

Okay, so it turns out she was notjustan influencer. She was a reporter from a lifestyle website famous for listicles. A day later, suddenlyEight Things We Are Dying Over At This Cute St. Kitts Caféis out there, and hundreds of thousands of people have been emailed a copy of the picture of me kissing Dav in their newsletter.

Shit.

It's Gemma who alerts me to it with some pop-eyed emojis and a link.

I'm standing in the kitchen, having popped back for a glass of water and a quick check of my phone. Dav’s abandoned the cauldron, resting his chin on my shoulder, arms around my hips, when I make a choked squeaking noise.

"What is it?" he rumbles into my ear and yes please, that's nice.

"The kiss heard round the world. Fuck. Sorry, babe."

Dav turns his attention away from where he was snuffling behind my ear (tickles!).The website lists the attractions of Beanevolence in the following order, with high-contrast, luscious photographs designed to make your mouth water.

1. The Coffee

This is a close up of our canisters behind the counter, the sunlight glinting off the glass.

2. The Bean Roaster