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A nyone else would probably have unravelled completely if they were kissed on the doorstep by the straight man they were secretly—and, they assumed, safely—in love with.

I, however, was a champion at repressing my emotions.

A random little peck on the lips from Kevin meant nothing, and I was completely unbothered all weekend long.

Was it weird?

Yes, it was.

Was it wildly unexpected?

Hell, yes. At no point when I woke up on Saturday morning did I expect to have Kevin hold me in place while he kissed me, twice, before swaggering off looking pleased with himself.

I did, however, expect Kevin to freak out about it after the fact.

I was pretty indignant to discover that, out of the two of us, I was definitely the one freaking out.

By Monday morning, despite my valiant attempts at repressing everything, I couldn’t pretend to myself anymore.

I was a mess.

I got to the coffee shop a full hour early, took the chairs down off the tables and had everything set up so far in advance of opening time and my first customer that I had, predictably, an hour to kill and nothing to do.

After a few agitated laps of the main shop, pausing now and then to realign already straight chairs and dust already spotless tabletops, I flung off to the kitchen where I rummaged around in the fridge, took out a carton of milk, and fired up the La Marzocco to make a few practice lattes.

I didn’t do it at the coffee shop all that often. Considering the price of a pint of milk these days and the fact I enjoyed the artistic pursuit but not the taste, I didn’t do it at home all that often, either. But I needed something to distract me. In about two hours, Kevin was going to walk through that door and I was worried, okay?

I plugged the grinder in and poured my first load of beans into the hopper. I started it up and sniffed the air appreciatively as the rich roast was pulverised.

Perfection.

The thing I worried about most was that Kevin would be angry.

In my experience, people tended to not like things—or other people—who challenged their core beliefs. While I didn’t have any insight into Kevin’s core beliefs, until his lips had hit mine, he’d at least presented as a man who was into women, not other men.

And all right, I had no reason to think he was a homophobe. He was friends with Jasper, he knew Adam, he clearly liked and respected Ray. And me. He was nice to me. He was sweet to me, and friendly, and then…well. More than friendly.

He was…

I sighed, filled the portafilter basket with coffee and clipped it into the group head. I set a couple of shot glasses ready on the drip tray.

He was lovely.

That really was the word for Kevin. Lovely. A sweetheart. A nice guy. A good guy.

But he could still be an angry guy. He could blame me for the kiss, even though he was the one who’d kissed me.

I still didn’t know why he’d done it. I’d gone over and over it in my mind. I wanted to say that it had come out of nowhere, but in retrospect, it hadn’t.

There had been a few flashes of possibility at the gym. That focused look. A handful of innocent-seeming comments that, when I looked back, landed a little differently. His hands on me, the way he stood close. The way he’d driven me home, opened my car door, escorted me up the drive, wheedled his way inside.

I’d thought it at the time—it was almost as if we were on a date.

Had Kevin been doing it on purpose? Or had he been as surprised by it as I was?

The parting kiss on the doorstep had felt instinctive. Natural. He hadn’t shuffled about, looked awkward, and then gone for it. It had been easy.

The first kiss, anyway. The second kiss was definitely deliberate.

I shoved the metal jug of milk under the steam wand and gave it a good blast.

Would it be worse to have him be angry at me? Or would it be worse to have him be embarrassed and awkward?

Ugh.

I didn’t want him to be any of those things. I’d never seen him anything but steady in my life.

I took down a large white cup, set it on the counter, and made a latte. Concentrating, I topped it off with a layer of foam and drew a big, simple heart on the surface.

I stared at it.

Kevin’s emotions, I told myself firmly, were Kevin’s emotions. I couldn’t control them or manage them.

They weren’t my business.

They felt like my business when Kevin’s emotions compelled Kevin to put his mouth on mine, but they weren’t.

I picked up a wooden stirrer and drew it slowly through the heart once, and then again. I X-ed it out. It looked awful. I briskly stirred it up, then tossed the lot down the sink.

Whatever happened, I was going to be fine about it.

I made another latte and tried out a feather. I didn’t quite nail it, but it wasn’t as bad as the heart.

If being obsessed with latte art was my secret, then my secret-secret was that I was pretty shit at it. I was getting there, though.

By the time I’d made two more, I was in my zone, in my groove, feeling relaxed. After six thirty, people started trickling in. Most of them ordered drinks to go. They rushed out clutching their cups to wait at the bus stop right outside the shop, or else scurried off in the direction of the tiny town carpark, or to one of the side roads where they’d illegally dropped their car long enough to dash in and get their fix.

I had a few regulars who liked to drink their first cup at a slower pace, such as Mrs Hughes who worked in the bookshop opposite The Chipped Cup, and Ray, who liked to camp out at my back table and hog it for two hours straight on one cappuccino.

With the best will in the world, I couldn’t handle all of these customers myself. When Amalie fucked off to Belize—or Bali, or wherever she went, I didn’t care—I had to cave and hire some part-time baristas.

At first, I’d had a high turnover of students looking for a cool, Instagrammable job. Most of them only lasted a couple of weeks before they peaced out.

A few took the opportunity to give me an unasked-for exit interview as they headed out the door, making sure I knew that I was too intense and should lighten up. It was just coffee, man. This wasn’t, like, their end point. Their dream. It wasn’t as if anyone wanted to make a career out of being a barista, right?

Thankfully, I’d found a couple of steady part-timers I could depend on.

Milly was nineteen, earnest and hardworking, Pippa was sixty-three, talkative and competent, and after six months of working as a team, I’d decided that we could manage with the three of us, and stopped advertising.

Yes, I ended up putting in more hours than was good for me, but when it came down to it, I’d rather do that than keep hiring and firing people.

After all that worrying about how Kevin was going to behave when I next saw him, in the end I missed him. Pippa was working that morning, and I must have been in the back emptying the dishwasher and unpacking the latest bean delivery when he came in.

I didn’t doubt that he would come in. He did it every single day without fail.

Sometimes, if he was working, he was with Craig. Sometimes he was with friends. Sometimes he came at nine, other times it was closer to eleven.

But he always came.

So when the lunch rush passed and I still hadn’t seen him, I decided that he must have come in when I was busy in the kitchen.

Unless…

I froze in the middle of carrying a tray of clean cups out to Pippa at the counter.

There was a chance that, for the first time in as long as I could remember, he hadn’t come in at all.

That he was so busy feeling whatever it was he was feeling about the kiss, he’d avoided The Chipped Cup altogether.

I might never see him again.

No, that was stupid. Of course I’d see him again. Even if he did stop coming to The Chipped Cup and decided that he was a Starbucks kind of guy now, I’d see him around town. I could still see him at the gym. If I ever went to the gym again.

Actually, if Kevin decided that he was a Starbucks kind of guy, I’d hunt him down and tell him to get over himself, you didn’t pass up my great coffee for Starbucks, and while I was at it, what the hell was he even thinking ?—

“Charlie, what on earth is wrong with you today?” Pippa said.

“What?” I blinked down at her concerned face. She was five feet two inches tall, fine-boned as a house sparrow, and the most stylish woman I’d ever known.

The shop’s uniform was technically black trousers, black bistro Crocs or the comfortable, work-safe flat shoe of your choice, and a black t-shirt with The Chipped Cup printed on the front in a white sans serif font.

Milly and I stuck to the rules and wore our uniforms.

Pippa did not.

Pippa interpreted the uniform, by which I mean that Pippa wore tailored black capri pants to show off her delicate ankles, ballet flats, and a white silk blouse that, along with her expensive, pixie-cut mahogany hair, made her look less Cotswolds barista and more classic-Hollywood Audrey Hepburn.

I didn’t even think about arguing with her. She classed up the joint.

I did draw the line at letting her class me up, though. I wasn’t wearing a shirt and waistcoat to work on a daily basis no matter how ‘dashing’ I’d look.

“You’ve been utterly distracted all morning,” she said.

I set the tray down on the counter. “I’ve got things on my mind. Just…things. Personal stuff. Nothing to worry about.”

She didn’t seem convinced. “I’m here if you want to talk about it.”

“Thanks. I’m fine, though. Hey, did Kevin Wallis come in at all this morning?” I refused to spend anymore time fretting about it. Enough was enough. If she asked why I wanted to know, I’d fob her off with a vague gym-related comment.

“Kevin? Of course he did. That boy loves his pastries. I’ll tell you what, though.” She raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “He had a latte rather than a flat white.”

“Weird,” I said, because she was clearly expecting some sort of commentary.

“That’s what I thought. Now, I know he likes to get a bit adventurous with his pastries, but he’s never once ordered anything to drink other than his flat white. I said to him, ‘Kevin, are you sure you want a latte?’ And he said to me, ‘Ms Carrington, I’m moving on from the flat white. I’m big into lattes now.’ And I said, ‘What brought this on, you haven’t been to Starbucks or anything have you because you know Charlie will lose his shit if you have and he finds out,’ and he said no. Said he was talking to a friend about lattes over the weekend and he got curious.”

“Huh,” I said.

A customer came up to the counter and Pippa turned to them with a welcoming smile. A quick glance around told me that everything was under control. I slipped into the kitchen to lean against the back wall and stare at my Crocs.

Well.

He didn’t sound angry .