Page 65 of September

“It’s not just a casual dress,” Juliet replied as her eyes raked over Gwen’s body. “You looka lotmore than casual in that dress, Gwen.”

“Yeah?” She smirked.

“You look beautiful,” Juliet told her, raising her eyes to Gwen’s. “I probably look like a slob.”

“What? No, you don’t,” she said. “Trust me, you donotlook like a slob. You look hot, honestly. Like, that hat thing is good for you.”

“It’s good for me?” Juliet laughed.

“Yes, it really works for you with your hair down like that.”

“It’s more practical than anything.”

“Practical?”

“Yeah. And I really, really hate to ask you to do this, but do you mind changing out of that dress and into something that’s actually casual?”

“Really? Where are we going?”

“Can you just wear it on another date? Like, any other date?”

Gwen smiled and said, “Fine, but I’m not wearing a hat. It took me forever to get my hair like this.”

“Fine, but you’ll have to wear a hairnet,” Juliet replied, confusing Gwen even more now.

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“I brought you a hat just in case you changed your mind about wearing it,” Juliet told her when they walked inside the building.

“You really brought me to your work on a date?”

“It’s not really my work. I don’t work at the roastery,” Juliet said. “And I thought it would be something fun for us to do. We can roast a bag of coffee just for us to drink.”

Gwen smiled over at her and said, “I assume someone will teach me what to do?”

She took the baseball hat Juliet held out and put it on her head.

Juliet turned to her, straightened the hat for her a little, and replied, “Yes. I’ve got a master roaster showing us how it’s done. Come on.”

She took Gwen’s hand, pulling her through the best-smelling warehouse building Gwen had ever been in, and a few minutes later, they watched on as a guy named Michael, the master roaster, explained to them the roasting process.

“First, we start by loading the beans into our drum inside the roaster. It rotates over gas burners and agitates the coffee, which is what we want. We generally do much larger batches here, but Juliet made a special request, and she is the best, so we don’t mind making a small one for her.”

The guy winked at Juliet.

Gwen gave him a glare and said, “Sheisthe best, isn’t she?”

“This roast is for espresso,” he continued after taking in her glare. “Juliet said you wanted to try that.”

“She did, huh?”

“I know you like the medium roast, but I thought you’d like your very own espresso,” Juliet said.

“I do. Thank you,” Gwen replied and returned her attention to Michael.

“These beans are actually from right here in Louisiana. We normally import coffee beans here, but there are a few local growers with mainly indoor facilities since coffee prefers diffused light rather than direct sunlight. When we roast, we typically do it for around twelve to fifteen minutes using three and a half kilos of raw green beans. In this case, though, it’s a much smaller batch, so it won’t take as long.” Michael motioned to a giant bowl of beans in front of him. “It’s what we call a washed process,which means when the coffee fruit gets picked, all the pulp and skin get removed before it gets dried in the drying process. This makes the coffees really clean and balanced, with a lot of sweetness, which is what we want.”

He smiled at Juliet.