The Ache Between Us

Vincent’s Coffee smells like burnt espresso and bleach.

Always has. Always will.

It’s wedged between a pawn shop and a discount dry cleaner, just off Third. The sign’s half-lit, the chairs wobble, and the floor behind the counter is always sticky no matter how many times you mop it.

I’ve been here three months. I told myself I’d only stay one, just enough to figure out what comes next. What I’m meant to do. Who I’m meant to be.

I’m still figuring.

Vincent says I need to be quicker on the register. He says I say “sorry” too much. That I let customers walk all over me. I don’t disagree. It’s easier to be stepped on than to stand firm and fall apart.

On Thursday morning, Shane starts.

Vincent doesn’t introduce him, just mutters, “He’s on training. Let him shadow you,” and disappears into the back to yell at inventory.

Shane doesn’t say much. He shrugs into the brown apron with all the grace of someone being dragged into a courtroom. He’s taller than I expect, maybe six foot, and he moves like someone who’s always half an inch from leaving. Black hoodie under his uniform. Ring on his middle finger. Hair a mess. No name tag. No smile.

We barely speak for the first hour.

“Milk?” I ask, during the lull between customers.

“Whole,” he says.

“Where’d you work before this?”

“Didn’t.”

I don’t push. I just pass him the milk jug and wipe down the counter again.

He works quietly, like he’s been doing it forever. No questions, no mistakes. I keep waiting for him to tell me I’m doing something wrong, the way Vincent does. He doesn’t. Just watches, makes coffee, and somehow gets customers to stop talking so much.

I watch him too.

Not because I’m curious or maybe because I’m curious. He looks like someone with history. Or grief. Like there’s a weight in his chest he hasn’t named yet. I feel that sometimes too. Like I’m not heavy enough to be here but too full to float.

By week two, I find myself hoping he’s on my shifts.

I don’t admit it, not out loud, not even to myself. But there’s something in the silence between us that makes me feel like I don’t have to perform.

One night, after close, I stay late to clean the pastry case. Shane is mopping near the front.

“You always do more than you’re paid for?” he asks.

I look up. He’s not smirking. Just watching me.

“I don’t like being told I missed a spot,” I say. “Vincent’s got eagle vision.”

He nods. “Yeah. And rage issues.”

I laugh. It slips out before I can stop it sudden and soft and unfamiliar. He hears it. Looks at me. Doesn’t smile, but his eyes flicker.

That’s the first time I realise he’s paying attention.

It starts with the book.

I don’t see him leave it just find it on the break room bench during my lunch. It’s old. The spine is cracked. Inside is a sticky note with all caps handwriting:

You talk like someone who’d get this.

I frown. Look around. The break room is empty. But the note is pressed flat, carefully. Not random.

I read the first chapter on my break.

Then take it home.

The next day, I leave it where I found it with a sticky note of my own:

Bit much. But I didn’t hate it.

The following shift, there’s another book. No comment. Just a title I’ve been meaning to read for years and never got around to.

That’s how it starts.

A quiet conversation in paperback.

He doesn’t say anything about the books. Not out loud. But the rhythm of it becomes sacred something neither of us talks about, but both of us keep feeding.

Sometimes he underlines a sentence.

Sometimes I write one back.

Once, I leave a note saying, Your taste in women must be chaotic if this is your taste in narrators.

The next shift, the book comes back with:

My taste is more careful than you think.

I don’t know what to do with that. So I keep reading.

I start writing again.

I used to, back in school. Nothing important. Just little scenes, scraps of things I never showed anyone. I stopped when someone said, “You’re too quiet to be a writer.” I believed them.

But now, I write on my break. In the corners of order pads. On napkins. On my phone under the counter when it’s slow. I don’t show Shane. But I wonder what he’d say.

I wonder a lot about what he’d say.

We grow closer in fragments.

He walks me part of the way home after evening shifts, always a step behind, like he’s making sure I get there without saying that’s what he’s doing.

Sometimes, he talks. He tells me he’s not from around here. That his family’s “complicated.” That he doesn’t sleep much, and that he reads because it keeps him sane.

Once, he asks me if I’ve ever wanted to disappear.

“All the time,” I say. “But mostly when someone starts yelling about almond milk substitutions.”

He huffs a laugh. It’s the closest I’ve seen him come to smiling.

Another time, I say, “You’re not what I expected.”

He glances at me. “What did you expect?”

I shrug. “Someone meaner. Or louder.”

He nods. “I used to be both.”

One night, I stay past close. I don’t tell him why.

But I think he knows. I was quiet during shift. Off.

“You okay?” he asks, as I mop the back corner.

I nod too quickly.

He puts down the mop and sits on the floor, back against the fridge.

“Sit,” he says. “Just for a second.”

I hesitate. Then I do.

The silence feels warmer than usual.

Finally, I say it: “I don’t think I’m good enough to do anything real.”

He doesn’t answer right away.

Then: “Who told you that?”

“I don’t know. Everyone. Me. The way people look at me when I say I don’t have a plan.”

He’s quiet. Then he says, “Why not try anyway? If other people get to, why can’t you?”

I look at him.

And he says it again, slower.

“Why not you?”

That’s when something shifts.

Something invisible and irreversible.

He leaves a week later.

Doesn’t show up to his shift. Vincent says he called and quit. Said something came up. Family stuff.

No warning. No goodbye.

I check the break room. I check the back door. I ask Vincent if he left anything. He shrugs.

I go home. My chest is caving in.

The next morning, I find a book taped to the staff locker with my name on it.

The Alchemist.

Inside, a note:

Sometimes we leave to come back. Sometimes we just leave. You’re going to write something that ruins people in the best way. Please, don’t wait for someone else to give you permission. Just start.

- S

I sit on the floor and cry until my shift starts.

It’s been years.

I don’t work at Vincent’s anymore.

But I still write.

And I still think of the boy who saw something in me quietly, gently, without asking for anything back.

The boy who never said goodbye, but gave me the courage to say hello to the rest of my life.

The boy who changed everything, just by handing me a book.