Читать книгу Kit: A Story from the collection, I Am Heathcliff - Juno Dawson, Juno Dawson - Страница 7

I DESERVE NO LESS, but before you judge me harshly, I need you to know I’m not that girl. I’m really not. I’m not the cartoon-silhouette girl on the chick-lit novel with the kitten heels and shopping bags. I don’t girlishly trip and stumble into whimsical new love affairs every time I leave the flat. I don’t wait by the phone. I don’t imagine what I would sound like with a different last name.

But he was different.

With him I became someone else. And so fast I shocked even myself.

The first meeting – mere weeks ago, although it feels like years – has taken on sweeping cinematography. They were refurbishing Pret A Manger, and I don’t care for the battery-acid aftertaste of Café Nero, so I went, with a certain smugness, into our local independent, Roaster. It’s all exposed copper pipes, Edison bulbs, and upturned tea chests as tables. I was raging at how a coffee shop could have possibly sold out of almond croissants before nine in the morning when first I laid eyes on him.

He emerged from behind the coffee machine, a vortex of steam hissing and swirling around him. Under his apron – thumpingly masculine with its coarse fabric and rusty fasteners – he wore a Breton shirt, rolled almost to the shoulder. Both forearms were a jotter pad of tiny tattoo doodles. Across his knuckles, from right to left, were the words CRUEL ABYSS. A tidal wave of raven-black hair, with flecks and stripes of silver, tumbled over his forehead and over his right eye. His beard was long, but not unkempt.

But it was the eyes. Isn’t it always? Framed by a flat, dissatisfied brow were the bluest blue eyes I’d ever seen. Not wishy-washy grey-blue. Blue, like the sky.

He slammed the metal milk jugs around as though he was mad at them. I suppose no one particularly delights in making coffee for strangers on a Monday morning.

‘Can I help you?’ the girl asked, and I suspect she was repeating herself.

‘Oh. Yes.’ She rolled her eyes. She must have caught me staring at her colleague. ‘A skinny latte and a porridge please.’

‘Plain, cinnamon, or jam?’

‘Cinnamon.’

He never once looked my way.

As soon as I got to the office, I exploded all over Nell. ‘Oh my God! Have you seen that guy who works at Roaster?’

She smiled and put down her granola pot. ‘Oh you must mean Dane.’

‘Dane?’

‘Great Dane. Irish? Blue eyes? Very … brooding?’

‘That’s him. Holy fuck, he’s lovely.’

‘Yeah, bit of a miserable fucker though.’ She returned to her yoghurt, prodding it with a plastic spoon. I wished she wouldn’t get plastic spoons when we have perfectly reusable, steel ones in the kitchen. ‘Is granola good for you?’

‘No,’ I told her flatly, not done talking about Dane. ‘When he looks like that, who cares?’ I sat in my seat and switched my computer on. The familiar, stomach-deep dread at opening my inbox awoke along with the monitor. ‘Although he is only a barista.’ I stopped, knowing it sounded both snobbish and a little unhinged to be mentally planning our future. Why did it even matter what he did?

‘Actually he’s not,’ Nelly said.

‘Not what?’

‘Not just a barista. He’s a pretty well-known photographer too. His brother owns the Roaster chain – he just helps out I think.’

Well that changed everything. A photographer, an artist. That explained his bad mood. He’d rather be off, I thought, taking pictures of despondent Londoners, not being one. When I was at school I was briefly interested in photography, but my friend Bella told me I was being a hipster try-hard so I soon gave up the hobby. ‘Oh, OK. Interesting. Do you know how old he is? Does he have a girlfriend? Is he straight?’

Nelly laughed. ‘Oh Jesus. Stalker much? I dunno, babes. Erm, definitely straight. I think. No idea about the rest.’

There was only one thing for it. I counted down turgid minutes all through a hugely tedious brand meeting with a client before heading back to Roaster for lunch. Nelly reliably informed me they did delicious organic superfood salad boxes.

As I tried to decide between kale or quinoa, I saw an opportunity and took it. He was clearing the table just next to the chiller cabinet. ‘Which do you think?’ I asked. ‘Kale or quinoa?’

At first, I thought he was either ignoring me or had simply zoned out. After a terrible silence where I feared he might just walk away, he realised I was waiting for a reply. ‘Oh. Erm … personally I’d get the bacon-and-egg roll.’ He offered a half-smile, a curl in the right edge of his lip.

I returned the smile. ‘Kale it is.’

‘Don’t say you weren’t warned. Rabbit food.’

I carried the little box of salad to the counter. It was almost two. I guessed the lunchtime rush was over. Sure enough, the waitress was sitting having her lunch, a Tupperware box filled with last night’s chow mein, at the corner table. ‘I’ll have that and a skinny chai latte please,’ I said.