Luca Chessman has been longing for love his entire life. The only problem is-he can't seem to find a guy that likes him the same way.
With his family cafe, Chessman's, struggling to keep afloat and no help from the bank, he's slowly accepting the d...
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It's six o'clock in the morning. On the dot.
I never used to be a morning person but through my early shifts and little sleep, I've been forced into being a morning person. I wouldn't even say it's a lifestyle, it's more like a personal hell. But I have to endure it for the sake of our family business.
Chessman's has been in our family for almost forty years.
It has moved all over England until we settled here for the last five years.
My mother, Hazel, grew up learning how to make fresh coffee and signature drinks. My grandparents were the true owners but they gave it to my mum when the time was right and they were considering retiring.
They've passed now but we keep this legacy to remember them by. It was their livelihood, their passion and I love knowing how proud they would have been of us for what we've achieved in that time.
The shop for Chessman's in which my grandparents ran was up in the North of England. My mother moved us away from her home because of my asshole father, she wanted nothing to do with him anymore so she packed all of our stuff and moved to the south.
Not once looking back.
So we found this nice little space in a quiet town. We could have opted for London but the buildings cost far too much and my mother was adamant we'd buy and pay it off as a second mortgage.
The sad news is, we haven't paid off the mortgage on the cafe or our house. But we still try to get by.
With the cost of living rising, people aren't coming to cafe's as much as people expect. Some days it's like a ghost down and when we see how much money we have in the till after a day's work, it's like we shouldn't have even opened that day at all.
We're not earning as much as we were four years ago, it's like there has been an apocalypse and half the population wiped out. I hate seeing how much it upsets my mother but we have to admit, we're struggling.
I grab the mop and bucket from the backroom and start cleaning the floors. I was too tired to do it last night and now I'm regretting it. My mother stands at the counter, sifting through pieces of paper and then cursing to herself.
"Are you going to the bank again today?" I ask her.
My mum raises a hand to her face and presses it into the skin, a deep, morbid sigh falling from her lips. "For the sixth time in the last two months, yes. No doubt it's going to be the same damn answer. But I have to keep trying, there must be something they can do."
I slant my lips to the side at her words. The bank pretty much refuses to give us a loan to help out with keeping our mortgage payments, otherwise we can say goodbye to this cafe and a second goodbye to our house. That's my biggest fear, having nowhere to sleep.
