Coffee and Cafés - Book Two of the Café Latte Trilogy

Welcome Home Coffee

Hey hey! Happy New Year, my loves. I hope you had a fantastic holiday season, whatever you celebrate. I had Yule, as I am Pagan, which I celebrated with my lovely partner Joe and our lovely cats. We had a wintery feast, gave thanks for those who got us through the year, and celebrated the lives of those we've lost.

We are fully isolated as the UK has dealt with COVID by largely pretending it doesn't exist (shockingly, that hasn't worked). The end of my PhD is looming large (roughly in August), and I am fully not ready to become Dr Cameron Pattinson! Joe, my partner, just bought a house and we're coming up to our fifth anniversary. We're also going to be getting a third furry goblin (cat).

All of this has led to me not being able to update books as often as I'd love to. Writing an 80,000 word thesis on psychology is so much harder than writing 150,000 words of fiction. If only my word count on my PhD progressed as quickly as the word count of my books.

How was your December, lovely readers? I send all my warmest virus-free hugs.

Also there's sex in this chapter. Previous maturity warnings apply.

Love, Cam.

♡

Welcome Home Coffee

I braced myself, staring at my phone. I had procrastinated so wildly to avoid this topic that I had cleaned the house, caught up on my work, emailed a few clients, banged Angelo, eaten a whole tiramisu, and gone through Edward's new set with him over Skype.

"Dude," Ross said heavily, walking past my room to find me staring at my phone. "You've officially surpassed the length of time that is respectable to avoid making a phone call. Do it now."

I glared at him. "It's not like I'm trying to call customer service here, these are my biological parents, dickhead."

Ross rolled his eyes. "Yeah, cause everyone here doesn't understand complicated parent relationships or anything."

He had a point. I sighed and kicked my foot out to close the door in his face, picking up the phone and pressing the green button on the screen. Their number had been dialled in for hours but I hadn't called them once. I desperately hoped for their voicemail.

"Hello?"

I cursed internally; not their voicemail. Then I realised that with all my procrastinating, I hadn't thought of what to say. I was immediately torn between 'I got your letter' and 'hi, how are you?', so I cleverly said, "How is your letter?"

"Excuse me?" the voice said, sounding confused. "I... Tom, is that you?"

I cringed. "Yeah, sorry. Hi."

The voice, which I presumed belonged to Savannah, softened and said, "Hi."

Then we had a few beats of silence, in which I realised that verbal awkwardness clearly ran in the family. I cleared my throat uncomfortably. "So... I, uhh, got your letter."

"Good, that's good," Savannah said, and then added, "Tom's out at the moment, but I know he'd be happy you called."

"Cool," I replied, the very picture of calmness and eloquence. "What's he up to?"

"Oh, he's at work," Savannah replied lightly. "He works in insurance."

I awkwardly joked, "Well, that's a classic dad job, isn't it?"

Savannah laughed a bit. I liked her laugh, even though it was strained. It was light and airy. She said, "Yes, Susie thinks so."

I hesitated. "That's my sister?"