Tuesday & Max

5

I NEVER KNEW

JUST WHAT IT WAS

ABOUT THIS OLD COFFEE SHOP

I LOVE SO MUCH

The first time Tuesday visits The Busy Bean, she falls in love.

A stone's throw away from Central College, she wanders into the little café one day, laptop in her bag, avoiding first period Media. The teacher is so mind-numbing that half of the class have transferred already; even Max doesn't bother to show his face, although that doesn't surprise her, considering his history.

The door rings as she opens it. To her immediate left is a wall of black bookshelves stuffed with a rainbow of paper and hardbacks. Tables, high and low, and various chairs and sofas of different sizes, style and shape litter the floor, but the most overwhelming number of items that fill the space are the huge plant pots everywhere, spilling green into the room.

Walking toward the counter, Tuesday thinks she steps on a loose leaf, but then looks down and realises it's a scrap of paper. She picks it up, and a person sitting at a table nearby grabs her attention by clearing their throat. Giving it a cursory glance before apologising and passing it over, Tuesday sees that it's full of words in scrawled handwriting. As she joins the end of the queue, the guy she handed it back to writes a few more words on it and then stands up, moves to the bookshelf, and blu-tacks the scrap onto one of the thick, wooden frames of a bookcase already littered with paper. He slots the book he'd been reading at the table in close to the note.

Reviews, Tuesday realises. People read the books and write pint-sized reviews for the other customers. Awesome.

The rest of the café manages to balance an industrial warehouse look, with its bare brick walls, and an odd sort of cosiness; probably down to the handwritten chalkboard menus on the walls and mismatched mugs.

She can just see herself, sitting with her mother on a table by the window. Her mother has something green and disgusting in her cup and is writing in a planner; dates for festivals, maybe, or client details. Her mother is a travelling florist, still. Her mother, in this daydream and so many others, is alive.

"Tuesday!"

Hearing her name jolts her back into the present and she recognises Daliyah behind the counter. Tuesday can't help but think of the night at The Doe, the conversation she eavesdropped upon, Daliyah's unwitting complicity with Naomi's plans for Jack. Her smile, when she returns it, is a little stiff.

"Oh—wow—hi! You work here?"

"Yeah. What can I get you? I can't believe we haven't seen you since the pool night."

"Could I get a hot chocolate, please? How are you guys doing?"

Daliyah rolls her eyes as she collects a blue mug with white birds printed on it. "Fine. The boys are disgusting. Albie was eating rice with his bank card yesterday because he couldn't be bothered to wash up a fork. I'm like, the fuck wrong with you? And he just laughs. He just laughs."

"Creative thinking."

"I guess you could think of it that way. Cream?"

"What?"

"On your chocolate?"

"Oh—no thanks." Tuesday glances around again as a brief silence settles over the two of them. "This place is so nice. What's it like to work here?"