I want You Deeper

There was a term in the restaurant business that referred to being completely overwhelmed. “In the weeds.” Alyssa knew it all too well from her time waiting tables during college. She and Emily were, without a doubt, in the weeds this morning.

She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but they were even busier today than the day before. The phone was ringing off the hook, mostly with questions about whether they delivered, but neither of them had time to answer it. They’d tried at first, but the person on the other end of the line had hung up, only for it to ring again. It eventually came down to a choice between talking on the phone and taking care of the line of customers in front of them.

“This has too much vanilla.”

“This isn’t a latte.”

“Could I get another shot of espresso in this?”

The complaints rolled in without stopping. Alyssa was making the orders as written on the cup-or so she thought-but when the cup came back, it seemed to always turn out to be her fault, not Emily’s. She had to find a way to focus.

Yeah, she had Jeremy on the brain.

At the start of the morning, she’d felt like she was floating on a cloud. Remembering that kiss had gotten her through the boring tasks that came with opening the cafe. But her dreamlike state was short-lived. There was a small group gathered outside the door when they opened, and it didn’t let up until just after lunch.

“Whatever happened to people drinking coffee in the morning?” Alyssa asked as they watched the last of their counter customers walk out. There were a few people scattered around, seated in front of laptops or catching up with friends. Even that was more than they usually saw this time of day.

“Coffee. It’s not just for breakfast anymore.”

Alyssa frowned, struggling to remember where she’d heard that before.

“I thought that was orange juice.”

“Yeah, we’ll have to come up with a different slogan.”

“Slogan! That’s what we’re missing.”

Alyssa pulled out her phone and checked. Annoyingly, she’d been hoping for a text from Jeremy. Maybe something saying he missed her, or he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Nothing.

“I don’t think we need any other reason for people to come in.” Emily stepped around to wipe off the back counter. “Hopefully, this will normalize soon. I don’t know if we can keep up this pace.”

“That’s just it,” Alyssa said. “If we want-”

Her voice cut off when she saw the first email waiting in her inbox. She’d set up an alert to let her know if the coffee shop was mentioned anywhere online. The notification was no surprise, as much attention as they’d been getting lately, but when she pulled it up, she saw there was more than one mention, and most of them were reviews.

“What?” Emily said. “If we want what?”

Alyssa shook her head. She couldn’t remember what she’d been saying before, and it didn’t even matter anymore. She could see from the brief text under each headline mentioned in the email that these reviews were not good.

And she didn’t know how to break it to Emily.

“Is everything okay?”

The problem was, that Emily was standing in front of her now, looking at her with concern. It was pretty obvious Alyssa had seen something on her screen that had slowed her to a full stop. But she could easily imagine the crushed expression on her friend’s face if she broke the news to her about the bad reviews.

So she clicked on one that took her to one of their social media platforms. That message was a good one. A photo of someone’s latte art, similar to the dozens that had been posted yesterday. She held it up to show Emily.

“Just more free publicity.” Alyssa forced a smile to her face. “As I was saying, I think we need to focus on keeping customers coming back after all the attention dies down.”

“You think it will die down?” Emily frowned. Not quite crushed, but worried. So much for protecting her friend.

“I think that anything like this has a short shelf life. Remember that

Italian restaurant we tried on opening night?” Emily nodded.

“We’ll go back…eventually.” Heck, she went with Emily’s brother just a couple of days ago. “But there’s no rush. And if the food had been horrible or we’d experienced really bad service, we wouldn’t have ever gone back.”

“And we would have told others,” Emily added.

Uh-oh. They were venturing dangerously close to online review territory. She needed to steer the conversation away from that.

“Exactly.” Alyssa slid her phone into her back pocket and turned to the espresso machine to start closing procedures. “We have to focus on making the customer experience so great, that we keep as many people coming back as possible. It may just be half or one-fourth, or even one-tenth of what we saw today, but loyal customers are the goal.”

“How do we do that?”

That was what Alyssa had been puzzling over all day while they’d struggled to keep up. She knew every single customer who complained about the wait or incorrect drink orders could very well be a lost cause. But she’d concentrated on being friendly and apologetic and hoped it would make a difference.

“I think we’re going to need some help.”Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

Alyssa hated to say those words, but they were unavoidable. The facts were right in front of them. They could not handle this crowd, not at the rate they were coming in. Even if it died down, Alyssa couldn’t put in these hours forever.

It was time to start thinking about her replacement. The problem was, that she couldn’t bring herself to suggest it to Emily. It was best for the cafe, but she could already feel the pain that coming in here to find someone else standing in her place would bring.

The sound of the cafe door opening pulled her from her thoughts, reminding her they’d forgotten to change the sign to “closed.” She was grateful she hadn’t gotten too far in her closing procedures. They already had enough trouble right now without making a customer mad by being closed when she wanted to order.

As soon as Alyssa looked up, though, she knew the woman coming toward the counter wasn’t here for coffee. It was the reporter from yesterday. Was she back to ask about the bad reviews? A follow-up to yesterday’s interviews?

“Hi.” Renee Forrester flashed them a big smile, showing off her perfectly straight, bright white teeth. Camera-ready at all times, of course. “I was wondering if your brother is around.”

Alyssa promptly stepped out of the discussion, heading to the far end of the counter to clean up the mess she’d made with her latte art. If she stayed near Renee, she feared she’d let Emily see that Renee’s interest in Jeremy bothered her.

“Nope. He’s at work. Do you want me to tell him you dropped by?”

“I’ll just stop by there. Thanks. And keep up the good work.”

With that, Renee spun and drifted toward the door. That was the best way to describe the way she walked. She drifted, moving gracefully and smoothly like she was gliding on a pair of skates.

“Maybe I should warn Jer.” Emily watched Renee’s exit, biting her lip.

“He’s not going to like this.”

“Like what?”

Alyssa’s goal was to pretend she didn’t care about any of this, but she honestly didn’t understand what her best friend meant. A beautiful woman chasing him around town? Jeremy should love that. Even if he didn’t, Emily didn’t know a thing about the kisses her best friend and brother had shared. It only seemed natural that Alyssa would assume Emily’s brother would welcome Renee’s attention.

And Alyssa had a sinking feeling he would.

“This woman is just going to show up at his work, sounds like,” Emily said, heading around the counter.

Emily went to the door and flipped the sign off, showing they were no longer open. The customers took the hint and started packing up. She waited until she was behind the counter to continue talking to Alyssa, though.

“It’s kind of creepy, don’t you think? I mean, just showing up in someone’s lobby?”

This put Alyssa in a weird position. She wanted to believe Jeremy would be completely creeped out by it. But he could also see it as romantic or, at the very least, flattering that this beautiful woman had tracked him down and shown up to demonstrate her interest.

“Oops. Never mind.”

That caught Emily’s attention. She looked up from her work to see her friend staring at her phone. Her first thought was that Emily had somehow discovered the bad reviews. Alyssa straightened, prepared to comfort Emily if what she saw upset her.

Emily held up her phone. “Jeremy’s on his way here. He said to tell you to change into something professional. You have a meeting.”