I want You Deeper

The coffee shop had never seemed so quiet.

That was Alyssa’s overriding thought as she stood behind the counter, a cup of steamed milk in hand, trying very unsuccessfully to make a Wi-Fi symbol. Jeremy was standing all too close to her, searching in vain for some sort of instruction manual.

“I think you can only do solid shapes,” he said, staring at his screen. “That’s why you always see hearts.”

She frowned, staring down into the barely full coffee cup. “There are those flowers I see.”

“Connected by a stem. What shapes have you done?”

“Hearts.” The word came out pinched like she’d been forced to admit it. “I also did an acorn once. But, yeah, they were connected. I thought maybe there was a trick.”

Setting his phone down, he came over to look down at her cup. There was no way she could pour with him watching like that. Would it be rude to ask him to step back?

If she did that, he’d assume it was because she didn’t like him being in her space. In truth, she liked it a little too much.

“Stencils!” Alyssa blurted out the second it hit her brain. She’d studied up on latte art a while ago when she was procrastinating at work. She vaguely remembered reading about a stencil that could help create latte art.

“Stencils.” As Jeremy said the word, he was staring at her quizzically, probably wondering if she’d finally flipped her lid. “What about them?” “Watch.”

She wasn’t sure how she was going to demonstrate this, but she had to see if it would work. She filled up the coffee cup with the steamed milk, then reached for the nearby cinnamon shaker. Making a circle with her thumb and forefinger and placing it as close as possible to the liquid surface, she sprinkled the cinnamon.

It made nothing resembling a circle, but he could see her point from that, she was pretty sure. With a stencil, they could make whatever shape they wanted.

“I like it,” he said. “But maybe you could do different kinds of symbols.”Content bel0ngs to Nôvel(D)r/a/ma.Org.

Alyssa looked up. “What do you mean?”

Their gazes met and held, and she tried to tell herself it was nothing. They weren’t sharing a moment here. Nope. She was just stuck in her adolescent fantasies where Jeremy was attracted to her.

He looked back down at his screen again and started tapping around on it. “Grab a bunch of stencils and do one every day. Or alternate on the same day. Customers will show up to see which one they’ll get. Kind of like fortune cookies. They’ll compare with their friends. Maybe…you could customize the stencils to the personality of the person placing the order.”

Frowning, Alyssa thought about that for a moment. The last part sounded complicated, but he did have a great idea there. Changing up the stencils would make it a fun surprise for each customer.

“The biggest part of that is social sharing,” Alyssa finally said. “Customers will snap photos and upload them. That’s the best way to market a business these days. It’s an even better version of word of mouth.”

“Come with me.”

Jeremy was already halfway around the counter, leaving Alyssa standing there, wondering what was going on. They couldn’t leave.

“Emily will expect us back.” Alyssa looked toward the door that led to Emily’s apartment.

“She won’t care. Guaranteed, she’s napping right now. If she wonders where we went, she’ll text.”

As she reluctantly followed him to his SUV, Alyssa realized her hesitation had nothing to do with Emily expecting them. She didn’t want to upset Emily by hanging out with her brother too much. It was no secret that Emily was protective of her big brother, especially to Alyssa, who had watched her best friend make life miserable for any girl her brother ever dated.

Not that Alyssa would ever have a chance with Jeremy. But if, by some odd chance, he did see her as more than his kid sister’s best friend, she could imagine Emily would be especially upset about it. Nobody wanted her sibling to start dating her best friend. That was just…weird.

Still, that didn’t stop her from going along with Jeremy’s plan. She told herself it was all for work as she sat in the passenger seat of his SUV while he drove out of the parking garage and hopped on the Eighty-Five. She kept staring down at her screen, wondering if she should text Emily or if doing so would only make it more suspicious. But there was nothing to be suspicious about. Just heading down the highway with her best friend’s brother.

“Don’t worry. I’m not kidnapping you. I’ll have you back in time for dinner.”

Jeremy’s words drew her attention to him, sitting over there with a charming smile on his face. He had that way about him, and it charmed almost everyone he met. Women-girls, back in the day-had always reacted around him the same way she did. She’d tried to tell herself back then she had an edge, even though he was too old for her. Like most people, she’d had to be rejected a few times by other guys to lose that childhood innocence. The innocence had her believing that if she liked a guy, there was a good possibility he’d like her back.

She decided to try to get out of her head. “Where exactly are we going?” she asked.

“I think I’m having deja vu. Didn’t we just do this yesterday?”