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Alhaitham used to enjoy the earthy, nutty aroma of coffee beans before his olfactory senses grew immune to them—one of the unforeseen drawbacks of working part-time at a cafe for over a year. Still, he appreciated the atmosphere—the soft afternoon light coming in through the sheer curtains and the faint music from his perfectly crafted playlist playing in the background. He made the right decision when he accepted the job in a small, local coffee shop over a corporate cafe. Less customers came in, which meant he got less money in tips, but it was infinitely more peaceful than the bustling environment of a corporate chain.
Peaceful meant that Alhaitham could crack open a book on shift, and nobody would scold his lack of professionality because nobody was there.
15:03 read the clock on the wall. Nobody came in during hours outside the early mornings or lunch breaks. The middle of the afternoon became the ideal time for Alhaitham to pull out a novel and engage himself in a story. So far, he enjoyed the romantic comedy book he checked out from the library. His eyes traced the sentences stringing together a scene of two characters dancing around each other, brewing in tension and unwilling to admit their feelings. Some readers may have found the trope juvenile, but Alhaitham was fascinated.
He had only experienced the raw, intense burn of romantic attraction once in his life, and he doubted he ever would again.
Reading about other characters experiencing love in different but similar ways was freeing. Eye-opening, even. Romance eluded him, unlike all his other areas of study. Alhaitham wanted to understand it better, and he was not one to settle for surface-level knowledge. Intrigued by the plot, he kept reading.
Then the doorbell chimed.
His eyes lingered on the words a moment more, then Alhaitham placed a bookmark inside and shut it. He dropped the book into his bag. As little as Alhaitham liked to interact with customers, talking to people was a requirement of his job. So, in spite of his aversions, he turned toward the door, ready to provide satisfactory service.
Only there was no one there.
“Hello, mister!”
Alhaitham looked down.
A young girl peered up at him with bright, peridot-green eyes. She smiled toothily, revealing a gummy smile with noticeable spaces in between her teeth indicating that her adult teeth had not grown in yet. Two hair ties on the sides of her head held her dusty golden hair in pigtails fitting for a child as small as herself. A colorful backpack a size too big for her rested against her back, giving her the appearance of a cute, human-like turtle. She tapped her chubby fingers against the counter, which she could hardly see over due to her height.
Her features were vaguely familiar. Must be a kindergartener from the school down the street.
But a customer was a customer nonetheless. “What can I get for you?” he asked, monotone and blasé as always.
She scrunched up her face in thought. Then her eyes lit up, and she said, “Black coffee!” Then she paused, her eyebrows creasing and her tongue darting out. Then she lit up again and added, “Pretty please. Baba says I should say that when I ask for something.”
Alhaitham doubted her Baba would be pleased if he found out he gave her black coffee, regardless of how she asked for it. But instead of saying no and making her cry, as kids so often did, he said, “That’ll be five mora.”
Without a fuss, she took off her backpack, unzipped it, and reached in. She dug around for a few seconds and then pulled out a handful of yellow construction paper scraps cut into circles. She counted off one, two, three, four, five, all the while mouthing the numbers. Once she was satisfied, she cupped the paper circles in both palms and extended them to Alhaitham.
“Here!” she chirped, bright and dewy-eyed.
Alhaitham looked at the offerings for a long second before he wordlessly took them from her hands. “Name?” he asked, grabbing a regular-sized paper cup on his left.
“Mehrak!”
Mehrak, he wrote on the cup in nice lettering with his sharpie. “One black coffee, coming right up,” he deadpanned.
He sighed. It was simultaneously too early and too late in the day for him to deal with this.
Pleased, the girl—Mehrak—hummed with delight. She zipped up her backpack, slid her arms through the loops, and found a chair to sit on. With little struggle, she climbed on to it and let her feet dangle off the seat.
It was a rather cute sight, Alhaitham admitted. Much to his dismay, he had a soft spot for kids.
He grabbed a cup and got to work. A black coffee was far too strong for a kid her size, and he doubted she knew what she was asking for. Usually, he’d let kids face the consequences of their actions, but something about her wide eyes and trusting behavior tugged at Alhaitham’s conscience.
Eyeballed amounts of sugar, cocoa powder, and chocolate syrup went in the cup one by one. Alhaitham poured hot water and stirred the ingredients until the concoction looked about right. Then, he steamed the milk and poured the now-foamy liquid into the cup at an angle, forming a lopsided latte-heart on top. He had never perfected the technique—not that it mattered because he sealed the cup with a lid.
Kids liked hot chocolate, right?
“Black coffee for Mehrak,” Alhaitham called out, putting a cup sleeve around the cup and setting it on the counter.
Mehrak scooted off the chair and scampered over with her short, agile legs as her backpack jingled behind her. Her stubby fingers reached up toward the cup in a gimme gesture while she stood on tiptoes to get closer to her prize. Alhaitham grabbed the cup and put it in her waiting hands.
“Warm,” she mumbled, her two palms encircling the drink. She brought it to her lips and took a small sip.
Her already-enormous eyes enlarged tremendously. Eyes sparkling, she looked up at him. “Wow!” She took another sip. “Tastes good. Tastes like— like the taste of happiness!” she declared.
“From My Little Aranara: Forest is Family?” asked Alhaitham, an eyebrow raised. He didn’t know kids still watched that show.
Delighted, Mehrak gasped. “You watch My Little Aranara?” she said, jittering with excitement.
“When I was young.” He remembered getting teased all throughout elementary and middle school for watching it. Not that he cared. It was a good damn show.
If possible, her eyes sparkled brighter. “Awesome! None of my classmates watch it,” she said, jutting out her bottom lip. “They said it was weird and old.”
“They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“Yeah!” she said, puffing her chest and putting one hand on her hip. “You’re so cool, mister…” She squinted at his name tag, trying to read the lettering.
“Alhaitham.”
“Mister Alhaitham! Thank you for the black coffee. Baba never lets me try any of his,” she said with a frown. “Please don’t tell him I was here!” she added, holding up her finger in a shh sign. “I really, really don’t want to be grounded.”
Alhaitham nodded. “I won’t tell him.” Not like he could, given that he didn’t know her father anyway.
“Pinky promise?” She batted her eyelashes and extended a teeny pinky toward him.
He sighed. Kids and their antics. “Promise,” he said, interlocking his much-larger pinky with her miniature one.
“Yay!” She pulled back and readjusted the straps of her backpack. “Bye-bye, mister!” she said, holding her cup of hot cocoa as she raced out the door, backpack tinkling all the while. The doorbell chimed again.
And just like that, the atmosphere of the coffee shop returned to normal—quiet music and faint background noise.
Alhaitham dug his book out of his bag again and opened it to the bookmarked page. Strange interactions were routine at any cafe. He filed the encounter away in his mind. Back to his book, he decided.
He wouldn’t see her again anyway.
----------
She returned the next day.
“Hi, mister Alhaitham,” she said, beaming and skipping to the counter as the doorbell chimed. Little jingle–jangly sounds from the keychains on her bag followed her when she walked. “Can I have a black coffee again?” A pause. “Please.”
Alhaitham abandoned the rag he was using to wipe down the counter. “That’ll be five mora.”
She plonked five circular pieces of yellow construction paper on the counter.
A sigh. “Name?”
“You forgot?” Pouting, Mehrak stuck out her bottom lip. “It’s Mehrak. Please don’t forget again!”
“Mm.” He grabbed a cup and wrote that name down. “One black coffee, coming right up.”
Instead of taking a seat like she did last time, she pranced over the drink pick-up area of the counter. Waiting for Alhaitham, she twisted and turned her torso in antsy childish excitement.
He made quick work of her drink—a cup of hot chocolate was far simpler to make than the ridiculous drink combos with a gazillion syrups people ordered nowadays—and set in on the counter in front of her. However, instead of reaching for the cup, she blinked up at him innocuously.
“I have something to show you,” she said, voice hushed and a tad shy.
Alhaitham blinked back in a way that said, Well?
She dug into her pockets and pulled out two figurines. She placed them on the edge of the counter, and Alhaitham took a good look at them. Aranara figurines, he deduced. One of them was green with leafy hair and a golden flower atop its sprout. The other was yellow with a shroom-like green cap and a plate of plants as well as an orange sprout sitting on its head. They were cute and quite detailed for miniature figurines.
“This one is Arama,” Mehrak said, tapping the green one, “and this one is Arasaka.” She patted the orange sprout of the yellow one.
Alhaitham knew all the characters in My Little Aranara, but he kept quiet and let Mehrak explain them to him.
“Arama sacrificed herself to get rid of the Marana,” said Mehrak, stroking the figurine’s leafy head. “I cried when she became a tree.” She rubbed the belly of the other figurine with her thumb. “Arasaka is my favorite. He cooks and stuff.”
“Mhm.”
“But you can’t have them,” she said, snatching her figurines off the counter and putting them back into her pockets. “Baba bought them for me, so you have to buy your own.”
“...Sure.” As if Alhaitham was going to steal from a kid, even though she didn’t properly pay for her own drinks.
She nodded solemnly. “I am happy we understand each other.” She grabbed her cup off the counter and took a long slurp. “Mm! Tasty. See you, mister Alhaitham!” Merrily, she skipped away.
The doorbell chimed.
Alhaitham picked the rag up again and continued wiping the counter. What a strange girl.
----------
Her visits became routine.
Every Monday, Thursday, and Friday—the days that Alhaitham worked—she’d pop in at approximately 15:03, order a “black coffee,” hand him her “mora,” and babble about My Little Aranara.
“You look like an aranara,” she had said once, pointing to the sprout—the few unruly strands of hair—sitting atop his head.
“Thank you,” Alhaitham had responded.
That hadn’t been the only thing she had to say about his hair.
“Are you going to die soon?” she had asked, walking into the cafe on a particular day. Her eyes had been full of unshed tears. “You’re— you’re going grey!”
“No,” Alhaitham had answered. “I am not dying.” Consoling sad children had never been a strength of his. He was lucky she brightened up quickly after that.
Then, on another unsuspecting day:
“I overheard Uncle say that Baba ‘has a thing’ for people with grey hair,” Mehrak had mused. “What thing does he have?”
“Not sure,” Alhaitham had said like a liar. Crumbs of curiosity piled in his mind the more Mehrak spoke about her Baba. But then again, kids tended to have warped perceptions of their parents anyway.
After her visits recurred for a couple of weeks, Alhaitham learned that Mehrak only came in on the days he worked at the cafe. Sensibly, his coworkers turned her away when she offered her paper mora. Alhaitham was the only one who surrendered his one shift drink per day to the poor, little girl who wandered into the local coffee shop.
It wasn’t a big deal. Alhaitham preferred tea anyway.
Book in hand, he glanced up at the clock. 15:22. Mehrak had never missed a day Alhaitham worked since the day she first walked in, all proud and bright, asking for a black coffee of all orders. To his knowledge, the kindergarten was in session today. It certainly wasn’t a holiday, and if it was, Alhaitham wouldn’t be at the cafe. There was nothing he despised more than working on weekends and holidays when he could be doing anything else in the comfort of his home.
Alhaitham read the same sentence on the same page over and over again, uncomprehending. He shut the book with a snap, not bothering to mark his page, and tossed it inside his bag. He wasn’t seriously worried, was he? Children were unpredictable by nature. Even if this particular child seemed to follow a pattern, she was still a child nonetheless. Little by little, before he knew it, she had carved herself into a small part of Alhaitham’s monotonous, predictable life.
A truck’s honk, the start of a car’s engine, and people’s chatter seeped into the quiet coffee shop. Some days were noisier than others, and unfortunately, some of those noisy days happened to be days when Alhaitham was on his shift. He had the urge to take his headphones out of his bag and put them on, but he didn’t want to deal with customers that would walk in and call him rude or disrespectful or some variant of insult for wearing them. The noise-subduing feature of his headphones wasn’t always worth the hassle of explaining why he needed them to unsympathetic customers.
Among the chatter, presumably coming from the sidewalk outside, Alhaitham heard a distinct masculine voice with a familiar speech pattern.
“...dangerous. What if you were kidnapped?”
“I was very careful!”
“You’re grounded. No TV for a week.”
“What? No! But I haven’t finished season six of—”
“You should’ve thought of that before you…”
The doorbell chimed. Sunlight trickled in through the crack of the door, and in walked someone with a face Alhaitham couldn’t forget even if he wanted to.
Pinned-up blond locks that turned brown at the ends framed his strong features—bold eyebrows, deep red eyes, prominent nose bridge, and defined lips. Familiar earrings dangled from his ears, and a loose blouse hung off his lithe figure. Alhaitham’s eyes zeroed in on the little red gemstone lying on Kaveh’s collarbone—the necklace he had worn all throughout high school. The necklace Alhaitham had left in his locker one day without a note, without a remnant that could link the gift back to him.
Alhaitham doubted Kaveh would wear it if he knew who it came from.
Hoisted at his side was a child. A girl. Dusty golden hair. Peridot-green eyes. A colorful backpack hooked on her shoulders.
Mehrak.
Something clicked.
“Baba! But—“
“No ‘if’s, ‘and’s, or ‘but’s,” said Kaveh in a parental tone Alhaitham had never heard from him before.
Six years of no contact, and now he was a parent. He had a kid.
Alhaitham needed to sit down, but there were no chairs behind the counter. Damn it.
“Hey, I’m so, so sorry,” Kaveh said at the counter, placing Mehrak on the ground and rifling through his pocket for his wallet. “I had no idea she was coming here after school and getting drinks for free—”
“Nuh-uh! I paid,” Mehrak piped up from beside him.
“Sweetheart, the mora you use in class and the mora Baba uses are very different,” said Kaveh with all the exasperation of a parent clinging onto his remaining shreds of patience. “How much do I owe? Sixty mora? Eighty?”
“It’s fine, Kaveh. You don’t owe anything.”
Kaveh’s head snapped up, eyes widening. “Alhaitham?”
Kaveh’s gaze drilled into Alhaitham, who held a passive expression. His heart thudded in his ears. The last time Kaveh looked at him, hatred colored his teary-eyed glare. Now, hatred was absent from his stare, and all that remained was shock and perhaps embarrassment.
“Mister Alhaitham!” Mehrak called with glee, waving her chubby hand at him.
Kaveh looked between both of them. “You two—“ He sucked in a breath, collecting himself. “No, I couldn’t possibly… How much do you need?” He dug through his wallet again, pulling out several bills of mora.
“Keep it,” said Alhaitham. “Unless you’re ordering something—in which case, you should hurry up, so you don’t hold up the line.”
Kaveh turned around. Nobody stood behind him.
Turning back, Kaveh narrowed his eyes at him. “...Right. I’ll have a black coffee.” He faced Mehrak and bent down to get closer to her level. “Do you want a drink? A pastry?”
“I want a black coffee like Baba!”
Kaveh shook his head. “You know the rules. Coffee is for grown-ups.”
“But mister Alhaitham makes black coffee for me all the time!”
Slowly, sinisterly, Kaveh’s head turned to Alhaitham. “Does he?” said Kaveh, eyes twitching. A smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes spread on his face, promising threats.
“I gave her ‘black coffee.’” Alhaitham licked his lips. “The type that consists of sugar, milk, and chocolate.”
He was not getting beat down by Kaveh today.
“Hm. I hope that’s true,” said Kaveh, giving him a look that Alhaitham did not want to challenge. “How much for both drinks?”
“Nine mora.”
Kaveh gave him a ten mora bill and said, “Keep the change.” Then, while Alhaitham grabbed the cups, he snuck an extra five mora bill in the tip jar.
Typical Kaveh.
“Name?” said Alhaitham, pen poised to write.
“You know my name.”
“Name?” repeated Alhaitham, unrelenting. His waiting pen hovered over the cup.
Realizing it was a losing battle, Kaveh sighed. “Kaveh,” he answered.
“One black coffee and one ‘black coffee’ coming right up,” Alhaitham said, writing Kaveh on the cups. He ignored how familiar the strokes were despite his rustiness.
Kaveh took Mehrak by the hand and chose a table by the semi-transparent curtain-covered windows. They sat on opposite sides, and Kaveh pointed to her bag, whispering something about homework. She scrunched her face, then pulled out a piece of paper and a writing utensil. She gripped a glittery green pen and began scribbling something.
Meanwhile, Alhaitham made their drinks. He put the ground coffee beans in the coffee filter and turned the coffee maker on. Then, he got to work on the hot chocolate. The motions were familiar. He’d grown accustomed to making at least one hot chocolate per shift, after all. Sugar. Cocoa powder. Chocolate syrup. Hot water. Stir. Add steamed milk. Over the weeks, he’d been getting better at the latte-heart on top. It wasn’t quite symmetrical yet, but it was a start.
Watching the coffee drip into the pot, Alhaitham wondered. Back in their high school and early college days, Kaveh would order lattes at coffee shops, claiming that he liked the creaminess of the milk and that he could never go without a little half-and-half in drip coffee. Perhaps his preferences changed, Alhaitham mused. Or perhaps those emerging eyebags had something to do with his newfound tastes.
The minutes passed quickly, and the coffee was done. He poured the translucent liquid into the cup and sealed it with a lid, like he did to the hot chocolate. Alhaitham glanced at their table, where Kaveh typed away at a laptop and Mehrak wrote on her slightly crumpled piece of paper. Normally, he’d call out the name of the order without a second thought. But Alhaitham had different ideas this time.
He snatched two baklavas from their pastry display. With great dexterity, he carried the two pastries in one hand and the two drinks in the other.
Mehrak, with her brilliant green eyes, was the first to look up at him when he approached their table. “Coffee?” she said, looking at the two cups balancing on Alhaitham’s hand.
He placed the two baklava on the table first, then grabbed one of the cups with his now-open hand to set on the table. “One ‘black coffee,’” he said, putting the cup of hot chocolate in front of Mehrak. His gaze slid to Kaveh, who hadn’t looked up from his screen. “And another black coffee,” he continued, setting the other cup down next to the laptop.
At last, Kaveh looked up with his tired yet unfailingly gorgeous carmine eyes, and his mouth parted to presumably deliver a clunky thank you that Alhaitham didn’t care to hear. Then, the two baklava sitting on a napkin next to his coffee caught his attention.
“I didn’t order this,” said Kaveh, eyebrows furrowing, as Mehrak sipped away at her hot chocolate without a care in the world.
“I know,” said Alhaitham. As soon as he saw a protest rise on Kaveh’s tongue, he turned around and walked away. Regardless of what he said, he practically paid for them in his own right from the mora he left in the tip jar.
Alhaitham resumed his place behind the counter and grabbed a rag. Without anything better to do, he wiped down the counters and machines. What a stellar employee he was. His book was on the counter—he had placed it down when he heard the doorbell—but he knew he couldn’t focus on the pages when Kaveh was sitting mere meters from him. Busying himself with mindless action was the only way to successfully distract himself.
Kaveh had a kid. A kid. And that kid was the same kid who’d walk in every afternoon and order a black coffee with the biggest smile on her face.
Who did Kaveh have a kid with? Someone he knew? Alhaitham pretended the pang in his heart wasn’t there. He knew he never had a chance, especially with how badly he fucked up the day they parted ways, but knowing something and having evidence of it were two completely different things.
He could be single, the devil trilled in his ear. A kid didn’t mean there was another parent in the mix. Foolishly, he entertained the thought. He grabbed a lock of his hair from his bangs and straightened it out so he could look at it. Grey. Didn’t Mehrak say her Baba had a thing for grey hair?
Alhaitham aborted that line of thinking. After wiping down every surface, he had the temptation to grab the mop and clean the floor too. He ultimately decided against it. He didn’t want his manager to think he was that good of an employee and badger him to take on more shifts.
Involuntarily, his eyes drifted to Kaveh—a north star to his compass. It was frankly embarrassing that he hadn’t moved on after so many years had passed. Sometimes, he felt like a character still chasing that one that got away in the shitty romance books he read to wind down.
But if he was a character in those stories, shouldn’t he get his cheesy, cliché happy ending?
At the table, Kaveh was helping Mehrak with what seemed to be math homework—easy stuff, basic addition. Alhaitham’s heart warmed at the sight of them. Kaveh used to help his juniors—him included—all the time, even when he should’ve focused on himself. But seeing him here in his element, teaching his daughter, brought Alhaitham unexpected comfort.
Kaveh was still the same kind soul who approached him in the library oh-so-long ago.
As the family of two had their drinks and pastries, a few people came in and out of the shop. No one else sat down. Alhaitham would take their order, make their drink, and call out their name, and they’d leave. Minutes sped by, and before he knew it, Kaveh whispered to Mehrak and both of them packed their things.
He didn’t want Kaveh to go. Leaving meant they wouldn’t see each other for another what—six years? That wouldn’t do. Alhaitham had watched Kaveh leave once, and he wasn’t about to sit back and watch again.
Hastily, Alhaitham reached into his bag and pulled out a post-it note. Bingo. He took one sheet and scribbled ten numbers in pen. As Kaveh stepped toward the door, Alhaitham came out from behind the counter, note in hand.
“Kaveh, wait,” he said—a combination of words he never thought he’d be able to utter.
Kaveh turned around with a nervous expression if Alhaitham was reading him right. “Alhaitham,” he breathed out. “Did you need something?”
Curiously, Mehrak stared up at him too, her hand gripped tightly in her father’s.
Nerves racked Alhaitham, but it was too late to back down now. “My number,” he said, holding out the note. “If Mehrak wanders back in here again.”
Kaveh looked down at the note then back up at Alhaitham. Agonizing, drawn-out seconds pass where Kaveh just… stares. Unsettling as it was, Alhaitham never broke eye contact.
Then he spoke. “That’s not necessary,” said Kaveh, pushing the note back to him. “Mehrak now knows better than to leave school premises until I come to pick her up.” He glanced down at Mehrak, who pouted and looked away. “And,” he said, his voice dropping into something more hesitant, even shy, “I still have your number in my phone. Unless you changed it?” He tilted his head, his gaze imploring.
“I didn’t,” Alhaitham managed, throat dry.
“Noted. Well, I have to start on dinner soon or else this one,” he gestured to Mehrak, who smiled brightly at the mention, “will be hungry.” He turned his body, reaching for the door. “Goodbye, Alhaitham,” he said with finality, urging Mehrak along. She followed, tiny legs pattering to keep up with her father.
The doorbell chimed, and the door shut. The coffee shop was always empty, but Alhaitham had never minded its vacancy until now.
No use lingering on the matter now, Alhaitham decided. What was done was done, and what was done had been done for years. He’d only fooled himself that something could be, would be different now that he walked into his life again by chance.
He doubted anyone else would come into the shop, let alone sit at a table, so cleaning time it was. Kaveh and Mehrak left no trash on the table, which made Alhaitham’s job easier. He still had to wipe down all the public surfaces, such as tables and chairs, but at least he didn’t have to touch any food-soaked napkins while he was at it.
As he was about to fetch a rag, a blur of green in the corner of his eye beckoned his gaze. He turned toward the small green dot, resting on the chair Mehrak was sitting at a minute ago. Stepping closer, he made out its shape—a figurine of sorts.
An aranara figurine.
Alhaitham picked it up between his pointer finger and thumb to examine it. Arama, he recognized. One of Mehrak’s precious possessions. One that would be sorely missed if not returned to its owner.
Lightness enveloped his heart. Breath returned to his lungs. A smile tugged at his lips.
It seemed that he would be seeing Kaveh again after all.