Chloë had ordered a medium-sized drip, black. It was her go-to order whenever she ventured into a new coffeeshop. Mochas, lattes, cappuccinos, frappes and all those other concoctions often made it difficult to judge how well the proprietors knew, respected and treated coffee. But in a cup of drip, there was nowhere to hide. It was like testing a chef by asking her to fry an egg.
The coffee in this place was listless in flavor, dull. Chloë knew it was Colombian, with a slightly floral base, but the baristas had mangled its preparation, overwatering it and then somehow burning it.
How the hell did they do that?
What the coffeeshop did have that Chloë liked, however, was an outdoor patio in the back with additional seating. A smart move considering the Covid pandemic was still a thing. With more and more people getting vaccinated, California had started allowing limited indoor seating again at restaurants, coffeeshops and the like but having an outdoor space for guests was an advantage, especially if another pandemic occurred.
Chloë made a mental note that if (when) she got to the point of looking for a spot for her own coffeeshop, it needed to have space for outdoor seating.
In any case, despite terrible coffee and terrible décor, this place was doing a brisk business. It was almost two o’clock, typically a slow time up in Carlsbad at La Vida Mocha, and yet this place had most of its indoor seating occupied and from what Chloë could tell, most of the outdoor seating as well. This was another reason why she wanted to open a place in San Diego, the nearest big city to Carlsbad. City folks never seemed to stop drinking coffee.
“Hey!” Lexx said, interrupting Chloë’s reverie.
Chloë stood and they embraced. When they sat again, Chloë slid Lexx’s caramel macchiato across the table to her. As usual, Lexx was stylishly outfitted in rather masculine-type clothes fitted to her female frame. She looked like a very pretty man and yet was unmistakably all woman. It was a fascinating dichotomy and once again, Chloë felt a little panic. What if Morgan did decide that she was a lesbian but then decided that she liked women who presented more like Lexx did: with a bit of a masculine edge? After all, Morgan had dated all those men throughout her life. What if she wasn’t ready to give up the manly look entirely for someone like Chloë, who was as girly-girly as a girl could get?
Shit!
Chloë resolved to make sure that Morgan and Lexx never met ever again.
“I think it’s exciting that you want to start a business down here,” Lexx said about ten minutes later, after they caught up on things.
“Do you, really?” Chloë asked.
“Absolutely! The city needs more small businesses, there are too many chains.”
“Is it, like, really hard to run a place in San Diego, though?”
Lexx thought about that for a moment.
“Yeah, San Diego is no joke,” she answered. “And it’s not so much getting all the permits and licenses and shit like that. I mean, that stuff is a hassle, sure, but it’s a hassle everywhere. It’s just that it’s expensive to run a business in this city.” And Lexx detailed all the financial hurdles a small business has to overcome each month just to survive in San Diego: sky-high rents, high utility bills, high wages for employees…Then she explained other aspects of what doing business in the city is like: homeless people panhandling outside your door, pain-in-the-ass tourists, customers who are always in a rush, constantly being worried about being robbed…
“I know people think San Diego is all laid-back and fun but, trust me, I keep a gun in my shop,” Lexx added.
Chloë absorbed it all, even trying to mentally apply some of what she’d learned so far in her business courses to what Lexx was telling her.
“What’s your timeline?” Lexx eventually asked.
“Oh god, I have no idea!” Chloë answered, taking another sip of the awful coffee. “I guess, when I’m ready?”
“I can dig that,” Lexx said. “But, trust me, no one is ever ready for this kind of thing. You just try to get all your ducks in a row and then take the plunge. If I were you and I could get the money lined up, I’d do it sooner rather than later. The older you get the more Life tends to get in the way.”
Chloë nodded. She didn’t want that, to wake one day at, say, thirty and find that whatever she had going on in her life then was getting in the way of fulfilling her dream. At the same time, however, she didn’t want to rush into this. Getting the money lined up was no problem. Her birthday was a couple of months away, in May, and because it was the big Two-Five, she was suddenly going to find herself pretty well off because of that trust fund. But that didn’t mean she wanted to just immediately spend her fortune rushing into opening her own coffeeshop. She wanted to be smart about it, she wanted to be ready, whatever that meant.
“You don’t think I’m too young?” she asked Lexx.
Lexx shrugged.
“Age doesn’t necessarily translate into capability,” she said. “I guess the question is, do you think you’re too young?”
***
“How was your meeting?” Morgan asked, letting Chloë into her house that evening.
Chloë, though, had other ideas than conversation. Morgan had answered the door wearing the cutest outfit: a smart casual dress with gray tights and once the door was closed, Chloë had pressed her up against it.
“Hi,” Chloë purred.
“Hi,” Morgan said, already breathing heavily.