Four Of A Kind

I walked back to the espresso station through fog that smelled like dry ice and teenage desperation. Harlow stood behind my machine with her tongue poking out between her teeth, pouring what looked suspiciously like cinnamon directly into the portafilter basket. The sight made something in my chest seize up like watching someone vandalize a Ferrari with a butter knife.

"What are you doing?"

She jumped, nearly dropping the spice container, and spun around with guilty pink cheeks. Her maid headband had shifted sideways, giving her an adorably lopsided look that would have been charming if she wasn’t currently destroying my workspace.

"I was making the Midnight Espresso more exciting!" Her voice pitched higher with defensive enthusiasm. "Sarah said it needed more pizzazz, and cinnamon has pizzazz, right? It’s like fairy dust but for coffee!"

"Harlow." I kept my voice patient because screaming at her would probably make her cry, and crying maids were bad for business. "That’s not how espresso works."

She wilted slightly, her shoulders dropping as she realized I wasn’t impressed by her innovation. "But it smells really good?"

"It’s going to taste like burnt Christmas and disappointment." I took the cinnamon from her hands, noting how her fingers lingered against mine for a heartbeat longer than necessary. Her skin was soft and warm, and she had paint under her fingernails from decorating menu boards at three in the morning. "Watch."

I dumped the contaminated coffee grounds and cleaned the portafilter while she stood beside me, close enough that I could smell strawberry shampoo and the vanilla perfume she’d started wearing since the gala. Her presence was distracting in ways that had nothing to do with her proximity to expensive equipment.

"The espresso machine is temperamental," I explained, measuring fresh grounds with the same precision I used for mixing cocktails at the Velvet Room. "You change one variable and the entire shot falls apart. Temperature, pressure, grind size, timing. Everything matters."

"Like baking?"

"Exactly like baking. Except if you mess up a cake, you throw it away and start over. If you mess up during the lunch rush, you have forty angry customers and Patterson threatening to make everyone stay after school for remedial customer service training."

She giggled at that, her entire face lighting up with genuine amusement. The sound was infectious enough that I caught myself smiling back before remembering that I was supposed to be teaching her about coffee extraction, not flirting with her over espresso basics.

"Can I try again?" She looked up at me with those purple eyes wide and hopeful. "I promise I won’t add anything weird. No cinnamon. No glitter. No edible flowers."

"You were planning to add edible flowers?"

"Maybe?" Her cheeks went pink again. "They’re pretty and they taste like nothing, which seemed safe?"

I shook my head and stepped aside, gesturing toward the machine. "Show me what you know."

She approached the espresso machine like it might bite her, which was probably smart considering how many ways expensive equipment could go wrong in inexperienced hands. Her movements were careful and deliberate as she tamped the grounds, locked the portafilter into place, and positioned a cup underneath the spout. When she looked at me for confirmation, I nodded.

The shot pulled perfectly. Golden crema, steady stream, exactly twenty-five seconds from start to finish. She had been paying attention during my earlier demonstrations, even while bouncing around the café serving drinks and taking photos with customers. The realization that she cared enough to learn something I was teaching made warmth spread through my chest in a way that had nothing to do with the steam rising from the machine.

"That’s perfect."

Her entire face lit up like Christmas morning. She bounced on her toes, her twin tails swinging with the motion, and clapped her hands together with pure joy. "Really? I did it right?"

"You did it right." I couldn’t keep the smile off my face this time. Her excitement was too genuine to resist. "Want to try the milk now?"

For the next ten minutes, I taught Harlow how to steam milk for lattes while she listened with the same focused attention she probably gave to her favorite anime episodes. She asked questions about temperature and texture, practiced holding the pitcher at different angles, and made soft sounds of concentration that were absolutely not helping my ability to focus on coffee education instead of the way her maid costume shifted when she reached for the steam wand.

The gymnasium had started to empty as parents collected their younger children and students drifted toward other festival attractions. The fog machines still pumped out periodic clouds of white vapor, but the density had decreased enough that I could see clearly across the room to where Vivienne stood near the entrance, tablet in hand, directing the breakdown of decorative elements with the same efficiency she brought to everything else.

"Isaiah?" Harlow’s voice was softer now, less bouncy than her usual enthusiasm. She had finished practicing with the milk steamer and was wiping foam from her fingers with a black napkin. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Are you nervous? About tomorrow?" She didn’t look at me while asking, focusing instead on cleaning imaginary spots from the espresso machine’s chrome surface. "About the rotation thing and Sabrina going first and everything changing?"

The question hit deeper than I expected. I had been thinking about it constantly since yesterday’s breakfast conversation, running scenarios in my head like battle plans, trying to anticipate every possible way the situation could explode in my face. Two weeks with Sabrina meant two weeks of her quiet intensity, her devastating observations, her ability to see through every defense I’d built and comment on what she found there with surgical precision.

"Yeah," I admitted. "I’m nervous."

"Good." She looked up at me then, her purple eyes serious despite the maid headband and the foam stains on her apron. "Being nervous means it matters to you. If you weren’t nervous, that would mean you didn’t care, and if you didn’t care, none of this would work."

"Is that your professional opinion?"

"That’s my Harlow opinion, which is different but probably more accurate." She smiled at me, soft and genuine. "Sabrina is scary when she wants to be, but she’s not scary because she wants to hurt you. She’s scary because she wants to understand you completely, and most people aren’t ready for that kind of attention."

"Are you ready for it?"

"When it’s my turn?" She considered the question seriously, her head tilting to one side. "I don’t know. I’ve never had someone’s complete attention before. Not like that. Not where they choose to focus on me instead of just tolerating me being there." She paused.

"It sounds terrifying and amazing at the same time."