He drops the wrinkled dollar onto the counter and with his tobacco-stained fingers grasps the paper cup brimming with black coffee. He sneaks a quick look at the barista, but dares not look for too long. Mumbling his thanks, he waddles away, warming his hands on the cup of joe. He leans into the glass door and, as he pushes his way out of the coffee shop, takes one last look at the barista—

—and the voices tell him that she knows. She knows who is looking for him, who will find him, and who will ultimately kill him. The voices advise him to be kind to the young lady, for perhaps she will one day reveal to him the identity of the Angel of Death. He so wants to ask her how much longer he has to live—

—but he refrains from doing so, because he knows she’ll just think he’s crazy.

She’s tired of working at the coffee shop. She expected so much more for herself.

Her mother is a real estate agent, hawking million-dollar homes to the contemporary gentry. Her father is a entertainment lawyer. Her older sister manages her own ballet studio. Her younger brother designs computer games for a major software corporation.

And then there’s her. A barista at a small coffee shop. Between a tall Americano and double-shot espresso, her mind wanders—

I’m the failure of the family. They were embarrassed to talk about me at the wedding; everyone else is so successful and then there’s me, the coffee girl. I hate spending time with my family. I’m trying the best that I can to get back on my feet, but they will never understand. They’re too busy with the expensive details of their lives—

She calls out, “Tall Americano!” and offers a warm smile to the elderly woman who approaches the counter to pick up the steaming beverage.

Holding the cup in her bony hand, she smiles at the young lady and thanks her. The elderly woman retreats to a small table by the window, pulls out a chair, and sits down. She looks outside at the falling rain. After taking a sip of the freshly-brewed Americano, she looks back at the slender barista.

She looks like my daughter when she was in her teens, she muses to herself. I wonder how she is doing now—

—and then she winces. She knew about it the entire time and she didn’t do anything about it, even when her daughter confronted her.

“Mommy,” her daughter pleaded, “he’s touching me down there.”

“No, he’s not,” she replied. “Stop lying. You’re just trying to get attention.”

“I’m not lying!” her daughter hotly answered. “He touches me and won’t stop, even when I ask him to! Can’t you make him stop?”

“Since he’s not actually doing that, I can’t make him stop,” she said.

Oh! The look her daughter had given her. She saw right through her.

And the day her daughter turned 18, she promptly moved out of the house without a word. She hasn’t seen her since and wonders—

Something jostles her chair. The elderly woman looks up and sees a young man looking back at her.

“I’m sorry!” the young man says. He places a warm hand on the elderly woman’s shoulder and leans over, inspecting her. “I didn’t mean to bump into you.”

“It’s quite alright,” the woman answers, smiling. “I’m fine.”

“Okay,” the young man says, relieved. He adjusts the bag on his shoulder with one hand and steadies the double-shot espresso with the other. He finds a small table on the other side of the coffee shop and sits down. He pulls a laptop computer from his bag, opens it, and turns it on. After checking his e-mail, he reluctantly opens the Word document that contains his dissertation. He still has three sections to write. This pains him.

The cursor patiently blinks at him. He raps his fingers impatiently on the quiet keys. His mind drifts from membrane proteins and ion channels—

—and he remembers her radiant smile, the way it shone on her face like the sun peeking out from behind a storm cloud. He liked the way her hand neatly fit into his, her bountiful affection for stray dogs and cats, her neat penmanship in smooth black ink in the cute notes she left for him. He liked the way she made him laugh.

That was over a year ago. Before the little white lie that wasn’t so little.

He still thinks about her every day. She doesn’t know this; neither does anyone else.

It’s not manly to pine after a woman for so long.

He daydreams about a chance encounter, what he would say, how she would respond—

—and then he looks up over the laptop monitor out the window.

She sees the man in the coffee shop look back at her, so she averts her gaze. She doesn’t want to stare; that’s rude.

Looking down, her cheeks flush as she smiles to herself.

He’s cute.