The mid-morning crowd was sparse, a handful of suits sipping espresso absently over newspapers and the occasional college kid with a wan hangover smile. Ivy must have seen him out there in a sea of blank white tables. It wasn’t long before she appeared with a cup of coffee on a tray, sloshed brown stains crawling down the side of the ceramic. She was accompanied by a gangling guy in a green smock.
“Thank you, how did you know?” Kevin said.
“You develop a nose for these things,” Ivy replied with a smile that would make angels renounce their vow. “This is Andrew. He’s from Dublin.”
“Ireland?”
“Ohio. Like Wendy’s,” Andrew said.
Ivy explained, “I’m training him.”
She was thin, petite, face blessed with a cowl of dark hair and green cat eyes. Kevin was in love with her in ways that only the wholly lonely can know, “the deep, unutterable woe which none save exiles feel,” as Aytoun put it. Something he was also unable to express; it wasn’t a language he felt comfortable with, and he was never able to dispel the feeling of undeserving to be around her. Somewhere, he knew that she loved him too. He wasn’t brave enough to probe the how.
“I’ve a break in about fifteen,” Ivy said. “Have you had breakfast?”
Kevin gave a look that indicated he wasn’t familiar with the word.
“That’s what I thought. You look like you could use a beignet.”
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