The clock on the wall had a broken second hand that clicked every time it struggled to pass the nine. It was a rhythmic, nagging sound that seemed to echo in the silence of words.
I was leaning against the counter, staring at a stubborn brown ring of coffee on the espresso machine. I'd already wiped it twice, but the stain was winning, burnt into the silver metal by a day of back-to-back rushes. I was exhausted—the kind of tired that makes my eyes feel like they have sand in them and makes every movement feel like I'm pulling my limbs through deep water.
Though this was the part of the night I usually liked. The quiet. The absence of people asking for "extra hot" lattes while staring at their phones. I reached over and flipped the 'Open' sign to 'Closed,' the plastic thud against the glass sounding louder than it should have. Outside, Oakhaven was starting to settle. The street was quiet, save for the occasional hiss of a car driving over wet pavement and the flickering neon of the laundromat across the way.
I was about to kill the main lights when the bell on the door gave a weak, tired jingle.
I didn't even look up. I just let out a heavy sigh, my shoulders dropping. "Closed. Door's locked."
"It wasn't locked," a voice said.
It was a girl. She didn't sound like the usual 9-to-5 type customer; she sounded like she'd been shouting over loud music for three hours—her voice was scratchy, dry, and frayed at the edges.
I finally looked up. She was bundled in a silver puffer jacket that looked three sizes too big for her, her hands shoved so deep into her pockets that her shoulders were hunched up to her ears. She had her hood up, shadows masking her face, and she looked like she'd just walked five miles through the freezing drizzle. She looked small, pale, and entirely out of place in a dive shop at midnight.
"My bad. I forgot to turn the bolt," I said, wiping my hands on my stained apron. "But yeah, the registers are shut down. Machines are off. I'm done for the night."
"I don't want a drink," she said. She looked around the shop, which was mostly dark except for the warm, amber glow over the counter. She looked at the empty stools like they were the most comfortable things she'd ever seen. "Is it okay if I just sit for a second? It's freezing out there, and I think I've been walking in circles for twenty minutes."
I hesitated. I wanted to go home; for a few seconds, I stared aimlessly at the ceiling. But she looked like she was about to fall over. "Five minutes," I said, nodding toward the stools. "I have to finish the floors anyway."
"Thanks," she muttered. She slumped onto a stool and let out a long, shaky breath that seemed to deflate her entire body. She pulled a tablet out from under her jacket and set it on the counter, but she didn't turn it on. She just stared at the blank, black screen as if waiting for it to tell her what to do next.
I grabbed the mop bucket from the back. The water was lukewarm and smelled strongly of lemon-scented chemicals. I started working on the area near the door, the slop-slop of the water and the rhythmic swish-thud of the mop filling the silence.
"Is it your shop?" she said after a minute, her voice cutting through the white noise of the cleaning.
I stopped for a second, leaning my weight on the mop handle. "I work here."
"Isn't this tiring?" she asked. Her eyes were following the movement of the mop, tracing the wet streaks on the floor as if she were trying to find meaning in them.
I shrugged, moving the mop again. "I just do the job. People want coffee, I give them coffee. It's not that complicated."
"I wish my job was like that," she said. She leaned her head back, looking up at the slow-spinning ceiling fans. "Instead of everyone arguing about 'vibes' and 'direction' until it's four in the morning and nobody's actually done anything. Everyone wants something from you, but nobody knows what it is."
"Sounds like a headache," I said, focusing on a scuff mark near the base of the counter.
"It's a nightmare," she replied. She finally looked at me, her eyes coming into the light. She looked normal—tired, pale, and a little annoyed at the world. "I'm Jenna."
"Leo."
"Nice to meet you, Leo. Sorry for crashing your closing shift." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, sliding it across the wood. "For the seat."
I looked at the ten. "Put your money away, Jenna. It's a chair, not a hotel room."
She actually laughed a little—a short, dry sound. "Take it. My company pays for my 'travel expenses.' Might as well have it go to someone who actually cleans floors."
I left the money where it was. I finished the corner and leaned the mop against the wall. "You ever think about just... not doing the 'nightmare' job?"
Jenna looked at her tablet. "Every day. But I'm already in the middle of it. Can't really walk out when people are counting on you to be the 'product.'"
I knew that feeling better than I wanted to admit. I looked at my wrist, the heavy watch hidden under my sleeve, then back at her. "Yeah. I get that."
Jenna stood up, zipping her jacket back up to her chin. "I think I should go or else I will get us both in trouble."
"Take it easy," I said.
"See you around, Leo. Make that coffee with the weird foam when we meet again. It's the only thing that actually tastes like anything lately."
She walked out, the bell jingling with a final, lonely note. I stood there for a second, watching her silver jacket disappear into the mist of the street. I finally walked over, turned the bolt on the door, and checked it twice.
Once the shop was truly empty, the silence felt different—heavier. I finished my chores with mechanical precision. I emptied the hopper, wiped down the steam wand one last time, and killed the espresso machine's power. The sudden death of the machine's hum made my own ears ring.
I retreated to the small back room, peeling off my coffee-stained apron. Beneath it, I wore a simple grey hoodie, but as I pulled it off to change, the movement caught the light on the Patek Philippe watch. It was a masterpiece of engineering, a piece of jewelry that cost more than most people in this neighborhood made in five years. I stared at it for a second—a relic of a life where people called me "The Sterling's next prodigy in the medical field" instead of "Barista Boy."
I didn't put it in a safe. I just pulled my sleeve back over it.
After locking the back alley door, I started the walk toward my home. Oakhaven at 12:30 AM was a ghost town. The air was sharp, smelling of wet asphalt and old brick. I walked with my head down, my footsteps creating a steady, slow rhythm against the pavement. I found myself thinking about Jenna—not the girl from the posters, but the girl on the stool.
She was right; everyone was a "product." My father had tried to make me one. The hospital boards had tried to make me one. All the people I knew saw me as one. Even here, at a dying coffee shop, I was just a cog in someone else's morning.
I reached my apartment building—a crumbling brownstone with a flickering hallway light. I climbed the three flights of stairs, the wood groaning under my weight. Inside, my room was sparse. A bed, a desk, and a shelf of heavy medical texts I couldn't bring myself to throw away. A stack of journals on neurology sat next to my bed, filled with notes and applications that I rarely even looked at.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked out the window at the distant, glittering skyline of the city center. Somewhere over there, people were still arguing about "direction" in glass offices. And somewhere down in the mist, a girl in a silver jacket was probably still trying to find a reason to breathe.
I closed my eyes. I had to be up in four hours to start it all over again. I didn't know why I'd let my life go in this unrhythmic direction, but as I drifted off, the clicking of the broken clock from the shop was still echoing in my head.
It wasn't a nightmare yet. It was just a melody.