Page 7 of A Barista's Guide to Love & Larceny
“Well, that—and I’m a massive nerd.”
He said it lightly, but Dani was no fool. He was nervous. No colors, though—this was all him revealing what he wanted to, even if it felt like a risk to him.
“Don’t be silly.” She lifted her bag into her lap and began to rummage through it, beaming the spotlight away from him. “If you reallywant to feel normal, you can always get me going about the Major Arcana or something.”
“The major what?”
“Or I could talk about different grind levels for coffee. Do you drink coffee at home? Where do you get your beans? They’re not robusta, are they?” Dani found her quartzpad at the bottom of her bag and pulled it out. “What setting do you grind them on? I can help you figure out the perfect number for your machine if you want. What kind would that be again?”
“Okay, okay,” he said, laughing. “I get it. I still want to know what the Major Arcana is, by the way.”
“And I still want to know what your xylophone paper is about. We all want something, Kass.” She set her quartzpad on the table with a shrug.
He regarded her with suspicion. “You really want to know?”
She met his eyes. “I really, really do.”
His features opened up as though she’d unlocked him. All bashfulness abandoned, he set his elbows on the table and leaned forward. They were close enough now that Dani could see every detail of his face: the mole on his right cheek, the convex curve of his overlong nose, his barely noticeable buckteeth. These mild imperfections took nothing away from his overall perfection. He had a faint and pleasant scent—a mix of clean boy smell and kitchen, like he had chopped some basil and then showered. Together with the coffee, you could have bottled it and sold it.
“You may not realize this,” Kass began, “but every type of wood is naturally imbued with different magical properties.”
“Wood? That’s what we’ve been talking about this whole time?”
“Well, when you say it like that… but that’s what xylophilous means, yeah. The prefix ‘xylo’ denotes wood—like xylophone,” he said generously, “even though not all xylophones are made of wood anymore. But that’s beside the point. Each type of wood hasproperties suited to different things. Like humans, I suppose. You could call them affinities. For instance, rowan is a very protective wood, which is why it’s been used to guard against fairies and the like since the beginning of time.”
“That’s handy,” Dani said. “So what’s this table made of, then?”
“Mahogany,” he said without hesitation. “It’s a peaceful, stable wood that absorbs magic very well. Whoever built this table might not necessarily have taken that into account, but it works well for a coffee shop, and as a place to do homework. It would work even better if it had an anti-stress spell on it. I could do that for you, you know.”
“That sounds useful,” Dani said. “It also sounds like something you should get paid for. Let me check with my manager; she might be interested.”
“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “But honestly, I’m happy to do it on the house.”
She curled her hands around her coffee, studying him discreetly. He was, so far, not what she’d expected when he had sauntered in, flouting the café’s rule against animals. He had an earnestness to him, a sincerity that seemed to indicate he took people at face value. It was refreshing.
“So, what’s the thesis of this magical wood paper?” she asked, instantly regretting her word choice. But the innuendo seemed to go straight past him.
“Good question. I’m trying to prove that woodworkers—magically gifted or no—throughout history have gravitated toward varieties of wood magically suited for their needs. Like sassafras for bed frames, hazel for paintbrushes, lilac for love charms. The list is infinite, really.”
“But your paper, I assume, is not.”
“Gods, no. Though I could certainly write a lot more than twentypages if I had the time.” He did his embarrassed head-duck again, and Dani felt her heart warm. “Maybe.”
“Have you declared your concentration yet? Is it xylophilous magical properties or however you call it?”
“Not yet. I’d love to declare for wood magic, but first I’d have to convince my father that it’s practical. And that could take until senior year.” He laughed, but it was bitter.
“Of course it’s practical. You could go into contracting or something, right?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to.” He hesitated. He had gone further than he intended, prompting a psychic influx of forest green in Dani. She could have let him off the hook—over the years, she’d learned she could push people to say more if she wanted, simply by continuing the conversation, or she could save them from themselves by changing the subject. This time, she decided not to put her finger on the scale in either direction. She wanted him to choose to tell her what hedidwant. She balanced her chin in her hand and watched him.
“I—” He cut himself off and looked down at his lap. “It doesn’t matter what I want. My father has my future in an iron vise. He’s paying my way through school, but it comes with a price. He has a specific idea of how my life is going to play out. And if I do something that veers even one degree off course, he’s pretty fast to correct it.”
“That’s shitty.” Itwasshitty, and she felt bad for him; but she was also more than a little pleased—not because his dad sucked, but because there were no colors in her brain. He’d told her all that because he’d wanted to.
“It can be, but I mean, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him, so I can’t complain too much. What about your parents? Are they like that?”
Dani shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Not exactly,” shehedged. “Honestly, they couldn’t really care less about my future. It was more what I did with my present that mattered.”
