Someone Out There Loves You After All (revised) || Gerard Way

Chapter I: Drnks Fr Th Mmrs

A macchiato with vanilla biscotti, why don't they just call it a tiny strong coffee and a vanilla biscuit?
Just because you tacked fancy words on didn't really make it that special.

It was true that I got paid well for my job and that I'd been a barista for give or take three years but that didn't mean I had to show any respect. Besides, what was the point of being a barista in an expensive cafe if I couldn't go around mocking people's snobby orders behind their back? It would have just been a wasted chance really.

I hummed quietly to myself as I tamped the grounds and hit the single shot button, the wonderful smell of fresh made coffee filling my nostrils and I smiled. Even if I mightn't have gotten much more than four hours sleep last night I was grateful for the smell to keep me awake since I'd sworn off making my own coffee whenever I felt even slightly tired long ago. After developing such a tolerance I needed three double shots to up my pulse I'd realised maybe I needed to cut back, since then I'd only order when someone else was running the machine.

Still, you'd think after spending so much time around coffee, inhaling it, drinking it and basically living around it would put me off any further drinking of the beverage for the rest of my life but nope. I still loved it and there was no chance of that changing anytime soon.

I placed the cup on a small plate with a napkin, teaspoon and biscuit before walking out from behind the counter and into the seating area where the customer was waiting for her drink. Well, perhaps not so much since most of her attention had been directed at the laptop sitting in front of her and she barely glanced up when I placed the saucer beside her and put my hands on my hips.

"Here you go, how's the book coming?" I asked and she tilted the screen half-closed before taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes, clearly tired. No wonder, she'd been in here hammering out paragraphs since before my classes ended and that was at least ten hours ago.

"Slowly," she replied with a sigh before sipping her coffee and smiling to herself. "I finally managed to get through my block on chapter twenty eight but I'm not sure whether I should give this a happy end or a sad one. I knew I'd regret not writing out a complete outline." Jill's smile became somewhat sheepish and she put her glasses back on, "I should know better shouldn't I?"

Interestingly enough in the seven months she'd been coming here I'd found out Jillian was a professional editor for a huge publishing company who after seeing so many good and terrible novels pass through her hands had finally decided to give it a shot herself. Usually she'd show up here on Sundays, her only day off, and spend the entire afternoon here and stay until closing. Occasionally when she was on a roll I'd let her write while I packed up and she'd let me read some of her work.

There was no way anyone would by any stretch of the imagination consider me a professional but even for a draft I was definitely impressed and if I was the kind of person who could hand out awards she'd be at the top of the list.

The problem was that regardless of how good her book was she'd been working on it for a whole year before she found GreenLeaves Cafe and she was a perfectionist, which was making it hard for her to get a flow. Even now I could see it was killing her to not spend the next hour perfecting every sentence.

"As long as you enjoy what you're doing and it's not like you're one of those unemployed writers either so there's no rush." I shrugged, the problem with being a perfectionist was small in comparison to the rest of her life. She was gorgeous, only twenty five with a job she enjoyed, from what I heard an amazing house, a corgi she showed me endless photos of and a good looking boyfriend I'd seen pick her up from the cafe on Valentine's Day with with a bouquet of roses. If I wasn't satisfied with my job I would have been green with envy even if I still dreamed to one day have all those things and the time to still practice my art. As much as I loved being a barista it wasn't something I could do forever.