The early morning rush at Anchor Coffee is always hectic. For some reason the owners won’t put on extra staff or buy more equipment to help us handle the line that often goes out the door. ‘It adds to the appeal’ Mr. Jennings told me when I had asked him about the long lines. ‘They show people on the street that we are popular, that people are willing to wait to get our coffee.’ He may be right, but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with dozens of frantic, over-stressed and under-caffeinated Congressional staffers, lobbyists, and assorted other D.C. denizens.

“Emma, we need more of the light roast. Run to the back and grab a couple of pounds.”

I nod an acknowledgement to April, who is on the pour-over station, and head into the back room. Anchor is an artisan coffee roaster. We bring in raw coffee beans and do custom, small-batch roasts that we serve and sell exclusively in store. We also have to do a wide range of presentations, from Chemex pour-overs, cold brews, various espresso based drinks, anything but traditional drip coffee.

I hadn’t even been much of a coffee drinker when I started work here two years ago. I drank herbal tea all through college. I was proud of the fact that I never had pulled an all-nighter. I never developed the caffeine habit that a lot of my friends did. They often argued that it was because I was majoring in Classics, not a hard, serious subject like engineering or biology. Maybe they were right. I certainly didn’t have any early morning labs. But at the same time, I doubted any of them could have hacked it in any of my classes. I took a perverse pride in the lack of direct job applicability of my major.

At least until it was time to graduate.

By the time I was in my senior year, I had started to realize that I didn’t want to go to grad school. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an interest in the subject. I did. But I talked with my professors, researched job openings, and discovered that the prospects for getting a professorship were slim, even if I got into a Ph.D. program at a top school. One of my mentors had gotten her doctorate from Harvard, but the first tenure track position she was able to get was at Kansas State, after bouncing around at different post-doc fellowships and assistant professor positions. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work so hard to end up in Kansas. I grew up in the D.C. suburbs and couldn’t imagine living that far from a major city.

That would be an ideal career path. The more likely outcome was a series of adjunct positions where you teach one or two classes, don’t get benefits, and don’t get paid for any of your work out of the classroom. I knew some people who were grad students while I was an undergrad that went that route. They had to race between three different colleges to get enough hours to pay their bills. It wasn’t appealing. I was sure I could find something else.

And that is how I ended up here, carrying these packs of freshly roasted coffee beans.

I hand April the beans, go back to my espresso machine, and start work on the orders that have piled up in the few moments I spent in the back room. Someone ordered a cappuccino with coconut milk. I don’t get it. I drink coconut milk sometimes, but for some reason it doesn’t foam the way that cow’s milk does. It kind of ruins the whole point of the cappuccino. They should just order a latte and be done with it. But whatever the customer wants, I guess. I pour the milk into the metal cup and set it up to steam while I pull a double shot of espresso. Even though I had stayed away from coffee for so long, working here has turned me into a connoisseur.

The rest of the morning flies past in a blur of steam and coffee grounds. Finally, around nine-thirty, the crowd thins out. The only people remaining are the long-timers, the people who don’t come to the coffee shop to buy coffee and then go to work, they work here. About a half-dozen of them are sitting at cramped tables, typing away on their MacBook Airs. I wish I understood what it is they do all day, how they make money. But I have never had much of a head for business. They sit there silently for hours, drinking cup after cup.

Nobody has come to the counter in at least twenty minutes, so I go into the back to do some organizing. Inevitably, some things get out of place during the morning rush, so these little lulls are a good time to put things back in order. April pops in behind me.

“Emma, oh my god, have you seen that guy sitting at the table by the window?”

I haven’t. Or rather, I haven’t noticed anything terribly interesting about him.

“Um, yeah, I guess.”

“He has been coming in here for a couple of weeks and he only comes up to the counter when I am on the register. Do you think that means he’s into me?”

“I don’t know, April. Could be a coincidence.”

“It happens a lot, though. I mean, it’s like he waits for me.”

I am skeptical. The idleness of working behind the counter at a coffee shop could lead one to flights of fancy. April is particularly susceptible.

“Has he done anything else? Flirted with you at all?”

“Umm, I think so. I mean, he smiles at me a lot.”

“So, why don’t you ask him out?”

April looks shocked.

“I am not going to ask him out. He should ask me out.”

I sigh. We have had this conversation before.

“Do you think he’s cute?”

“Duh, haven’t you seen him?”

I have and I suppose he is, though not to the point of getting as worked up as April, but I let it go.

“So, what’s stopping you?”

“What if he has a girlfriend, or he isn’t interested? It would be so awkward!”

“Oh, well then. Guess you will just have to wait.”

April huffs and leaves the storeroom. I am not exactly a relationship expert myself, none of my college boyfriends lasted more than a few months, but I am not inclined to just sit around and wait for someone to come woo me. I couldn’t stand the kind of ‘will he, won’t he’ anxiety that April lives with. But she seems to love it. It gives her energy, a sense of excitement.

The rest of my shift passes without incident and I collect my things and head home. I have been working since six in the morning and I can’t wait to take a nap. I have never been an early riser and this job has definitely taught me to enjoy going to bed early and taking naps. Luckily, the apartment I share with Willa is only a short walk away from Anchor. It isn’t too humid today, so the walk is pleasant.

I grab the mail and head upstairs to my apartment. As I separate out the letters into a ‘me’ pile and a ‘Willa’ pile, I notice something strange. A ‘past due’ notice from a company called Navient. I open the letter and read it in disbelief.

My student loan payment is past due.

I don’t even have student loans. My parents paid for my tuition. My father had made a big point of telling me that while complaining about my choice of major. They had finally gotten accustomed to me pursuing Classics when they died in a car crash about a month after I graduated. But they had paid for my tuition out of pocket, I was sure of it.

I call the number on the letter to explain the situation. It must be some kind of clerical error. Emma Taylor is probably a pretty common name, after all.

After navigating an interminable voice-activated menu system, I am forced to listen to minute after minute of excruciatingly bad ‘on hold’ music. I almost give up when a bored voice pops in on the other end of the line letting me know that this call will be recorded for training and quality assurance purposes.

I explain the situation, as calmly as I can. But I have trouble maintaining my composure as the person on the other end tells me how my parents took out loans for tuition in my name. They had made payments for several years, including pre-paying for a few years after their death, but now the money has run out. And there is a balance due.

One hundred and seven thousand three hundred and forty-four dollars and thirty-five cents.