“Hailey?” repeats Steve, staring back and forth between me and Jordan as if he’s waiting for someone to tell him this is a practical joke.

I’m suddenly very aware of the fact that I’m holding my apron in my hand, with my hair flying wildly around me and the front of my blouse askew. I might as well have a condom wrapper stuck to my pants.

“What, Steve?” I snap, all the anger I feel focusing itself on him.

He just gapes at me, one hand still raised and making a fist like he’s about to knock on the door. I try to step past him but he won’t move.

“You— You shouldn’t be here!” he stammers. “He’s— He’s a bad guy!”

“This really doesn’t concern you, Steve. Now would you please move?”

He drops his arm but stays rooted to the spot. “Hailey, I don’t think you understand.”

“I don’t think you understand. I don’t want your input on this.”

At that he turns around and marches towards one of the rows of cubicles. I think he’s finally gotten the message, but then he starts to shout at one of the employees sitting in front of a computer, and I notice several dozen heads turn in his direction.

“Show her what you were looking at!” he thunders, pointing a finger over at me. “Yeah, you heard me, show her what you were all looking at when I walked by.”

Curiosity gets the better of me, and despite everyone’s stares I walk over to Steve, shooting Jordan a wary glance before I go.

“Look at this. This is the kind of guy he is,” exclaims Steve, gesticulating towards the screen.

The man whose desk we’re at sits stiffly in his chair between us, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else, but I forget all about him and Steve and everyone else in the room when I see the picture on the screen.

Some sort of celebrity news website is open, and right under a headline that says ‘Nina Felina Gets Frisky with Dinner Guest— Who Is the Mystery Man?’ there’s a picture of a woman in a green ball gown standing on a balcony with a man in a suit. His arm is draped around her and she has her head resting on his shoulder.

I lean towards the screen, willing the pixels to reorganize themselves into a man that isn’t Jordan, but it’s him. I know it’s him. The balcony is dark and the picture is zoomed in so far it’s barely above flip phone quality, but there’s no mistaking his tousled hair or Hollywood-worthy features, even when they’re a bit blurry.

My hand takes control of itself and grabs hold of the mouse to scroll through the article. My eye catches on a few emboldened quotes:

The two shared a few cozy moments on the balcony during a dinner party thrown by Nina Felina last night.

A source in the company says Jordan is “quite the ladies’ man, with a new girl every week.” Is Nina just asking to have her heart broken?

A friend of Nina’s and an exclusive correspondent of ours says Nina is “totally wild over him,” and that she’ll definitely be seeing him a whole lot more.

I reach the bottom of the page and a sharp pain stabs through the numbness that’s filled me since I saw the first picture. There’s a second image at the end of the article, this one even more pixilated than the first, but I can still make out the same woman in the green dress. She has her arms thrown around the man’s neck, their faces close enough that they can’t be doing anything other than kissing.

“See!” crows Steve. “And that’s not even the half of it. Tell her what you call him around here.”

He glares at the man sitting between us, who looks about ready to crawl under his desk. The entire office has gone silent.

“Tell her!” thunders Steve.

“The— The Wolf... The Wolf of 19^th Street,” is the stuttering reply.

Steve fixes his eyes on me.

“The Wolf of 19^th Street,” he repeats, in the tone of a lawyer resting his case. “I’m sure you can tell they don’t call him that because he’s good at stocks. You should hear the things they say about him here. Look at this email I got forwarded about our meeting today.”

He pulls out his phone and scrolls through it before thrusting it under my nose. I go to push it away, but notice the sentence he’s zoomed in on just before I do.

Glad to see you’re moving on from latte girls and hitting the big leagues.

The letters swim in front of me. I raise my eyes to look at Steve

“Why the fuck would you show me that?” I glower, my voice coming out low and thick.

He blinks at me, confusion spreading over his face. “I thought you’d want to know.”

I narrow my eyes, practically spitting the next few words out. “Here? Really? You thought I’d want to know that right here, right now?”

The eyes of everyone around us burn holes into my back. Whispers have started to travel around the room. Steve shakes his head from side to side, as if he’s trying to clear it.

“I just— I don’t want you to get hurt!” he splutters. “He’s a bad guy! I didn’t think—”

“That’s right, Steve,” I cut him off. “You didn’t think.”

Whirling around, I do my best to stop myself from outright bolting to the elevators as I stride across the room. Behind me, I hear Jordan calling out my name and Steve shouting at him to leave me alone, but their voices sound distant, murky. My vision has started to blur, the air in the room feeling too thin to fill my lungs.

I reach the elevator doors and slam my hand on the down button, leaning my forearms against the wall and pressing my head against them as I wait for the elevator to arrive. I stare at the square of carpeting below me, trying to bring the pattern into focus enough to count the all the tiny squares as I fight to control my breathing.

I lift my head up at the ding of the elevator. There are already two people inside, but I’m past caring about social decorum right now. I ignore the looks they give me as I sink down into a squat against the back wall, wrapping my arms around my knees and sucking in shaky, measured breaths until we reach the lobby.

The Catering Mobile is still up at the meeting I’m supposed to be serving in a few minutes, but the ropes of panic coiling around my chest get tighter with every second I spend in this building. I jog across the lobby and burst through the glass doors into the backstreet behind the Knox building.

Gulping down the polluted city air, I feel the blast of the freezing temperature and blaring noise of downtown traffic shock me out of my daze.

I blink at the grey walls around me, and then I start to run.

I run over to Dark Brown’s back door and into the kitchen. I run past a gaping Trisha and Lisa, grabbing my things and shouting that I feel sick and have to go home. I run past the customers queuing for their midmorning coffees and push through the front door. I run a full five blocks before I finally start to slow down.

My chest is heaving, my cheeks smarting from the cold wind blasting against my face, but still I keep moving, speed-walking up another four blocks before taking a left, not even sure where I’m going until I arrive.

The full length windows in the brick storefront give a view of the tables and snug leather couches inside, warm lighting spilling over the handful of people hunched over laptops or talking to one another as they sip from steaming white mugs. I glance up at the metal sign above the door.

Cuppa Joe.

* * *

Mel takes one look at me, sees my coat hanging open with my hair still flying loose around my desperate face, and points to one of the stools in front of the counter.

“Sit down and have a cookie,” she orders.

I slide onto the stool in silence as she puts a huge chocolate chip cookie onto a plate and sets it down in front of me.

“Eat that,” she instructs, “then we’ll talk.”

The last thing I want to do right now is eat, but I pick up the cookie anyways and nibble at the edge. It’s as delicious as everything at Cuppa Joe and I can’t help but take a bigger bite. The taste reminds me of being a kid, of licking batter off spoons and sneaking chocolate chips out of the bag.

By the time I’m finished, the survival instincts that sent me running here have started quieting down, the emotions I’ve put on hold until I found somewhere safe taking over.

So of course I start to cry. The tears that have been stinging my eyes since l ran out of Dark Brown finally spill over and make everything blur. They don’t stop, dripping onto the plate in front of me and continuing to fall even as Mel hands me a tissue and leans over to pat me on the shoulder.

She lets me cry, not caring that I’m snuffling right next to the cash register and making a scene in front of all her customers. It takes me a good ten minutes to calm down. I blow my nose into the tissue.

“So,” says Mel, pausing as I let out a hiccup, “you going to tell me what happened?”

I don’t even consider Mel a close friend, but at her invitation, I let my story pour out in a flood of words big enough to fill every mug in the store. I tell her everything, starting with the moment Jordan and I first met. I tell her about all our stupid stalker jokes, about his app idea and how he encouraged me to start my blog. I tell her about how kissing him felt like being let out of a cage I didn’t even know I was stuck inside.

She stands there, nodding through it all, as I explain Jordan’s issues with his father, and how he dropped out of design school to work at Knox Security. The tears threaten to fall again as I get to his confusing announcement about needing to talk to me, but I dab at my eyes and continue, finishing off by recounting this morning’s events.

“I just don’t understand. He said I made him want to be better. How could someone who felt that way do something so bad?”

“Wanting to be better is a lot easier than actually being better,” answers Mel. “Whatever he felt for you, it sounds like he’s been under someone else’s influence for too long to put anything else first.”

“You’re right,” I groan. “I should have seen this coming. I just feel so stupid. All along I had my doubts about him, but I went with my heart instead of my head.”

I cross my arms in front of me and bury my face in the crook of my elbow.

“Hey!” Mel calls. She snaps her fingers in front of me and I lift my head. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of. All this proves is that you’re way better than that man is prepared to be. If someone’s not willing to step up to your level, don’t let them drag you down to theirs.”

I don’t think my hopeless stare is the kind of response she was looking for. She smacks her palms onto the countertop and then comes out to take a seat on the stool next to me.

“Hailey, listen,” she begins. “Did Mina ever tell you the story of how she opened this place?”

“Not really. I thought you two opened it together.”

Mel shakes her head. “Mina and I always talked about opening a cafe. When we were first living together, she was managing a restaurant and I was finishing up my business school program. It was both of our dream jobs combined.”

The story is interrupted when a customer walks up and asks where the washroom is. Mel directs them and then turns back to me.

“Right, so, we found this place for rent, and everything started falling into place. We were really going to do it, and I panicked. All I could see was failure. I knew the risks of starting an independent business, and suddenly they outweighed any chance we had at success. Do you know what I asked her to do?”

I shake my head, as captivated as a toddler during story time.

“I told her we should start a Starbucks franchise. I said we’d be better off being part of a chain.”

I try to picture the local artwork on the walls of Cuppa Joe replaced with giant Starbucks ads. I can’t.

“What did she say?”

“She said I was letting fear get the better of me, that I was giving up on building what we’d dreamed of before we even tried. I told her she was being stupid and ignoring the facts. We had a huge fight that ended in a break up. I moved out of our apartment.”

She pauses, lost in the memory.

“So Mina, being Mina, did it all herself. She rented the building, hired a designer, a renovation team, everything she needed to get the place going. I regretted my decision the moment I left and finally got the courage to tell her about a month before the cafe was set to open. I said that she was right, that I was scared and that I hurt us both because of it. I knew that wouldn’t be enough on its own, so I drafted an entire business plan and presented it to her to show that I was serious.”

“And she forgave you?” I ask.

Mel smiles. “I’m here, aren’t I? She said she only took me back because of my business contacts, but I think she knew she’d be too busy with the store to find someone else to date.”

We both laugh. Mel gets up from her stool but stays standing next to me.

“I’m not saying you should forgive this Jordan guy,” she cautions. “To be honest, you sound better off without him. What I am saying is that you shouldn’t let someone else’s insecurities hold you back. The people who really deserve to be with you will eventually rise to the occasion. Try not to worry about the ones who don’t.”

“Shit, Mel,” I remark. “How did you get so wise?”

“By talking to a lot of people over a lot of cups of coffee,” she laughs, heading back behind the counter. “Speaking of which, let me make you a latte. You look like you could use some caffeine.”

I don’t argue with her as she gets to work at the espresso machine.

“I just wish I didn’t have to go back there on Monday,” I sigh.

“So don’t.”

I stare at Mel and she shrugs.

“But I don’t want to seem like I’m just running away from all this,” I tell her.

“There’s a difference between running away and moving on.”

“But what would I be moving on to?” I ask, hoping Mel will somehow hold all the answers I need.

She sets my latte down and then reaches under the counter to bring out a business card, placing it next to my mug. “Have you ever heard of Angela Croydon?”

I nod. The Angela Croydon Show is a cooking program that plays in the afternoons on the local news station. When I was a kid, I’d watch it every time I stayed home sick from school.

“She comes in here from time to time,” Mel explains. “The other day she was telling me that she’s been looking for an assistant, specifically someone to start up her social media accounts and run them for her. She asked if any of the customers I know here are journalism students who might be interested in the job, but I told her about you and how keen on blogging you are.”

“I don’t have any real experience with that,” I protest.

“To be honest, neither does she. She said she’s pretty out of touch with technology, but she wants to be more relevant for her viewers. All she’s really looking for is someone with decent writing skills who has a basic understanding of social media marketing. You’ve told me about all the research you’ve put into blogging, Hailey. I think this might just be a perfect match.”

“I don’t know. I really don’t think I’d be qualified.”

“Well, Angela said she’d like to hear from you. You could send her some writing samples and see what she thinks.”

I nod and pick up the business card, flipping it over in my hands. A big group of customers walk in and Mel has to spend the next few minutes collecting orders. I take the opportunity to check my phone.

I have fourteen new texts and two voicemails. Trisha has texted me three times asking where I went and if I’m okay. Steve has sent several apologies followed by long strings of question marks. The rest of the texts and the two calls are from Jordan.

I consider slipping the phone back into my bag and ignoring it for the rest of my life, locking this whole ordeal away in a SIM card I’ll throw out the first chance I get.

Instead I tie my hair up, square my shoulders, and punch in the number for my voicemail.