Sometimes you have to lure the fish in, and sometimes you get lucky and they come to you. I couldn’t believe my eyes or my luck when I see Josie Dunn walking toward me in the alley. At first I think maybe I’m imagining it, which is why I don’t immediately put out my joint. I’m not usually much of a smoker. It’s Tyler. Call it peer pressure. Also, I haven’t eaten in three days, and pot seems to be the only thing that helps.

I take a long pull off the joint, suck the musty smoke deep down into my lungs, into the core of me. I hold it there. She’s every bit as beautiful, even though she’s not wearing a dress. She looks more casual, almost relaxed. She doesn’t look like the kind of woman who received hundreds of photos of shellfish—something she’s highly allergic to and would mean certain death if ingested. I know, I read up on food allergies.

No, she looks like someone who has it all together. Like someone who has her emotions in check, which is one reason I don’t instantly recognize it’s her. This time she has on jeans and a blouse with heels, and I wonder what it must feel like to be so flawless. Scanning her Instalook again this morning, realizing more of her likes and dislikes, it finally sunk in. This time it has to be different. I realized I can’t be stupid about this. I can’t send immature jabs when I’m lonely or when I’ve had one too many. I have to be strategic. I don’t want to watch from afar. Less like last time. That wasn’t real. That’s why it didn’t last.

I want it to be like this. Up close and personal. I want her to come to me. And just like that, she has.

Already, I feel like I know her. I know she likes dinner parties and hates traffic. She doesn’t hate a lot. She’s not one of ‘those women.’ Her positive to negative ratio is roughly eleven to one.

It probably doesn’t hurt that she’s married to Dr. Grant Dunn, plastic surgeon extraordinaire. That part kind of surprised me; she doesn’t strike me as the type who’s had work done. But maybe he’s just that good. They have two kids. One boy, one girl. The perfect family. She’s into flowers, salads, and spin class. Typical. But there’s something different there, too. For one, she doesn’t try too hard. She isn’t trying to get people to like her.

I can tell.

They just do.

They vacation at least twice a year: once in the winter and once in the summer. She’s proud of her children, and her husband clearly adores her. It’s evident in the photographs he takes. In fact, I would argue that he takes just as many as she does. An involved family man. The kind I know Josh would have been. Sure, we might not have had their money, but we could have been that happy. We were that happy. Once.

I can have that again. I just have to dig deep. That’s what @liveyourbestlife224 says. Sometimes you have to dig deep. And I am. I have.

“Izzzzzy,” Stacey calls out the back door. The sound of her voice makes me jump. She likes to do that, draw my name out as long as she can. I don’t like the way it sounds coming from her lips, but I can’t exactly tell her as much—not now. Not now that @Josie_Dunn loved my sandwich. Not now that I really need this job. Not now that I know she’ll be back.

“Izzy,” Stacey says. “There you are.” She finds me in the back, washing the last of the dishes. We have a dish washer but her kid had a thing at school tonight, some performance or something, so I said I’d finish up. I’m not supposed to be back here—I’m supposed to be off the clock, and I assume that’s why Stacey’s saying my name in that manner. She may have money, but that’s the thing about rich people. They like to hold on to what they have.

“Where’s Maria?” she asks, her eyes searching the kitchen, taking note of the fact that I am elbow-deep in dish water.

“Her kid had a thing…”

She squints as though she has no idea what I could possibly be talking about. “A thing?”

“Like a performance.”

“Oh.”

I don’t stop washing. Maria’s job isn’t as easy as mine. But Stacey wouldn’t know that. She wouldn’t know hard labor if it struck her in the face. I know I’m considering testing my theory.

“You’d think she’d need the money.”

She did need the money. She’d even said as much, when I’d suggested covering for her. I told her not to worry, and I slipped her a twenty. It was more than she would’ve made in the two hours she had left here, but Grant Dunn had left it in the tip jar, and I figured Maria needed it more than me. I only had one mouth to feed, and lately, barely had that.

“I don’t think she was feeling well,” I lie. I’m careful about it, though. It’s not an outright lie. It’s just my opinion, which can’t be used against you the same way a real lie can.

“Oh—that’s too bad. Say— I was going to ask if you wouldn’t mind placing the dairy order again this week?”

I tilt my head and set the plate on the drying rack. “It’s due in the morning.”

She frowns. “I know. It’s just that I have a date.”

I want to tell her this is her problem. This is her business, not mine, and that the order is due at the same time every week. I want to tell her this will mean staying an hour even after I close up. But that’s not what I say at all. I could use the money, anyhow. “Sure,” I tell her, and with that she smiles sweetly. Then I watch as she turns on her heels and walks out.

“Thanks again,” she calls when she reaches the counter. I listen as she gathers her things. She’s happier than usual. She has the shot at the one thing money can’t buy in earnest— love. For this reason alone, I know better than to engage her. I hate hearing about her dating life. It’s above and beyond my pay grade. Not that she understands that. People like Stacey—rich people—hardly know boundaries.

Finally, when I’ve had enough pretending to busy myself in the back, when I can tell that she’s heading out, I make my way to the front.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she says, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “You’re a lifesaver, I swear.”

“Not really,” I say. But she’s already gone.

I clean up, and then I place the order for the dairy, which was an even bigger pain in the ass than I thought it would be. Stacey hadn’t figured in that we release the pumpkin spice latte next week, and that calls for double the whip we normally order. Thankfully we aren’t busy, or it would have taken me even longer, and I have to make it to the bus stop by 9:30, otherwise I have to wait a full hour for the final bus of the night to make its way back around. I’m just finishing up counting the till when I hear the doorbell chime. I look up, and I see him. Grant Dunn. He looks almost confused as he steps through the doorway, as though he’s misplaced something, and he isn’t sure this is where he’ll find it.

“I’m sorry,” he says, checking his watch and then meeting my eye. “Are you closed?”

Technically, we closed two minutes ago but I remember the twenty dollar tip and his million dollar grin and I simply say, “What can I get you?”

“I was thinking about an Americano, actually.”

He smiles, and there’s something in his eye that lets me know, he hasn’t forgotten they aren’t on the menu.

“Decaf?”

He tilts his head as though it isn’t late, as though I’m crazy for the thought. “I never do things halfway.”

I nod, and then I swallow hard because he’s looking at me the way I’ve seen him look at her in the photos, and I never want it to stop. I gather the things I need and flip the espresso machine back on. It comes to life, and I busy my hands.

“Busy today?”

“Always,” I say, and it isn’t a lie. Today was abnormally busy. We’ve just gotten the first cool front of the season and suddenly everyone thinks run-of-the-mill coffee is a good idea.

“I hope you don’t mind, but there’s something I need to ask you…”

I look up then and meet his eye.

“It’s the reason I came back, actually. I just have to know…”

I swallow hard, because his stare is burning a hole through me. I’m pretty sure in all my years in existence, no one has ever looked at me this way before. I can’t speak. I can’t think. Somehow I manage to lift my brow.

He waits for a second before he speaks. He holds my stare. “Who was Joshua?”