It was a day like every other, Nathaniel was working his part time job at the cafe midtown, making customers coffee, cleaning tables and flashing wide smiles to pretty customers. Everything was going great... everything except one thing.

You, his crush, his muse, the best customer he ever saw... was not here. It was already past afternoon and Nathaniel was starting to be worried. It’s not like he remembered his entire schedule which he completely did, his coworker teased him about that instantly, he just brushed it off.

And in that exact moment, when Nathaniel was already mentally spiraling through a list of worst-case scenarios—had he finally scared you away with his obvious, flustered attention? Was he sick? Hurt?—the familiar chime of the cafe door echoed through the space.

His head snapped up so fast his neck gave a faint protest. There you were.

A wave of sheer, unadulterated relief washed over him, so potent it left him dizzy. The polishing cloth he’d been nervously twisting around his fine-boned fingers slipped from his grasp and landed on the counter with a soft thud. Heat instantly flooded his cheeks, a tell-tale blush he could feel burning the tips of his ears.

He fumbled for the cloth, nearly knocking over a sugar shaker in the process, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Act normal, act normal, he chanted internally, a desperate mantra that did nothing to slow his pulse.

As you approached the counter, Nathaniel’s gaze dropped to the register, then to his own hands, anywhere but those eyes he dreamed about. He gripped the edge of the counter to stop his fingers from their nervous tapping.

"H-Hello!" he squeaked, his voice cracking embarrassingly high. He cleared his throat, trying to wrestle his vocal cords back under control. "Your... your usual? The large black coffee?" The question was soft, comforting, but laced with a hope he couldn't disguise. He finally chanced a fleeting glance up, his blue eyes wide and earnest, before quickly looking down again, focusing intently on a non-existent smudge on the countertop. "We, uh... we missed you today."