Word on the Street

Midnight Roast appeared on both menus Monday, and by Wednesday the whole block wasn't talking about the drink anymore so much as the sheer fact of its existence.

"So it's true," the flower shop owner said, leaning over the counter with the expression of someone who'd hit the jackpot on the local gossip lottery. "You two finally made up."

"We didn't make up," Dani said, more sharply than the situation called for. "We're just rationally using a shared kitchen. It's a business decision."

"Sure, honey," the woman said, in the tone reserved for someone stubbornly denying the obvious, and left with a cup of Midnight Roast, clearly unconvinced.

***

By Friday, the rumors had reached a scale Dani found personally offensive to her dignity: someone — she suspected Sol, though there was no proof — had started a betting pool in the neighborhood group chat on exactly when "the enemies of Maple Street" would finally admit their feelings for each other.

"Did you see this?" she asked Theo, shoving her phone in his face, screen displaying a message that read: "Betting end of month. Have you seen the way he looks at her when she's not looking?"

Theo read it with the expression of a man caught in his own exposure.

"Absurd," he said, a touch too quickly for something absurd. "Utterly absurd. People have too much free time."

"Exactly what I said," she agreed, though her own voice sounded a little less certain than she wanted.

"We should shut this down," Theo said. "Publicly. Stop the talk."

"Agreed. Completely. No feelings involved. None whatsoever."

They stood staring at each other over the counter a beat longer than a conversation about the total absence of feelings required, and both seemed to realize at the same moment that they were protesting hard enough to look suspicious.

***

"You know what's funny," Sol said Saturday, wiping the counter with the same deliberate indifference she reserved for her most uncomfortable questions, "you're both denying it with exactly the same intensity you used to deny caring what the other one thought. And back then, if you remember, you were wrong too."

"That's different," Dani said.

"Sure," Sol said, with a smile that made it very clear she believed none of it, and went back to work, leaving Dani with the uneasy sense that the entire block, apparently, saw something she was still refusing to admit even to herself.

That evening, closing up alone, she caught herself looking through the glass at the lit windows of Roast & Co., where Theo was wiping down the counter with that focused expression she'd learned to recognize without effort, thinking that maybe — just maybe — the block knew something she wasn't yet ready to say out loud, even to herself.