The rest of the week went by uneventfully, mainly because Ellie didn’t see Jae for the remainder of it; the day after he walked her to the bus stop, Barkley cancelled class at the last minute, and Jae didn’t come that Friday. It was a little sad – more than a little, actually – to go a couple of days without seeing him, but it didn’t mean that his presence wasn’t known; he made good use of her phone number, keeping her phone busy with an uncannily steady amount of text messages. She thought that, at some point, the text messages would die off, which was usually what happened when she talked to guys, but they didn’t; he was just as unpredictable and witty as he was in person, and extremely consistent, to top it off.   There was a lull in their conversations only when she got up and went into the city to work an opening shift on Saturday morning; at six in the morning, she wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t heard from him – he wouldn’t have heard from her, if the tables had been turned. She went about her day as she normally did, moving briskly to get cookies, muffins and scones in the oven, as well as tea steeping and coffee brewing in the hour before the café opened. For the first three hours of her full day shift she was busy with that and the morning rush; only in the two hours before the lunch rush began did traffic die down significantly, leaving Ellie to her own devices. She took the time to restock everything before settling into a spot near the register with a notebook, completely and satisfactorily distracted.   At first she thought that she had imagined the vibrating sensation in her back pocket; with a slight frown she reached back and grabbed her phone to check it, her eyebrows raising at the sight of Jae’s name and a message displayed for her on the lock screen.   So…about this date.   Ellie automatically rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she pulled up their message thread.   You’re even more annoying than I thought you would be.   It’s one of my finer qualities.   This message was accompanied by a grinning, bespectacled emoji; Ellie had to cover to keep from laughing out loud, and attracting attention to herself. For the next hour they talked through consistent text messages, interrupted only by the occasional customer, approaching the counter for a refill, or a quick drink. Over this amount of time she ended up telling him where she was and what she was doing; she was interrupted again by a customer, but came back to find that there was no response from Jae. She did her best not to feel too down about it, and tried to focus on other things, cleaning and restocking things that didn’t really need to be cleaned or restocked.   She had gone back to her notebook when she heard the entrance door open, drawing her attention away from her sentence; her eyes widened at the sight of Jae entering the cafe, dressed casually and lacking