The usual jingle of the bell rang through the relatively empty coffee shop, signifying yet another customer had entered for the lunchtime rush. Well...as rushed as a small coffee shop can be on a drizzly Wednesday. Irene didn’t even look up from her station behind the counter to see who walked in, and continued to clean the coffee machine. She wasn’t on the register today which meant as little human interaction as possible today, just how she liked it.

It had been a quiet day so far with a few regulars earlier in the morning and now students were beginning to filter in for their midday caffeine fix to push them through to the end of their work day. A quiet day meant chores for those who weren’t dealing with the customers, from stock taking to cleaning there was gonna be a job to be done somewhere and Irene got stuck with the latter. But cleaning had its perks, she was behind the counter and able to people watch without having to interact with them and got to have a little fun while doing it.

Like that guy in the corner, he comes in a lot, probably to get out of the house away from his family who are always asking him why he was doing literature for the billionth time, when they wanted him to do law like the rest of their family. Or those two girls sat on the stools to the side, who are supposed to be going over study notes but are actually listening to a new album together and are laughing with each other and slowly falling in love.

Or at least that what Irene makes up in her head.

And okay, maybe she was self projecting a little and these stories came from her own mind and her own dreams which she then pasted into the lives of others...but hey...it passes the time.

Her eyes scan the room looking for her next subject and they land on a girl sat on her own next to the window. Irene hadn’t seen her around before but gosh she was beautiful. The girl had flaming red hair which Irene knew she’d remember if she’d seen it before. To be honest, she’d remember anything about this girl if she’d been her before. To put it simply, she was rather breathtaking and Irene found herself staring a bit. The girl had headphones on and was staring at her laptop rather intently while her head silently bobbed along to whatever song Irene assumed she was listening to.

Irene was brought back down to planet Earth by her co-worker throwing a cloth at her. Apparently she’d been asking her to pass the dry roast beans for the past five minutes. Oh.  

Irene brushed her bangs back behind her ears and got back to cleaning. No more distractions. I gotta finish up and head home and finish my paper soon. She went back to cleaning and a few moments later her co-worker said something to her that she didn’t really catch because she was too busy telling herself to stop thinking about headphones girl.  

“Uh...hey…?” a voice called out.

Irene ignored the call, she wasn’t on register so not her problem.

“Um...excuse me? Can I get a ca