C. Omololu - Dirty Little Secrets

“There,” Josh said as he pulled me through the front door. “If the alarm system went off, then she’d be pissed.”

We stood in the darkened café. It was weird being in there with the lights off and nobody sitting at the tables or waiting in line to order a drink. The only light came from above the sink in back of the counter.

“This thing takes forever to heat up,” Josh said, flicking buttons on the espresso machine. “You really don’t have to be home?”

I shook my head and grinned. “Nope. Not tonight.”

“Your mom must be really cool,” he said. “Mine gets mad if I’m out past one, even during vacation.”

“Let’s just say my curfew isn’t high on her priority list right now,” I said. My mind flashed quickly to the sheet-wrapped figure in the hallway.

“Is your dad around?”

I just shook my head. I really didn’t want to talk about me.

Josh was fiddling with stuff behind the counter. “My mom is on husband number three, and I think they get higher on the asshole scale every time.”

“And you don’t want to go live with your dad?”

He pulled a carton of milk out of the fridge. “Don’t really know him. He took off when I was a baby. Last time I heard, he was living in New York, but that was a long time ago. Besides, I like it here. I figure I’ve got less than two years before I’m out of here, and I can put up with anything until then.” For some reason, it made more sense when he said it.

“Do you know where you want to go to school?” I loved picking up little pieces of his life and putting them together to make the picture whole.

“I was thinking about Cal, but it’s so close, you know? Mom is trying to get me to go someplace a little farther away, like UCLA or maybe Santa Barbara. Sometimes I think she’s trying to get rid of me completely.”

I laughed a little. I always wanted to go someplace as far away as possible. I was thinking about the East Coast, maybe Boston. I’d go farther than that, but you run out of country someplace around New York.

“Come here, you’ve got to take a whiff of this.” Josh lifted the lid off a big gray garbage can that was sitting behind the counter.

My heart skipped a beat, and I could feel a shiver of fear run through my body as I stared at him with the garbage can lid in his hand. He knew. All this time and he was just setting me up for this moment. This whole thing was too good to be true. “Why?” I asked warily. I looked around, half expecting Justine and Cara to jump out from behind the counter pointing at Garbage Girl.

Josh laughed. “Stop asking so many questions and come over here. I promise you, this is one of the best smells in the world.”

“Are you making fun of me?” I asked. I could feel my throat closing up, and the last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of him. I took a step back toward the door.

“No,” he said, a look of concern crossing his face. “Why would I make fun of you? I just wanted to show you these.” He reached into the can and pulled out a handful of shiny black coffee beans.

Relief flooded my body. I took a step forward and immediately the strongest, thickest coffee smell I’d ever imagined filled the air around me. The plastic can was filled almost to the rim with beans.

Josh laughed and took a deep breath. He stuck his face down close to the beans and inhaled again. “Oh my God, I love that smell. Sometimes when I have to work really early, I just come in here and stick my head in the can and breathe for a few minutes. I swear, you can almost get a buzz going off the smell alone.” He took a scoop of the beans and put them in a big red machine. “Now, what can I get for you, miss?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what would you like? Anything. On the house. If we’re going to stay up late, we’re going to need some assistance.”

“I thought you had to be back by one o’clock,” I said. “That was probably a long time ago.”

“I said they get mad if I’m not home by one o’clock,” he said. “I didn’t say that I always do as I’m told. I’m working the early shift tomorrow, but I’m not about to abandon a girl with no curfew by going home on time.”

“Well, thanks for risking it,” I said.

“So, what’ll it be?” he asked. “Medium vanilla latte, or would you like to go for something completely different?”

“Something completely different sounds exactly like what I need right now,” I said. I leaned on the countertop and watched him work.

“So glad to hear you say that, Lucy Lu,” he said. He turned on the red machine, and the noise of the grinding beans filled the empty space.

The last bit of my coffee was lukewarm as I tipped it out of the bottom of the paper cup. “That was awesome,” I said. “What do you call it?”

“It’s not on the menu,” he said. “It has a little of this and a little of that, and I only make it for very special customers.”

“So what do I have to do to get you to make it again?”

“All you have to do is show up,” he said. “I’ll call it the Lucy Special. But you can only have it made by me. If you go to any other coffee guys, you will definitely not get what you want.” He tried to hide his grin by downing the last of his drink. “Hey, all we’ve been talking about is me—what about you?”

I shrugged. “What about me?” He was dangerously easy to talk to.

“Well, I know that you’ve seen every Johnny Depp movie ever made and that you like Shel Silverstein.” I blushed, not expecting him to remember back that far. “Let’s see—you live with your mom, who is religious but very cool with the curfews. Does your dad live around here?”

“No,” I said. “He lives in Michigan with the new family.” I couldn’t believe all of this was sliding out of my mouth. It took months for me to tell Kaylie this much.

“That’s a drag,” Josh said. “Your mom never got married again?”

“Nope. She didn’t . . . she doesn’t even date or anything. Not since Dad left.” I realized too late that I was already thinking of her in the past tense. Josh didn’t seem to notice.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “My mom was never a good single person, which is why she makes such horrible choices. She’s cool now, but before this last husband, she was drinking pretty heavy. I used to wake up in the morning and find her passed out on the couch from the night before, a couple of empty wine bottles on the floor.”

It was hard to picture perfect Josh Lee coming from a broken home with an alcoholic mother. It didn’t seem to bother him that much, though, and he talked about it like he was talking about what his mom did for work. Casually. Like it had nothing to do with him.

“Is that why you don’t drink?” I asked.

“No. I wasn’t drinking because I’m driving tonight. My mom got a DUI a few years ago and almost killed someone in an accident. It was a mess to undo—it still isn’t all the way taken care of. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”

I smiled at him. “Is that the big family secret?”

Josh shook his head. “Not much of a secret,” he said. “Not sure who knows, but it doesn’t bother me. Just because she screwed up doesn’t make it my problem.”

I couldn’t believe that it really wouldn’t bother him that much. “Didn’t you worry what people were going to say about her? About all of you?”

“They probably didn’t say anything worse than I did at the time.” He thought for a minute. “I guess at first I was pretty pissed off and embarrassed by the whole thing. Luckily, nobody ever saw her totally messed up, except for us. When she had the accident, it sort of blew the whole thing wide open, so we couldn’t hide it anymore. It must have been before you started at our school, or believe me, you would have heard about it.” Josh looked at me from under a strand of dark, shining hair. “The funny thing is, it was almost a relief in a way. We were all forced to deal with it, instead of pretending everything was okay. She even met this husband at AA. He’s a lot of things, but at least he’s not a drunk.”