Page 21 of Pretend You Love Me

Luca, who’s midway through explaining to a customer why oat milk foam is “literally impossible, it’s like asking water to be dry,” doesn’t even look up. “Hello to you too,” he calls. “You forgot your personalized mug yesterday, it is behind the counter. The one that says, ‘I’m not rude, I’m Australian.’”

“I’m not Australian,” Liv says, already moving toward the back of the café.

“No, but you’re definitely rude,” Luca counters, his voice carrying easily over the mid-morning chatter. “It’s close enough to be accurate.”

Liv ignores this, stopping briefly to examine the playlist with a critical expression. “This sounds like a waiting room for people who gave up,” she announces, loud enough to be heard at the farthest table. “Is there a reason we’re punishing everyone who walks through that door, or is it just general misanthropy?”

“It’s Fleetwood Mac,” I tell her, handing a customer their change. “It’s literally the opposite of giving up.”

“It’s the musical equivalent of beige paint,” she says, already moving again. “Inoffensive. Forgettable. The sort of thing you put on when you want to make sure no one remembers your taste in music.”

She pauses at the specials board, where Luca’s handwriting, looping and dramatic, with extra flourishes on the capital letters, spells out the day’s offerings in three different colours of chalk.

“Is this a font or a cry for help?” she asks, tilting her head slightly. “Because I’m genuinely concerned. This looks like what happens when someone discovers calligraphy while having a nervous breakdown.”

“It’s artistic,” Luca calls from behind the counter. “Something you wouldn’t understand because your idea of self-expression is wearing slightly different shades of black.”

“It’s called a cohesive aesthetic,” Liv says, already heading for her usual table in the corner. “Something you wouldn’t understand because your idea of a cohesive aesthetic is ‘clown threw up in a craft store.’“

She drops into a chair with the dedication of someone who has absolutely no intention of moving for the next several hours, spreads her laptop bag, notebook, and a collection of pens across the table in what appears to be a deliberately chaotic arrangement, and then, apparently as an afterthought, reaches for her coffee without looking up from her phone.

“Jesus, how many customers do you have?” she asks, squinting at the line forming by the counter. “Is there some kind of poetry reading I wasn’t told about? A cult meeting? Has the apocalypse started and this is literally the last coffee shop open?”

“Some of us have actual jobs,” Luca says, already heading for the espresso machine. “Not all of us can work from literally anywhere with Wi-Fi.”

“Says the man whose entire business model is ‘hot bean juice and books,’” Liv counters, opening her laptop. “Very demanding. Extremely complex. I’m surprised you find time to sleep with all that corporate strategy.”

She settles into work typing rapidly, one hand reaching occasionally for her coffee without looking away from the screen. Around her, the café continues its midday rhythm, customers arriving and departing, orders being taken and filled, conversations overlapping in the comfortable chaos that happens when people share space without demanding constant attention.

I’m halfway through the lunch rush, making avocado toast for a woman in a green coat, fielding questions about dairy alternatives from a man with a complicated coffee order, and simultaneously keeping an eye on Milo, who has decided that the best use of his newly discovered voice is to conduct experiments on its upper volume limit, when I notice that Liv has somehow acquired Maisie.

I didn’t hand her over or ask her to hold her. I didn’t even register Liv moving from her table to the counter. But there she is, my daughter balanced against Liv’s shoulder with the practiced ease of someone who has held babies before, Liv’s hand supporting Maisie’s back. She’s still typing with her other hand, her eyes on her laptop screen, her conversation with the person on the other side of the table continuing without interruption.

“…so I told him if he wanted ‘approachable but still premium,’ he could either pay for the logo that achieves that or go back to business school and invent a time machine so he can stop me from taking this job in the first place,” she’s saying, bouncing Maisie slightly as she speaks. “He chose the logo. Smart man. It would've been cheaper to build the time machine.”

The woman she’s talking to, a regular I recognize but don’t know by name, laughs, the sound bright in the crowded café. “What did you end up doing?”

“Exactly what he asked for,” Liv says, reaching for her coffee. “Approachable but premium. Which is not actually a thing, but I made something that makes it look like it is.” She sets the mug down, adjusts Maisie against her shoulder, and continues typing. “The trick is making them think you’ve solved an impossible problem while actually just giving them what they wanted in the first place.”

Twenty minutes later, when the lunch rush has peaked and is just beginning to ease, Liv is bouncing Milo on her knee with one hand while redoing a typography layout with the other. She’s moved from her corner table to the larger one near the window, Noah having glanced up, registered her laptop and materials with a single careful look, and then immediately offered to move, and she has somehow commandeered half the café’s surface area with mock-ups, colour swatches, and at least three different versions of what appears to be a book cover.

“Your Instagram caption for the new arrivals post is aggressively boring,” she tells Luca, who’s wiping down tables on the other side of the room. “It’s like you’re trying to make sure no one remembers your business exists.”

“It’s descriptive,” Luca counters, not looking up from the table he’s cleaning. “I’m describing the books. That’s what captions are for.”

“Captions are for making people want to buy things,” Liv says, already typing. “Not for listing the names of books they could literally read on the shelf behind you.” Her fingers move across her keyboard with efficiency, her expression focused. “You need something that makes people feel something. Not just ‘new books arrived today.’”

“Not everyone communicates in emojis and dramatic declarations,” Luca says, but he’s smiling, the warm, open smile that he shares so willingly. “Some of us use complete sentences.”

“Complete sentences can still be interesting,” Liv says, still typing. “It’s not mutually exclusive.” She hits send with a decisive tap, then turns back to her laptop. “I’ve fixed it. You’re welcome.”

Luca’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He checks it, his expression changing from scepticism to grudging approval. “That’s actually not terrible,” he admits.

“High praise,” Liv says dryly. “I’ll add it to my resume. ‘Not terrible’ according to Luca Reyes, who once tried to convince me that Comic Sans was ‘misunderstood‘ and ‘actually very sincere.’”

“I stand by that,” Luca says. “It’s the most honest font. No pretences. Just pure, unapologetic Comic Sans energy.”

“You stand by a lot of things that would get you committed in a more just world,” Liv tells him, but there’s no heat in it, just the easy back-and-forth of people who know how far they can push each other.