"The important thing is that nobody beats me to them. Like before," she had said, watching me from the corner of her eye. "Buying clothes always makes my mouth dry — let’s get something to drink."

Chapter 25: Brown Shoes II.

The afternoon air felt thick, heavy with the smell of Mayo’s Caesar — placed in a pitcher she balanced with one hand like a trophy. With the other, she held onto me by the neck, or at least was trying to.

"Are we here?" I said, looking at the café door while trying to form words. "Why did we walk if you have a car?"

"It’s illegal to drive like this, you idiot," she took another sip of her Caesar. "Ha, ha! How I missed the worst Caesar in the city — it tastes like alcohol and clams!"

She kicked the café door open, which luckily was empty inside.

"We’re here, baby!" she shouted, letting me go. Luckily I managed to hold onto a chair as Nolan came running toward me.

"Are you alright, Ryne?" he said, taking the can from my hand. "Did you drink a lot?"

"No, I didn’t—"

"She didn’t drink anything!" Mayo interrupted. "You’re an embarrassment to every twenty-something in the world!" she yelled, her laughter echoing through the empty café. "Half a can, Nolan! Half a can of light beer and she’s already walking like someone roughed her up!"

"But this is apple juice," said Nolan, looking at my can.

"I bought it for her to calm down!" Mayo shouted. "You should have seen how bad she handles it! About twenty men asked her to dance — real men!" She took the last sip from her pitcher. "She didn’t want any of them, and one who grabbed her by the waist she almost killed! A bottle, she picked it up, broke it on the table and pointed it at the idiot! This crazy girl almost stabbed him!"

"He didn’t grab my waist!" I tried to defend myself, though my tone of voice wasn’t helping. "He grabbed my backside — that’s a crime, he was a criminal!" I fell into Nolan’s arms, leaning against his chest.

"Are you going to sleep already!?" Mayo questioned. "In my day it was all night, not half an hour!"

My vision was blurry, my head spinning — everything without noise, but resembling it.

"Let her be, Mayo. Not everyone has your mammoth tolerance," Nolan defended me, placing his hand on my forehead and cheeks. "You must be sleepy, Ryne — close your eyes."

"But I have to work," I protested, though my body wouldn’t even cooperate enough to stand up.

I felt his warm hands wrapping around my waist and legs, lifting me in his big arms, separating me from the cold chair. "Don’t worry, Ryne — take a rest," he said, laying me down in the back of his car, covering me with his jacket. His scent — the combination of cologne and warmth — created an atmosphere of peace.

"Rest, love," Nolan whispered, kissing my forehead. "Sleep a little. I’ll take care of closing the café with Mayo."

"Nolan..." I tried to say, but my eyelids weighed more than my consciousness.

"Shh." He closed the door, leaving the window halfway open. "I’ll keep your apple juice in the fridge."

He smiled, walking away. I heard the door close behind him.

"Miss Moore," the doctor called. "You’ve spent three hours telling me something that seems irrelevant — I don’t see the problem with Mayo that would have marked you like this."

I kept my eyes closed. "I woke up two hours later. Not in my room — in his car. The shadows were long and the cold of the leather pressed against my cheek."

"What time is it?" I whispered, turning on my phone. An hour left before closing.

I got up with a clumsy movement, feeling a faint trace of nausea. When I stepped out of the car, the silence of the street was absolute — broken only by the hum of the streetlamps. I walked toward the back door of the café, the one that led to the kitchen. It was slightly open, perhaps waiting for me.

"So thoughtful, my wizard," I stepped in, seeing the kitchen fairly clean for the hour. "I’m going to surprise Nolan with a kiss before closing," I whispered, looking at the door that led to the café.

I was going to walk in, was going to say "I’m awake" and steal a kiss from him — but the voices inside stopped me. They weren’t working voices. It was a tone I had never heard from Mayo before: quiet, stripped of her usual noise.

"...and in Switzerland, the cold is different, Nolan," Mayo was saying. The clink of a cup against the wood could be heard. "It’s not like this Canadian cold. Over there the cold lies to you — it makes you feel fine until you can’t feel your fingers and have to go to the doctor. The place is beautiful, but I’d only go to skate."

"That sounds incredible," Nolan laughed. "But also — who goes out without a sweater?"

"I’m telling you, alcohol warms your blood," she took a sip of her tea. "If I’d put one on, I would have sweated."

"Though it sounds like Ryne would love the place," he laughed, eating a cookie. "She doesn’t like the cold — I found that out once when we went out and it rained. When a drop hit her she screamed quite a bit."

"Haven’t you two been together like a month?" Mayo asked. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"As an official couple," Nolan replied. "But we went out almost all the time before. She turned this place yellow — literally and figuratively."

"It was the first thing I noticed the first time I came back," she turned to look at a wall. "It smells like vanilla and butter. You have the cups in order — even the floor has no more marks."

"Ryne likes order," my wizard added. "It gives my perfect girl peace."

There was a long silence, decorated only by the beating of my heart.

"Your life with Ryne is very beautiful," Mayo said finally. The rustle of her coat was heard, as if she had moved closer to him. "When I was with you, you weren’t like this."

Her words froze me. The gap in the door seemed like an immovable lock.

"That was five years ago, Mayo," Nolan replied, with a calm that hurt me. "You were a mess back then, and I thought I was the luckiest guy alive to have you."

"And you were," she confirmed. "Not everyone was capable of handling me."

"You had already kissed half the school," Nolan added. "I think you kissed more people at university than I have in my entire life."

"Including you," she laughed. "Though it was only two weeks."

"Two weeks that felt like a century," Nolan continued, and I heard the sound of the coffee machine releasing steam — that domestic sound that now felt foreign to me. "You were like a hurricane, Mayo. I never knew if we were going to end up at a party or at the police station."

"But you liked it," Mayo’s voice turned sweet, playful. "You liked that I pulled you out of that dusty library. You liked that I made you spend your savings on a beach trip we came back from without shoes — even knowing I was a millionaire. Admit it, Nolan — I taught you how to breathe before Ryne taught you how to count the minutes."

A silence followed. In my mind, the image of Nolan — my Nolan, the one with the perfect schedules and the exact coffee — was becoming blurred. I couldn’t picture him shoeless on a beach, being swept along by a girl who kissed everyone.

"You taught me that I couldn’t live like that forever," Nolan replied, and his tone turned soft, almost nostalgic. "Being with you was like burning a hundred-dollar bill just to see the color of the flame."

"And then she came along," said Mayo, and I heard her sit back down on the stool. "The girl with the single stocking. The one who looks at you as if you were a porcelain god. How boring, Nolan. Don’t you miss the chaos? Don’t you miss not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow?"

"No," he said, and this time his voice was firm. "With Ryne I don’t need the world to burn to feel alive. She is... the peace I didn’t know I needed."

I smiled, turning the handle.

"Ryne, you’re up?" said Mayo with her eyes wide open.

I yawned, rubbing my eyes. "Yes, yes. What were you talking about — was it about me?"

Nolan’s face relaxed, managing to release a breath. But before he could speak, Mayo got up to hug me. "RyneRyne, we were talking about whether Nolan would give me a job," she smiled, with the same smile she’d had with the shoes. "You’d love that, wouldn’t you, Ryne?"