Red Flags

The town of Forrester has one of everything.

One doctor’s office, one grocery store, one police station. You want anything fancier than that and you have to drive an hour into Bastrop. Or God forbid take the ninety-minute trek into Austin.

We didn’t use to have a coffee shop until Bart Reinard inherited ten thousand bucks from his grandmother and bought the old watchmaking storefront. He made the logo a green circle with a fish, even though we don’t actually serve Starbucks coffee.

I have the morning shift, which means I flip over the Open sign at six a.m.

We get a slow but steady drip of customers, from loggers who want to complain about the cost of coffee compared to their Folgers Dark Roast at home to the retired women who host knitting circles over green tea. Then there are the homeschooling moms who use the purchase to teach their kids about counting money—and the perils of getting straight Cs on your report card.

If you don’t study, their smug smiles say, ~you’ll end up working at The Coffee Bean.~

Or maybe that’s just me projecting my own insecurities.

That’s a fancy word I learned on TikTok, projecting. Therapy is another one of those fancy things that’s never made it all the way to Forrester.

“I’ll have a mocha frappuccino.” The woman wearing sunglasses indoors is vaguely familiar. I think she’s married to my third-grade teacher’s ex-husband. Everyone’s related to somebody around here, but she isn’t a regular.

“We don’t have frappuccinos,” I say, only vaguely apologetic. I get these requests about once a week despite the chalkboard menu above me. The rusty bell over the door rings as someone else enters behind her. “But we have an iced latte if you want something cold.”

She sighs and frowns at the menu. “I’ll have a cappuccino.”

My finger hovers over the button. I want to ring it up and push out one of the tiny ceramic cups, but somehow I know that won’t end well. “That’s… pretty different from a frappuccino. It’s hot and small and strong.”

She sniffs. “I know more about coffee than you.”

The way she says you makes it feel more personal than ~random dumbass barista.~ As if she knows who my parents are. Or maybe she doesn’t have to know. Maybe it’s written across my face. I’ve looked in the mirror a hundred times in my life, but I can never tell.

“One cappuccino it is.”

“And I don’t appreciate your lip. I’m going to tell Bart about this.” Her sunglasses slip, and for a moment I see the blue-green bruise around her eye, the reason why she’s wearing those large tortoise-shell sunglasses. It makes my heart lurch. Guess there was a good reason why my third-grade teacher left her ex. Then again, there usually is.

“That’ll be three dollars sixty-five cents.”

Her lips part. “For a drink?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She fumbles in her purse, but there doesn’t seem to be any green bills inside—only loose change. There’s a checkbook, but I doubt she wants the bastard seeing that line item. Plus we don’t accept them. Cash only. “This is outrageous.”

“I don’t control the prices, but you can mention it when you talk to Bart.”

An open-mouthed stare.

Then a masculine hand reaches around with a twenty-dollar bill. “My treat.”

She glances back and then does a comical double take at the handsome man standing in the small-town knock-off coffee shop like some kind of action hero. He’s jacked like the loggers but missing the beer belly. And the sneer.

Instead, he looks calm and capable.

The woman flutters over the money, demurs but only for show, but my savior from the circus insists.

“If you want something refreshing,” he says, “I’d recommend that iced latte. I bet they even have caramel back there to sweeten it up for you.”

“Oh,” she says, her cheeks pink. “Well, if you recommend it, then of course I’ll try it.”

“Caramel’s twenty cents extra,” I say, my tone forbidding.

He gives me an easy smile, as if he knows the source of my anger. Funny, because I don’t even know where it comes from. “I’m sure it’s worth it.”

I make his change and slam the cash register drawer shut a little harder than needed. Then I pour her drink while listening to her say “Thank you” and “I left my wallet at home” and “You’re such a gentleman.”

Then I slide the plastic twenty-ounce cup toward her, along with a fully plastic straw that’s sure to melt the ozone.

She takes it and sits in the corner, her back to the window, presumably hoping she doesn’t see anyone she knows.

Which leaves me alone with Logan.

“This kind of thing get you off?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Ordering coffee?”

“Stepping in to save the poor damsels in distress.”

“Were you in distress?” he asks, his tone polite and distant. “I couldn’t tell, but if I helped you out just now then I’m glad.”

I snort. “What do you want?”

He peruses the chalkboard menu, taking his time. “Who drew this?”

I don’t get much pleasure from my job. It’s minimum wage customer service, with a side of bathroom cleaning. The one small light is that Bart doesn’t give a fuck what I draw on the menu as long as the names and prices are readable. I change it up every so often.

Currently, there are little coffee bean beings with stick arms and legs in various peaceful vistas—lying on a hilltop looking up at coffee-cup-shaped clouds, running through a field of wild coffee beans, rowing through a river of espresso.

“That would be me.”

“Nice,” he says, seeming impressed.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter what he thinks. “Your order?”

“You got those little cardboard things that hold four cups?”

“We did, but they got wet when the roof leaked. No one orders more than two drinks around here. We never got more.”

A noncommittal hum.

“If you have four cup holders, I can help you carry it out.” I’m not saying it to be helpful, I tell myself. Or to be nosy and look inside his car. I’m only suggesting it to get rid of him.

“I need thirty drinks. Anything will work, but that iced latte looked pretty good.”

“Thirty? You’re shitting me.”

“Operations,” he says.

“And security. Administration. I remember.”

“Asked around. Heard this was the best coffee in town.”

“Compared to the gas station? Sure. We don’t have containers, so I don’t know how you’re going to… Hang on.” I rummage underneath the counter until I find the empty gallon jugs of milk I used this morning. “You want me to fill these up? I can give you the cups, so you can pour it out when you get there.”

A blinding smile that makes me feel stupid and young. “That works.”

He overpays and overtips, and in the end, even his ridiculously nice biceps and large hands can’t carry them all in one trip. So I follow him out with the last container—this one cardboard full of oat milk that was about to expire half full, because no one here drinks it. Along with a stack of paper cups.

He’s driving a truck, which isn’t surprising around here. Or in his line of work. I wonder what he usually hauls. Not lumber, I assume. And not hay feed, since his circus doesn’t have animals. Black paint shines more than it should after a long trek from some faraway place.

He opens the cab and ducks inside to set the containers carefully on the floor, where they hopefully won’t spill everywhere. I do my best not to glance at his ass, but I fail. The denim holds him tight, and I look away, regretting my own weakness. I hand him what I’ve got, and then I’m standing there, useless, useless, useless.

I turn away.

“Sienna.”

I’m still facing the Coffee Bean, staring at my own dim reflection. “What?”

“Come to the circus tonight.”

“Why?” I whirl to face him, this red flag who came into my place of work. This man who wants to lure me back to his lair, even if it’s a bright-colored lair with lights and music. “So you can kiss me?”

“More than that.”

So kissing would be part of it then. “I might be busy.”

He doesn’t point out that we don’t even have a movie theater. There’s nothing to do in Forrester except the circus tonight. He pulls something out of his back pocket. “Take this.”

It’s in my hands before I can think to refuse. I read the red and gold embossed ticket in my hands. VIP, it says along the side. ~Cirque des Miroirs. Everything you can dream.~

And then in small print: This ticket allows the bearer access to any show under the Big Top, private access to the performers’ tent, and unlimited rides and games.

It’s a generous thing to give to a stranger.

Unless he’s giving it in exchange for sex. Then it’s probably offensive.

“Don’t overthink it,” he says, his voice low and urgent. “There are no requirements here. No promises. The whole thing is a bad fucking idea. We established that much. But I want to see you again. I hoped I would see you again. This is a sign.”

Pleasure pulses through me at the idea of this man, so self-composed, so confident, hoping to see me. “I’ll think about it.”

Green eyes striated with gold examine me. They examine the purple scarf that’s tied around my neck like a terrible fashion statement.

The haughty woman and I aren’t so different.

Those eyes flash emerald in the sunlight. “You don’t trust me. I would ask who hurt you, except I already know, don’t I?”

He means Asshole #2.

You don’t know the half of it.

“Come to the circus,” he says again.

I want to. I hate how much I want to. I push the tickets into my apron, the place where tips would go if anyone in this town actually tipped. “Everyone will be there.”

“I’ll find you.”

"I'm going to bring Kyle with me."

"Good. I'd enjoy throwing him out again."

My throat feels too tight to answer.

After a long look, he nods, as if something was decided. Then he gets into his truck and drives off at a nice, sedate pace that won’t end up with milk and coffee rolling all over the cab.

I stare after him with a giddy feeling in my stomach.

No, the haughty woman and I aren’t so different at all.

By the time my shift ends, it’s a blazing hundred degrees outside. My sweat stinks of coffee as I ride my bike down the long winding lane toward the house.

The three-bedroom ranch-style home with a faded blue awning is the place where I live, but it’s been a long time since I thought of it as home.

Sun scorches the dry grass and praises the tall weeds. Despite the light blinding me as I drop my bike on the side of the house, it’s dark as a mausoleum inside.

Heavy drapes have remained closed for as long as I can remember. The only light comes from the metal fan above the stovetop. It’s been scrubbed clean, but no amount of Clorox can make the little black specks where paint has peeled from metal disappear.

I find my mother on the back porch, which my father once screened in with loose netting and a staple gun. She has a cup of tea. Black tea, I already know. It’s one of the few things she kept from her culture. She doesn’t move when I come in, her gaze distant. I lean down and give her a kiss on the dry papery texture of her cheek.

“You stink,” she says without rancor.

She hates the smell of coffee, though of course she never mentions that to my father when she prepares his Folgers every morning.

“I know,” I say, not taking offense.

“Did you go to the circus?” she asks.

I hadn’t gotten home until late, but then that’s normal. “Everyone did.”

Everyone doesn’t include her.

She came to this country when she was only a child, and she resented her parents’ foreign accents and weird-smelling food. As a teenager, she shed every part of her heritage and embraced nightclub culture. Short skirts and heavy makeup.

Sometimes when I was little and my dad was at work she’d turn on Madonna and we’d both dance in the living room barefoot. Rebelling against her parents landed her in an Americana-themed prison, a place of shiplap Live Laugh Love signs and little tolerance for black tea.

And I knew without anyone having ever told me, that I was the turn of the key. A woman didn’t have many options, but a pregnant woman? Even less.

“I might go again tonight. Come with me.”

“Bessie says they all do drugs there.”

Bessie is one of her few friends, in the way that a spider befriends a fly as it wraps loop after loop of its string. “Good. Maybe they’ll share.”

She gives me a look of censure, and I see myself in the reflection of her dark eyes, my rebellious youth and my future cage wrapped up in one. I also see the hint of purple at her temple. I reach out, but she yanks her head back, and looks away again, staring into space. Not a random stare, then. Not this time. She’d been avoiding showing me her right side.

“Mom.”

No answer.

God, how many of the women in this town are hiding bruises? All of us? Fuck. “What if we leave? Right now. Pack bags. Get on a bus. Just you and me.”

She gives a dismissive snort. “I’m too old for buses.”

What she really means is that Dad would find us. He would destroy everything then, even these small moments with her tea. “Then at least let’s go to the circus. We could share a funnel cake. He doesn’t have to know.”

“He’d find out.”

The words are barely a sound, but they’re loud enough to make me flinch. Of course he would. Someone would tell him. Someone would tell him about the terrible debauchery of his wife at the circus, of fried dough and powdered sugar, of five dollars spent in pursuit of happiness. And he would hate it. He would punish her. And if I wasn’t very careful, he would punish me.

I stand with a sigh. There are only a few hours to sleep before he comes back from work. Then I’ll be out of the house again. Will I use that VIP ticket in my pocket? Maybe. Maybe not.

Either way, I won’t be home when he’s here and awake.

My mother grasps my wrists and holds me tighter than I’m expecting, hard enough to hurt. She doesn’t look at me when she grinds out the words. “If you ever get the chance to leave, Sienna Mae, leave. Don’t worry about me. And don’t look back.”

“Mom.” I think about all the times I’ve wanted to leave. When I would dream about running away from home. When I turned eighteen and pulled up every Craigslist rental in Austin. The way my father promised to find me and kill me if I ever left. And then he’d kill my mother.

Don’t worry about me. And don’t look back.

She looks at me, giving me that dark glass mirror, the whisper of my future. It makes me shiver.

“Promise me.”

My wrist throbs. “I promise.”

She lets me go and takes a serene sip of tea. I’m already forgotten.