It’s a Wonderful Night: A delightfully feel-good festive romance for 2018!

My mind is suddenly reeling. How can he have been the person on the other end of that phone? How can he have been thinking of taking his own life? How can things be so bad for him underneath the happy face he shows to customers?

‘Yeah. Er, couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get an early start,’ I stutter. I’d be less shocked if I’d just walked smack bang into the back end of a hippopotamus. It’s like I’m having an out of body experience. My brain can’t comprehend that the man on the phone was Leo. That he’s the guy I felt such a connection with. That his bright smile is hiding so much pain.

Maybe I’m wrong. I must be wrong, and at the same time, I know I’m not. I have absolutely no doubt that it was him. Everything suddenly adds up. Leo named his shop after It’s a Wonderful Life, so he obviously knows the film we talked about last night. He’s definitely in his late thirties. The man on the phone even said his mum works with him and Leo’s mum does. Leo often talks about funny words and the man last night saidthat honking was a good one. Which it undeniably is. And I get the feeling it’s one Leo would appreciate too.

‘Me too, on both fronts,’ he says. ‘What can I get you? You’re just in time for the start of the Christmas menu. The festive coffees I’ve been teasing you with for weeks are finally available if you want to try something different?’

His smile doesn’t falter and the expression on his face doesn’t change. He looks at me exactly the same way he looks at me every other morning. He doesn’t realize it was me.

And I can’t tell him.

How can I say that the ‘stranger’ he opened up to is someone he sees every morning? I can’t tell him that I work on the same street, that if I walk to the bend in the road just past the bank, I can see the duck-egg-blue and mocha-brown frontage of his coffee shop. I can’t tell him that he’s the sole reason for my caffeine addiction, or that seeing his smile brightens my day, or that he shared his deepest feelings, something he obviously works hard to keep hidden, with someone he actually knows. He’ll be embarrassed. He might be scared that I’m going to tell someone. People can be more open with a stranger. They can tell them things they wouldn’t tell a friend. Not that I’m exactly a friend of Leo’s, but we share two minutes of conversation every day. He wouldn’t have said half the things he said last night if he knew I’d be buying a coffee from him in the morning.

It was a private conversation between two strangers. It was a magical connection on a wonderful night. It’s not my place to drag it into the real world. It will change everything, and it would certainly breach even more anonymity rules than I’ve already broken. If he’d phoned the helpline like he intended to, if I’d given him the right number and made him phone there like I should have done, we wouldn’t be in this situation.

If he doesn’t know, which he clearly doesn’t, I can’t tell him.

‘Go on then, what have you got?’ I suddenly realize that if I recognized his voice then he could recognize mine. He did say he thought I sounded familiar too. I clear my throat and put on a lower voice to disguise my own. I’m going for low and sultry but probably sound more along the lines of flu-ridden moose. ‘I still think you could’ve given me an early preview. You’ve had that countdown to Christmas coffees on the counter since mid-October, and everyone knows your Christmas coffees are the best thing about this time of year,’ I say, referring to a joke we’ve had every morning lately. He’s had a hand-drawn chalkboard by the till counting down the days to Christmas coffees for weeks, and knowing I love all things festive, he’s been teasing me about them every morning.

It’s a shred of normality in what has otherwise been a completely abnormal morning.

I search his face for some hint of what happened last night, but I don’t know what I expect to find. He’s wearing his usual plain black T-shirt and baby blue apron with ‘It’s A Wonderful Latte’ embroidered on the chest in brown thread. There’s no hint of how cold he got. His denim-blue eyes aren’t bloodshot from crying, his face isn’t red or puffy, and his mop of curly hair is styled and quiffed at the front. If I think the man in the shop this morning will show some hint of the truth revealed by the man on the phone last night, then I’m sorely mistaken. His mask is firmly back in place.

‘So …’ he says, sounding like he’s waiting for an answer.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I was miles away. Can you tell me again?’ My face flushes bright red. I must’ve been staring at him without listening to a word he was saying.

‘You okay?’ he asks in such a genuine way that it makes me feel like I really could tell him if I wasn’t.

‘Absolutely fine, thanks. Sorry, the early start clearly doesn’t agree with me. Better add an extra shot of espresso to today’s drink. What have you got again?’

‘I was saying my Christmas coffee syrups are out today because it’s the first of December. I was thinking about you when I put them out this morning because I know you’ve been waiting. I’ve got warm apple pie, caramel pecan, chestnut praline, gingerbread biscotti, peppermint, orange and cranberry, mince pie, and unlike the big coffee chains, my pumpkin spice will stay available until January.’

‘Mince pie flavoured coffee?’ I pull a face involuntarily. ‘Yuck.’

He grins. ‘I knew you’d say that. It’s really nice though, trust me.’

I’m sure he knows as well as I do that I’ll try one flavour a day until I’ve decided on a favourite. I love seasonal coffee and he always has the best selection. ‘How am I supposed to choose out of all those? They all sound delicious. I’ll try the –’

There’s a clatter from the kitchen and Leo looks panicked for a second. ‘Hold that thought.’

He rushes out the back and I hear him talking. I sidle along the counter to the one spot where, if you squint, you can see through a gap in the sliding door and straight into the kitchen.

‘I’m fine, dear, I just dropped an oven tray.’ Leo’s mum pats his arm. ‘You don’t have to worry, I’m quite capable of managing. It was all vibration and no damage.’

Maggie is a tiny, frail woman who I sometimes see sitting in the kitchen of the coffee shop with her feet up and an oven timer on the unit beside her, always looking so happy to be there. She’s just as cheerful and friendly as Leo is, with the same bright eyes and curly hair, and never without a smile.

Leo comes back looking slightly more het up than before. ‘Sorry, just my mum clattering around with the morning muffins. Have you decided yet?’

To be honest, I’m so distracted that I’ve already forgotten what his new flavours are, but an idea comes to me. ‘What would you have? If you were going to have one, which would you go for?’

‘Mince –’

‘And not mince pie, I’m not brave enough for that this morning.’

His face lights up with his wide grin, the one that makes it impossible not to grin back at him, letting me know he was only saying it to wind me up. ‘I’d go for the peppermint.’

‘Okay, peppermint latte it is. I’ll take two of those, please.’

‘Two?’ He doesn’t hide the double take. ‘You must be really tired. How many years have you been coming in here and I’ve never made you two coffees before. Rough night?’

Oh, if only you knew. ‘Something like that. How about you?’

‘Me?’ He’s already gone over to the espresso machine but he turns around with a raised eyebrow that makes me wish I’d kept my mouth shut. ‘Nah. I was tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle and a hot chocolate by ten o’clock. Snug as a bug.’

What did I expect him to say? I’m a customer. We might have a few minutes of friendly banter every day, but we’re not friends. I didn’t really think he’d turn around and say, ‘I nearly threw myself off a bridge last night’, did I?

He slides one peppermint latte onto the counter and goes back to the chrome coffee machine to make the other one, the milk frother hissing on the unit beside him. I look at him while his back is turned and wonder when he lost so much weight. I’ve never noticed how loosely his apron is done up at the back, as if to hide his waist that hasn’t always been that narrow. His bare arms are pale, having lost the tan they had in the summer, and although muscular, there isn’t an ounce of fat on them and I’m certain there used to be. His hair is short at the nape of his neck but straggly, like it needs a trim, and the curls on top are light brown with a few natural highlights left from the late autumn sun. He reminds me of a cross between Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing and the Hollywood stars of years gone by, a lovechild of Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, with his sharp jawline and bright blue eyes that are always smiling.

He carefully writes my name on the first cup, complete with fancy scrolls underneath and a star above the ‘i’, and it makes me smile like it does every morning. Even though the shop has been gradually getting emptier in the last few months, even when I’m the only customer, he still writes my name on the cup, and I don’t know why it feels as special as it does, or why I try to imagine what he’s like outside the coffee shop as I walk to work sipping my latte. I think about what his life might be like, if he might be single, and how much I wish I had the courage to ask him like my best friend, Casey, would. She’d just march in and say ‘Are you single? Do you want to sleep with me?’ I’m not that brave. I just chat to him while he makes me a latte and think about how much I’d like to run my fingers through his curly hair.

‘Seven quid, please, lovely.’ He puts the second peppermint latte down as the coffee machine gurgles itself to completion with a puff of steam behind the counter.

Why is my hand shaking as I go to hand him the money? I fish a note and two coins out of my purse and try to brace my elbow against my stomach to hide the trembling as I put them into his hand. I might have a teeny tiny crush on the man but I’ve never trembled when talking to him before. It’s because of how much I want to grab his hand, I tell myself. I want to take his hand between both of mine and squeeze it and tell him he’s appreciated, that he’s lovely, and funny, and the world would be a much darker place without him in it.

‘Thanks, beautiful.’ At least he’s enough of a gentleman not to mention the shaking hand if he notices it. ‘Here, let me get the door for you, you’ll have your hands full.’

‘Wait, actually …’ I push one of the peppermint lattes back across the counter towards him. ‘This one’s for you.’

‘What?’

‘It’s for you.’

‘Why?’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know. I just thought you might like one.’

He looks at me like I’ve asked him if he’d like to exfoliate with someone else’s toenail clippings. ‘You do realize I work in a coffee shop, right?’

‘Yeah. And I bet no one’s ever bought you a coffee before.’

‘Well, no, but …’

‘There you go, then.’

‘Yeah, but … why?’

‘I don’t know. Because it’s December. Because it’s nearly Christmas. Who doesn’t deserve a peppermint latte to kick off the best month of the year?’