Ellie was hot.
And not in the sexy way.
"A/C's out again," said Hunter, as he breezed past her in his apron.
It sounded like an apology, even though Hunter had nothing to do with the air conditioning system.
Ellie sighed and tied her own apron.
Cheapass managers, she thought. Out on the lake while we're all boiling alive in here.
"What can I get for you?" she smiled at her first customer of the day, and hoped she wasn't sweating too much.
Summers in the city could be brutal.
Ellie couldn't understand why anyone would want hot coffee in this kind of weather, but it had been so busy all day that she and Hunter had been absolutely slammed. People were spending what amounted to her hourly wage on a single cup of coffee. She got to enjoy some of the weird concoctions herself since she worked there, but often she found they made her feel ill so she stuck with iced black.
She went to the restroom and pulled up her long brown hair into a ponytail. There wasn't much relief. Even though she and Hunter opened both the front door and the side window to try and create a cross-breeze, the air was so hot and still that it was marginally cooler leaving the place closed up, but neither was a great option.
Ellie was eternally thankful to be working alongside Hunter. He was carefree, easygoing, easy on the eyes, and a hard worker who was dependable, not leaving her to take up the slack like some lazy former employees she had worked with over her two years at the shop.
She looked at herself in the mirror and debated whether to hide out in the slightly-cooler bathroom, but she couldn't do Hunter like that.
"Once more into the breach," she said to herself, and headed out to talk to the next customer in the long line of people who demanded a hot drink on a hot day.
"G'night, see you tomorrow!" Hunter said, as he waved to her in the sunset-light, and took off on his bicycle, probably grateful for the wind in his hair and the breeze created by the ride.
"Night, Hunter, see you," she called back, and then locked up the shop.
The weather had finally cooled off enough that it was somewhat manageable, and the iced coffee she had made herself for a leisurely stroll home really hit the spot.
She loved to wander through her neighborhood of an evening, unwinding and enjoying the chance to get out into the world.
Ellie hadn't traveled much, and she hadn't been able to earn enough to even consider much of anything. Still, she liked to spend a little, especially in the area where she lived, to support local businesses.
"I'll take a single red rose, Margaret," she said at the flower stand near her apartment, thanking the old woman who smiled at her as she handed over a beautiful dark-red rose, firm and round, its petals still closed tightly, only just now peeking open.
"Well, if you don't have someone to do it for you, why not spoil yourself?" she asked Margaret. "Buy myself flowers, take myself on dates. Why not?"
"Yes, dear," agreed Margaret, although Ellie suspected the old lady was probably humoring her, and a sale was a sale, after all.
Still, Ellie liked to talk to her, and to see her smiling face, and to buy her beautiful flowers.
She walked slowly towards her building, smelling the lovely scent of the rose, and smiled to herself. Strange? Perhaps. But it made her happy.
Ellie lived in a fourth-floor walkup in an old building that needed a lick of paint, both outside and in.
But she had her own studio apartment all to herself, a luxury that many could not afford anymore, and it had one big window where she had placed three plants she'd bought from Margaret and also a painting from Joe down by the old shoeshine stand who liked to do terrible watercolors of the five colorful old houses on the other side of the bridge on the river toward the canal. Although it was artistically questionable, it still provided a splash of color, and in the mornings when the sun poured into her picture window, Ellie could imagine that she was some well-to-do city girl off to a big city job, instead of working as a barista, a poor city girl who had heard stories all her life of women who made it big in the city during a time when things like studio apartments were achievable dreams for everyone.
She fed her cat, Salmorejo, an orange tabby friendly creature that wound its way around her ankles, and then she climbed into her daybed. The studio was not a large one, room enough for the picture window, the daybed, and a kitchenette along one side, a closet-sized bathroom with a handheld showerhead and an even smaller closet beside it. She used a couple of plastic lockboxes under her bed for storage for clothes and a few pieces of memorabilia.
The pictures on her walls, though - that was where she really shone. She used stickytack because the landlord took a dim view of anything that put holes in the walls, and she was lucky enough to live there in the first place as well as having permission to keep Salmorejo. She had a tiny bookshelf alongside the wall and a minuscule table next to her bed. The apartment was cluttered and filled with stuff, but all of it was important to Ellie.
The pictures were of her family, her dad at a pool game, her mom and sister on her birthday, and a group photo taken at some long-forgotten family reunion. A photo of her with Hunter, outside the coffeeshop and also at the beach one day, where he was eating an ice cream and she was laughing. Photos of her friends, Stacey, Darla and Liana, as well as older photos from long ago friends she'd lost touch with but still loved and looked upon fondly - Sarah, John, Stephen, and others like them.
And then, in one corner, were photos of Ireland.
Ellie adored Ireland. She'd never been there. But she picked up travel brochures at agencies and had cut the photos out, framing them for her wall. She had a couple of little signs with shamrocks she'd stumbled upon in antique shops. There were several books on the shelf about Ireland, along with her collection of novels and magazines she couldn't bear to part with because she'd seen some fantastic idea about how to decorate a small space to make it feel more open and breezy, but had so far completely failed in said endeavor. Still, she kept them with the thought that one day, she'd be organized enough to put the ideas into action, and finally be the put-together city girl with her tasteful chic, if small (bijou, she'd heard it called once, and preferred it) apartment in the metropolis, where she drank her iced coffees and went to her big city job.
So far, all of that had failed to manifest, but as they say, hope springs eternal, as does a woman's desire to organize her life and hang a sign labeled success on it. Ellie longed to be the kind of woman who could wear nylons without always getting a run in them, sometimes even from putting them on, and who could wear the kind of high heels that made Ellie trip and almost break her ankle.
In her mind's eye, she would become the kind of woman who could wear such things with finesse and style. She would be the kind of woman who could wear a diamond tennis bracelet to the country club! Not that she had ever been to a country club or really knew what anyone did there, but she was determined to pull a cherry off one of those little plastic swords with her teeth, the kind of garnish they'd put in her bubbly drink, and do it in a sexy fashion, all cool and confident.
So far, she'd only achieved putting sparkling water into a short glass she'd bought at a secondhand store. No cherries or swords to speak of, but she did have ice. So it was sort of the same, if she looked at it in a certain light.
Let's face it, thought Ellie. You're not the country club type. More hiking boots and sturdy sandals, and you don't even like hiking, and haven't been to the beach in what, years now?
But Ellie did not focus on these thoughts. She let them arrive in her mind, and then neatly organized them in a way she could never really do with her apartment or with her life, and then swept them away.
Then she turned, instead, to one of her favorite pastimes.
Tonight, she curled up in the swiftly-cooling evening with a tea, and pulled a photo book of Ireland off her shelf as Salmorejo made a breadloaf beside her and slowly closed her eyes. Ellie lost herself in daydreams of a country made of cool mist and rain, a place so green as to be miraculous, where the sea crashed blue against the rocks.
When she came to a photo of snow laying soft upon the peaks of Connemara, she sighed and looked down at Salmorejo, petting his strikingly orange fur, and the cat responded with a swift brrp! of a purr.
"Wouldn't it be nice if it were snowing?" she asked. "I love autumn, it's my favorite time of the year, but right now I'm dreaming of winter. What d'you think, Sal? Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."
The cat responded by pressing her head into Ellie's hand, asking for more pets, and Ellie obliged, returning to her photos of Ireland and getting lost in impossible daydreams about the Emerald Isle.
Ellie barely made enough to cover rent, pay for cat food and her own food. Much of what she ate was made at the shop, because it was free for employees and allowed her some meager extras, like caring for the cat and buying a flower from Margaret, which was now sitting pride of place in its glass vase in the windowsill. A trip to Ireland was out of the question, a thing of dreams. Still, she understood how fortunate she was, in that she had a roof over her head - however small, and she had convinced herself the apartment was cozy and just the right size! whether or not it was true.
She had a job, and some money, if not much. Family, friends, a good life.
Ellie finished her tea, and slotted the coffee table book back into its place on the shelf.
Best not to dream, she told herself, but she couldn't really help it.
When she fell asleep, with Salmorejo warm by her side, she dreamed of green fields, and of Ireland.