Cascade of Emails

My name is Noelle Petersen and I'm forty-four years old, which matters later, so hold that thought. It was a Friday in October and I was at BuzzHive Coffee Labs doing a favor for Quentin, the founder, who is my friend and my former boss and someone who should really stop letting me near his roaster after hours. I'm the head roaster over at my own little operation across town, but I still like playing with other people's toys, and Quentin's new sample roaster is a very good toy.

Dillon Churchill had come by around eight to keep me company. He's forty-seven, he writes software, and he has spent eleven years being the guy I call when a pitch event goes sideways or when I need someone to tell me my pricing is stupid. We met at a startup thing back when I was thirty-three and still thought I'd be retired by now. He did the math on my spreadsheets and I did the coffee and somewhere in there we became the kind of friends where nobody asks questions anymore.

The plan was simple. Roast a couple of batches, drink too much of the result, order a pizza, go home. That plan died at nine forty when the lights went amber and a voice came out of the ceiling speaker that I will hear in my nightmares for years. System lockdown. Doors secured. Contact your security provider.

I tried the front door. I tried the loading dock. I tried the little side door by the recycling bins that Quentin swears nobody knows about. All of them made the same sad electronic clunk, the sound of a door that has decided its opinion on the matter is final. I pulled out my phone and called the security company and got a recording saying their office was closed until Monday morning at eight. Some update had pushed to the building's system at nine thirty-eight and locked everything down, and the reset had to happen on site, in person, with a code only Quentin had.

So that was our weekend. Two adults, one break room, one very good roaster, and a silent alarm that was apparently only good at locking people in.

I did what any reasonable person would do. I took a photo of the loading dock door with its little red light glowing like an evil eye, and I emailed it to Dillon even though he was standing eight feet away from me.

Well, this is our weekend now, I wrote underneath it. Hope you brought deodorant.

He wandered off toward the front lobby to try the keypad, and a minute later I heard my phone buzz with his reply. He replied like we were in different time zones, which is a habit we've had for years and honestly one of my favorite things about us.

Found a forum post with the default reset code, he wrote. Trying 4-4-7-1 on the keypad now. If this works I want it noted that I'm a genius. If it doesn't work I want it noted that I found it online and the blame is distributed. Also, fair warning, I plan on roasting a lot more than beans this weekend.

The code didn't work. The keypad blinked at him twice and went back to its smug little green idle light. But that line about roasting more than beans sat in my chest for a solid minute like a swallow of coffee that went down the wrong pipe. I read it four times. I told myself it was a joke. I told myself Dillon makes jokes. I also caught myself smiling at my phone like an idiot, and I'm too old to lie to myself about that kind of thing.

So I escalated. If we were going to be trapped, we were going to be trapped with documentation. I walked into the break room pantry and did a full inventory, and I emailed it to him with the subject line OFFICIAL SUPPLY MANIFEST, BUZZHIVE DETENTION FACILITY.

The list went like this. Fourteen bags of green coffee, mostly Ethiopian, one Kenya that Quentin will miss. A case of instant ramen, six chicken, six beef, one spicy that nobody has ever claimed. A jar of peanut butter that's about half empty and I think that's a crime we should investigate. Forty-three paper cups, which means we can each have twenty-one coffees before we have to reuse, and then things get feral. One hot water kettle that works. One espresso machine that doesn't, may it rest in peace. A bag of pretzels, opened, clipped with a binder clip, dated by unknown hands. And a locked cabinet that Quentin keeps his good bourbon in, which is locked, because of course it is, because this weekend hates us.

Then I sat there looking at the blinking cursor and thought, what the hell, it's not like either of us is going anywhere. So I typed one more line at the bottom.

Truth or dare via email?

I hit send before I could think about it, which is how most of my decisions get made, according to Dillon, who says this about me roughly twice a year and always with that look on his face.

His reply came fast. Dare, obviously. I don't do truth before midnight.

Fine. I asked him to dare me, and he came back with something I did not expect, because I expected dare me to chug the cold brew concentrate or dare me to do a dramatic reading of the fire evacuation poster. Instead he wrote: describe your favorite way to take a compliment. In detail. No skimming.

I stared at that for a while. He was somewhere in the building, the front office I figured, but I imagined him sprawled in one of Quentin's terrible office chairs, pretending very hard to be reading something on his screen. I typed slowly.

My favorite way to take a compliment, I wrote, is badly. I get suspicious first. Then I deflect with a joke about the roaster doing all the work. But my real favorite way, the way I'd pick if somebody made me choose, is when a compliment comes with hands. When somebody says something kind and touches my arm at the same time, or tucks a piece of hair back, or just puts their hand flat on the counter next to mine like they're claiming territory. I remember compliments by where the hands were. The words fade. The hands don't.

When I typed hands I was thinking about one specific pair of hands, and we both know whose. Dillon has these big careful hands, roaster's hands almost, though he's never roasted anything in his life, and four years ago they were the last thing I thought about for about three weeks straight.

Because I have never written down this thing. Four years ago, in this building, at about one in the morning, during a late roasting session that ran long because we kept talking, Dillon kissed me. One kiss. It lasted maybe six seconds. I was forty and he was forty-three and it was the best six seconds of that entire year, and then he pulled back and said sorry and we never mentioned it again. Not once. Eleven years of friendship and we built a wall around six seconds and never once knocked on it.

So after I sent the hands paragraph I sat there with my heart doing an unprofessional amount of work, and I typed the last email before midnight, before he could claim truth-only territory.

I've been replaying that kiss. For four years, off and on, more lately than I want to admit. The question is whether you have too, and if you dare to answer that one, Churchill, you'd better mean it.

I hit send. Down the hall, I heard his phone buzz through the wall.

I couldn't see him read it, but I knew him. His thumb would stop moving, and for a second he'd go very still, the way he does when he's working a problem he actually cares about. Then he started typing, and he typed for a long time, longer than he'd typed all night, and I sat there with my cold cup of coffee trying to breathe like I was ordinary.

The reply came in under the subject line RE: truth, then. Fine. Truth.

Noelle. Yes. I have been replaying it. Four years, off and on, more lately than I want to admit, which I think we've now both admitted in writing so that's settled. But since we're being honest and the doors aren't opening until Monday, here's a dare back at you, and I'm not asking truth this time. I'm just going to tell you something.

If we were on the roof right now instead of stuck down here with the ramen, here's what I'd