Layover in Roast

The flight to Vienna got cancelled at two in the afternoon, and the board flipped Christine's whole trip home into a mess of gray letters. She stood there with her phone in one hand and her boarding pass in the other, twenty-nine years old, Korean American, and stuck in a provincial airport that used to be a military base. The terminal was small enough that she could see both runways from the coffee kiosk.

She called the airline twice. The second call ended with a woman reading her a rebooking for the day after tomorrow, which meant two nights and most of two days in a town she knew nothing about. Christine had been in Bosnia and Herzegovina for a work conference, of all things, and she'd seen exactly two restaurants and one hotel conference room in five days.

That was when she heard the laugh.

She had been hearing that laugh in the back of her head for five years. It belonged to Caitlyn, the little sister of Roy, her college roommate's best friend, the one who'd driven them all to a lake once and laughed at every bad joke the whole way there. Christine turned around before she could think about whether that was a strange thing to do.

A woman stood at the ticket counter with a duffel bag at her feet. Dark hair pulled back, pale freckled skin, a jacket that had seen some weather. Twenty-seven, if Christine remembered right, which she apparently did.

"Caitlyn?"

The woman turned. "Oh my god. Christine? From Roy's thing?" She laughed again, right up close this time. "What are the odds, you're stuck here too?"

"The flight died. You?"

"Mine never came. Some problem in Zagreb, they say tomorrow, maybe." Caitlyn picked up her duffel. "Roy would say this is a sign. He's superstitious like that."

"He would. He married a woman because his horoscope told him to."

"He did not, but close." Caitlyn looked at her phone, then at the doors. "Listen, I know a guy with a taxi. There's nothing at this airport, seriously, nothing. I know a roastery in town, my friend runs it, I work there half the week. You want to come? Worst case, you drink good coffee for an afternoon."

Christine thought about the terminal, the vending machine, the plastic chairs bolted to the floor. "Yes. Yeah, let's do that."

The taxi ran twenty minutes through pine-covered hills with limestone sticking out of them like bones. Christine mostly watched the window and let Caitlyn talk. Caitlyn talked the way Christine remembered, easy and all over the place, one subject sliding into the next. By the time they pulled into town, Christine knew about Caitlyn's job driving a bus, the roastery, and a camping trip she'd been planning with a friend for a week.

The roastery was called Kava Grad, and it was built into an old mill, stone walls and a big waterwheel frame still bolted to one side. It smelled like coffee and warm wood inside. (Christine would later think that was the moment the whole day turned, though she didn't know it yet.)

"So this is the drum roaster," Caitlyn said, waving at a big copper machine that took up a third of the room. "And this is where I come in, the boring part." She grabbed a scoop and measured beans into the grinder. "Roy never told you I was into coffee, did he."

"He told me you drove a bus and argued with him about movies."

"Both true. The bus is the steady money. The coffee is the part I actually like." She turned the grinder on and the room filled with noise. When it stopped, she poured the grounds into a paper filter, tapping the sides to settle them. "Okay, watch. This is the bloom. You wet the grounds first and let them sit, and all the gas escapes. If you skip it, the coffee tastes flat."

Christine watched her hands. She noticed how Caitlyn's dark hair fell loose across her forehead when she leaned over the counter, how she pushed it back with the back of her wrist without thinking about it. Christine had noticed things like this about women before. Once, at twenty-four, she'd noticed them about a coworker named Aileen for about eight months and told no one, and it had gone nowhere and ended on its own. She'd filed it under something to think about later. Later had never quite arrived.

"See how it puffs up?" Caitlyn was saying. "Like the beans are breathing."

"It looks alive," Christine said.

"Right? People think roasting is the magic part. It's not. It's this. Water at the right second, ninety-two degrees, patience." She poured in slow circles, and the coffee rose dark and even in the filter. She set two cups on the counter. "Try it before you say anything."

Christine tried it. It was better than anything she'd had in five days, possibly better than anything she'd had in Chicago. "Okay," she said. "I get it."

"You get it." Caitlyn grinned and leaned her hip against the counter. "My ex used to say I was a cult recruiter about this stuff. We broke up last year, by the way, I mention that for no reason."

Christine laughed before she could stop herself. "No reason."

"Absolutely none." Caitlyn pushed her hair back again. "So what's your story? Spreadsheets, right? Roy said you do risk something. Risk assessment."

"HR, mostly. Risk assessments for hiring and policy. It's exactly as fun as it sounds."

"You sit in a building all day and imagine what could go wrong."

"Pretty much, yes."

"That's a terrible way to live." Caitlyn said it cheerfully, no judgment in it at all. "You should see what happens when you imagine what could go right for once."

* * *

They drank three cups between them, and the afternoon went long and slow through the stone room. Caitlyn showed her the green beans in burlap sacks, the roast log book with her friend's cramped handwriting, the cupping table in back. At some point Christine realized she had stopped checking her phone.

When the light through the mill windows went orange, Caitlyn wiped down the counter and looked up at her.

"So here's the thing," Caitlyn said. "Tomorrow morning I'm going camping up in the hills. One night, a tent, a fire, a lake that's freezing and worth it anyway. My friend Emir was supposed to come and bailed, so it's just me so far. You're stranded anyway. Come with me."

"With you?" Christine said.

"With me. I mean it." Caitlyn shrugged, but her eyes stayed on Christine's face. "There's a spare tent. I can lend you gear. If you hate it, I'll drive you back to the airport myself and you can sit in those plastic chairs and be miserable with a clear conscience."

Christine stood there with her cup halfway to her mouth. Every risk assessment she'd ever written told her to say no, thank you, the airline will rebook me. But she had spent five days in conference rooms and she was tired of imagining what could go wrong.

"Yes," she said. "Okay. I'm in."

* * *

"So I should probably tell you something," Christine said as they walked out into the evening air. The streetlights were coming on down the hill, and the town smelled like woodsmoke and grilling meat. "I've never camped before. Not once. Not even in a backyard."

Caitlyn stopped walking and laughed. It was the same laugh Christine had been hearing in her head for five years, only louder now, out in the open where it belonged.

"Never? You're twenty-nine years old and you've never slept on the ground?"

"I grew up in a condo. My family did vacations with pools. Pools, Caitlyn. With towels you didn't have to carry."

"Oh, this is going to be great." Caitlyn was still laughing, hands in her jacket pockets, rocking back on her heels. "Okay, don't panic. I'll show you everything. How to set a tent, how to build a fire, all of it. It's not complicated. People make it complicated, but it isn't."

"You're sure you won't mind babysitting a beginner?"

"I'll love it. I love teaching people things. I'm insufferable about it, ask Emir." She turned and started walking again, and Christine fell in step beside her. "I've got a spare tent in my car anyway. It's small, but it's cozy."

"How small?"

"You'll see. It's fine."

Christine had spent her whole career reading the gap between what people said and what they meant, and that "it's fine" had a little hitch in it. She filed it away and said nothing.

Caitlyn's car was a beat-up white hatchback parked on a slope two streets down. There was a rolled sleeping bag in the trunk, a duffel, a cast iron pan, and a folded tent in a bag that did not look big enough to hold a tent. Christine looked at the bag and did the math in her head.

The plan was to stop at Caitlyn's flat so Christine could drop her laptop bag and charge her phone, and then dinner somewhere. On the way they stopped at a grocery store wedged between a pharmacy and a shoe repair shop. It was the kind of store Christine would have walked past in Chicago without a glance, and now it felt like the most interesting building in the world.

"We need matches," Caitlyn said, ticking things off on her fingers as they went down the narrow aisle. "And bread. And those little sausages I like. And you need a sleeping pad or you'll feel every rock in Bosnia personally."

"I have a phone charger. That's my whole contribution."

"That's a contribution."

They reached the camping aisle at the same time, if two shelves of batteries and bug spray counted as a camping aisle. Caitlyn reached for the pack of matches on the top shelf and Christine reached for it too, and their hands landed on the cardboard at the same moment. Caitlyn's fingers were warm. She didn't pull away right away. She looked at Christine, one eyebrow up, and Christine felt something go through her that she hadn't felt in a long while, a quick low thrill that started in her chest and dropped all the way down.

"Sorry," Christine said, and didn't move her hand.

"You're not sorry," Caitlyn said. She wasn't moving either. "You're doing risk assessment."

"Maybe I am."

"Verdict?"

Christine took her hand off the matches. "Tentatively favorable."

Caitlyn grinned and put the matches in the basket. Her ears were a little red. Christine noticed that too, and noticed herself noticing, and thought, well, here we are then.

They bought bread, sausages, a block of cheese, two apples, a chocolate bar, a bottle of water each, and a second pack of matches because Caitlyn said you never trust just one. At the register the cashier and Caitlyn traded a few words in the local language and the cashier laughed at something. "What did she say?" Christine asked outside.

"She said I'm feeding a guest too well. I said you're a stranded American and Americans need feeding."

"I'm not stranded. I'm rebooked."

"You're stranded until the day after tomorrow, so eat your sausage."

* * *

Caitlyn's flat was on the third floor of a building with no elevator, up a staircase that smelled like somebody's dinner two floors down. It was one room plus a kitchen nook plus a bathroom, with a bed, a desk buried under bus schedules, and a wall of records. A green camping backpack sat by the door, already half packed.

"Home," Caitlyn said, dropping her keys in a bowl by the door. "Excuse the mess. Excuse everything."

It wasn't a mess by any standard Christine had ever used at work. There were two mugs in the drying rack and a plant in the window that was doing fine. Christine set her laptop bag down and looked around, and her eye went straight to the tent bag leaning against the desk, the same size bag as the one in the car.

"Wait," she said. "That's the tent, isn't it. The one in your car. The spare."

Caitlyn leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms, and the look on her face was not a guilty look at all. It was a grin with no attempt to hide behind it.

"That's the tent," she said.

"So the spare tent. The one you offered to lend me."

"That's the one."

"Which means there's no second tent." Caitlyn shrugged, easy as anything. "So it's one tent, one person tent, mind you, and two of us. Unless you want to sleep in the car, which I don't recommend, there's a smell."

"You said small but cozy."

"It is small. It is also cozy. Those are both true."

Christine looked at the tent bag, then at Caitlyn, then back at the tent bag. Her pulse was doing something she chose not to name. Every alarm she'd trained herself to hear was dinging politely, and she found she wanted to wave them all off.

"One person tent," she said slowly. "As in, built for one person."

"As in two people can fit if they don't mind each other." Caitlyn came a step closer, casual, hands still loose at her sides. "And look, I want to be straight with you, since we're being straight. I asked you to come tomorrow because I wanted you to come. Not because Emir bailed on me. That part was true, but it wasn't the reason. The reason is I've thought about you a few times over five years and then you walked into my roastery and I'm not built to pretend."

Christine stood there. The evening light was coming in orange through the window and the plant was doing fine and her heart was loud.

"I noticed you at the lake," she said. "Five years ago. When Roy drove us all out there. I don't know if you remember."

"You were twenty-four and you stared at the water the whole time like it owed you money."

"I was staring at the water and one other thing."

"I know," Caitlyn said. "You think I wouldn't notice?"

Christine laughed, a little shaky. "Okay. So. This tent situation."

"This tent situation."

"If it's a plan, it's a sloppy plan."

"It's a sloppy plan," Caitlyn agreed. "I had a good one and then you touched my hand at the grocery store and now I've got nothing."

They looked at each other. Neither of them moved. Somewhere down the street a dog was barking at something, and up on the hill the first lights of the evening were coming on.

"So we share the tent," Christine said. "And we take it slow, and if I say stop, you stop, and if you say stop, I stop."

"Deal," Caitlyn said, and there was nothing sloppy about the way she said it.

"And I still get my own sausage at breakfast."

"That's negotiable."

Christine picked up her water bottle and took a long drink, mostly to have something to do with her hands. "Okay," she said. "Then I guess I'm camping after all."

Caitlyn pulled the tent bag out from behind the desk and tossed it onto the bed. "You can practice setting it up right now if you want. It's good practice."