My favorite regular at my coffeeshop is a very manly, curt, stern old man, gruff and exacting, who is a quality inspector for road crews. Picture an old (but never unkept!) sea captain, then name him after a Romantic poet: there ya go. He named his company something like "Accept No Bullsh*t Quality Control" and in the winter he comes in with a few inches of snow on his head because he's been standing outside in the storm and doesn't care? doesn't notice? that the snow is falling!

Everyone is scared of him but me. I tease him about 'pretending' to be gruff and how I'm sure everyone believes him but not me, and I make him the sweetest candy-coffee drinks each afternoon because I know he loves it sweet, though if he comes in with his young, business-school-looking supervisor he drinks an Americano, black. And he smiles at me, and tells me to give up teasing him about his flannel because his daughters have already given up on him, exhausted, and I shouldn't waste my energy. Instead I should spend it making him a breakfast sandwich, extra hot. And I do (extra bacon) while I talk to him over the kitchen half-wall about his men and the mud/rain/snow/sun and whatever.

I really adore him because he's hard to please and yet I do, just about every day, and it's not hard; I pay attention to what he likes and I give him exactly what he wants, EXACTLY how he wants it. The thing I like most about our little relationship is that little by little he's expressed things to me that I don't think he can say to many other people - how pretty the flowers are on the counter, and how he misses his far-away daughter, or how he feels bad for the crews on such a frigid day. I understand that he's gruff and cranky, I just also know that this isn't ALL HE IS, and I choose to respond to the part of him that isn't scowling.


I wonder if he'll miss me, because this summer I'm going to be working shifts where I won't see him.

I'll miss him.