Page 28 of Pretend You Love Me

Harper asks about my work, and when I mention translation, she asks a sharp, insightful question about preserving authorial voice. She talks about her husband trying to fix their garden fence, then rolls her eyes about her manuscript deadline. The conversation is effortless, and I realize I feel less like a customer and more like I’ve stumbled into their living room, a place of shared histories and easy belonging, all just by sitting still.

From across the café, Liv says, her voice carrying with the casual indifference of someone who doesn’t care who hears, “Men with quiet faces and emotional intelligence are either serial killers or therapists.” She doesn’t look up, but her words land at my table like a thrown dart. Behind the counter, Luca smothers a laugh. “Liv,” he mouths dramatically. She just shrugs, a tiny, dismissive gesture, and I know I’m supposed to pretend I heard nothing at all.

I stare at my manuscript for a long moment, the words blurring slightly as I try very hard not to look like I’ve heard every word of this exchange. My ears feel suddenly, inconveniently hot. I take a sip of my coffee, which is now completely cold, and very carefully do not look up.

Harper, who has definitely heard and is trying very hard not to laugh, says, “Please ignore her. She thinks social awkwardness is an art form.”

“It’s not awkward if it’s deliberate,” Liv calls from her table.

“That doesn’t make it better,” Luca tells her.

“It doesn’t make it worse,” she counters.

Leo, completely oblivious to the adult conversation happening around him, has moved on to examining my pencil case, which is covered in more dinosaur stickers courtesy of the same nephew. “Your nephew has good taste,” he informs me seriously. “Except for the stegosaurus. That one’s wrong.”

“I’ll let him know,” I promise.

Across the table, Harper is watching this exchange with a particular softness around her eyes. “You’re good with him,” she says. “Most adults either talk down or check out entirely.”

“I have nieces and nephews,” I say with a shrug. “You pick things up.”

I don’t say that the way Leo’s forehead creases when he’s thinking reminds me so much of my nephew it makes my chest ache. I don’t say that I’ve been timing my coffee runs for weeks on the small chance I’ll see the woman behind the counter smile like she means it. I just watch her with Harper and Leo, part of this lived-in, easy world, and feel the sharp pang of wanting something I have no right to.

So I don’t say any of that. I just answer Leo’s next question about whether dinosaurs had belly buttons (they did not) and try very hard not to look like a man who’s just been thoroughly and accurately assessed by a stranger in a beanie.

A few hours later and it seems as though I’m actually making progress with the manuscript, two full paragraphs translated without stopping to check my phone or stare out the window or wonder what the woman behind the counter is thinking about. I’ve reached that state of flow where the words come without conscious effort, where I’m not translating so much as finding the English that was already there, waiting underneath the Italian. It’s the closest thing to meditation I’ve found as an adult, this complete absorption in someone else’s language, this temporary escape from my own thoughts.

Which is why it’s particularly jarring when I’m pulled back to reality by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, followed immediately by a small, unhappy noise that quickly escalates into the wail of a baby who has reached his absolute limit.

I look up to find Elsie emerging from the back room with a box balanced precariously against her chest, one arm braced underneath it while she tries to steer clear of Milo, who’s strapped into a bouncer near the counter and working himself into what appears to be an extremely committed meltdown. Her face is set in the expression of someone who is using every ounce of self-control not to join in the crying, her movements careful as she tries to navigate the narrow path between tables with a box that’s clearly too heavy for one person to manage comfortably.

I’m nearest to the door she’s trying to reach, the one that leads to the small office behind the counter. Without thinking too much about it, I stand, cross the short distance, and hold the door open, stepping back to give her as much room as possible. I don’t comment or hover. Just a simple, practical gesture, the kind you’d offer anyone who was clearly struggling.

But from where I’m standing, I can see Elsie’s face when she registers the open door, a flicker of surprise, quickly smoothed over, like she’d already braced to manage it alone. Like having someone notice she needed help was the unexpected part, not the box or the crying baby or the fact that she’s clearly running on no sleep and too much caffeine.

“Thanks,” she says, the word slightly breathless as she manoeuvres through the doorway. “Sorry about the…“ She gestures toward Milo, who has now reached what can only be described as performance volume.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, and mean it. “Take your time.”

She nods, already turning toward whatever crisis awaits in the back room, and then she’s gone, the door swinging shut behind her with a soft click that’s immediately drowned out by Milo’s continued complaints.

I return to my table, settle back into my chair, and try very hard to focus on the manuscript. It doesn’t work. My brain keeps returning to that expression, the brief, genuine surprise, and doing something complicated with it that I don’t have a word for.

I’m staring at a paragraph I’ve now read four times without absorbing a single word when I become aware that something has changed. The café has gone slightly quieter.

I look up slowly to find Milo staring directly at me with enormous, suspicious eyes. He’s completely stopped crying, his mouth a perfect round O of surprise, one tiny hand reaching toward my table with focused determination.

It takes me a moment to realize what’s happened. While I was staring at the same paragraph, trying to force my brain to focus on tax law instead of the woman who just carried a box through a door, I’ve apparently been making faces, unconsciously. My forehead creased in concentration, my mouth moving slightly as I sound out difficult phrases, my eyebrows raising at particularly convoluted sentences. And somehow, across the café, this has registered with a baby as entertainment worthy of his complete attention.

The café is watching. Not obviously, people are still talking, still drinking coffee, still checking phones, but there are a lot of sideways glances going on.

Elsie is watching too, having emerged from the back room. She’s standing behind the counter, one hand resting on the coffee machine, her expression caught between surprise and something that might be the beginning of a smile.

Do I keep making faces? Do I stop? Do I acknowledge what’s happening or pretend I haven’t noticed?

Before I can decide, Milo lets out a surprised, delighted noise that seems to surprise even him. His tiny face transforms, mouth curving into a smile so bright, one hand reaching toward me with the absolute conviction that whatever’s happening is what he wanted.

Elsie laughs the same one that made me lose fifteen minutes of work earlier and says, “He doesn’t do that for just anyone.”