In the three weeks since she’d wandered into the coffee shop, she’d grown quite accustomed to the rhythms of the place. Breakfast and lunch were intense and the evenings ran on forever, it seemed. Regulars greeted her by name, and she was no longer fazed when the boss suddenly exploded from calm into voluble anger and sharp words.

He’d taken her on immediately, no questions asked. In the lulls between the lunch and evening crowds, he trained her as a barista. She had reached the point where he would let her clean the vast, shiny contraption, and, if no one was about, make them coffee. The last one she’d offered, he’d only complained about twice.

She didn’t know what drew her to the guitar. It had lain untouched, upon the tiny stage, during her tenure, and a fine layer of dust clung to the strings and frets. When she strummed it, the tuning was so wrong it made her wince but it was the work of a scant few moments to fix that.

Years of practise flooded back to her then, and the guitar wept under her fingers.