A warm place to land…
Carrie Ann’s life fell apart over the course of two days. Leaving her bereft and numb and so tired that making a plan for the rest of her life eludes her. Even making a plan for the rest of the day proves beyond her exhausted capabilities.
But a walk in freezing rain, soaking her to the bone, brings her to the door of a coffee shop she’s never noticed before. A café attached to a bookstore. Drawn to the bright, warm interior, Carrie Ann takes a chance she won’t get kicked out for dripping a lake onto the floor.
And finds much more than she could ever have expected…
CARRIE ANN AT THE CAFE is available to read for free until the 15th of March, when another story will be posted. For readers who would prefer to read on a device of preference, or who would like their own personal eBook of this story, you can find it here.
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Carrie Ann at the Café
Kat Simons
Carrie Ann walked into the café, dripping wet from a bucketing rainy day and satisfied with her state of misery. In two days, she’d lost her job, her marriage, and her home. The drenching rain and cold felt perfectly appropriate for her mental state.
But the café had looked so warm and beckoning, she hadn’t been able to resist. Attached to a cheerful bookstore, the café was an open, bright contrast to the gloomy wet city streets behind her. There weren’t many people in the middle of a work day. An older woman sitting in the center of the café, sipping her drink as she read what looked like a book of erotic poetry. And in the back a man on a laptop, typing furiously, the mug and pastry beside his laptop going unnoticed. Another woman walked in from the bookstore as Carrie Ann stood in the doorway dripping water onto the polished wooden floor. She was around Carrie Ann’s age, late twenties, and carrying a pile of books to the counter.
Carrie Ann looked longingly at the books, but she didn’t dare go into the bookstore until she stopped dripping.
The barista behind the counter smiled at the woman with the books and proceeded to make her a cappuccino while an absolutely ginormous and very furry gray cat sprawled on a stool—which the creature did not fit on—next to the cash register, looking extremely uninterested in everything going on as it licked a foot clean.
After serving the woman with the books, the barista looked over at Carrie Ann and her expression dissolved into immediate sympathy. “Oh, you’re drenched. Do you want a towel? I have one back here.” She ducked into a small room behind the counter and reemerged with a couple of white kitchen towels.
Coming around the counter she handed them to Carrie Ann. The towels weren’t large, but two of them was enough for Carrie Ann to wipe her face and arms off and squeeze some of the water out of her hair.
“Sorry to drip all over your floor,” she said to the barista.
The woman waved that away. “That’s what mops are for. What can I get you to drink? Something hot, right? I’ll bring it to your table. Sit anywhere.”
Carrie Ann started to wave off the offer of a drink. She wasn’t sure she should be spending any of her money on fancy coffees at the moment. She’d managed to save a little, in the secret account her grandmother had told her to get on her wedding day, which Carrie Ann had sheepishly opened two days after the honeymoon. She’d never been so grateful to her grandmother’s advice before in her life. It was the only money her soon to be ex-husband hadn’t stolen because he hadn’t known about it.
There was maybe enough there to get set up in a new apartment. Maybe enough to see her not starve until she found a new job. Maybe. If she could get an apartment without a job or a job without an apartment. Those were details she still had to work out. At the moment, all her brain seemed able for was wandering around in the rain, though.
And a hot coffee, a fancy cappuccino even, sounded so wonderful she almost cried just thinking about it. So she ordered one and took herself off to one of the seats near the front window, one of the few plastic ones in the place so she didn’t have to worry about destroying one of the wooden seats or soaking one of the cushioned chairs.
She laid the damp towels on the chair under her anyway and settled in, surprised she wasn’t shivering. It was freezing outside, even though it was late spring, and she had gone out without a coat because she hadn’t been thinking clearly when she left her friend Joy’s place that morning. She was currently sleeping on Joy’s couch. But Joy had a job and so did her wife and they couldn’t babysit Carrie Ann twenty-four hours a day. Carrie Ann had felt awkward just sitting on their couch watching gameshows while they were out. She’d decided she needed a walk. She hadn’t bothered looking out the window to check the weather. And once she’d stepped out into the rain, she hadn’t bothered to turn around and go back.
She had no idea how long she’d been walking in the rain, shivering with cold and feeling miserable, before spotting the warm, bright windows of the café. It had to be at least lunch time by now given how many people passed on the street just outside. The smells of coffee and pastry made her stomach grumble. She hadn’t been hungry in days, but suddenly the idea of a croissant with her fancy coffee sounded like heaven.
When the barista brought over her cappuccino, Carrie Ann asked if there happened to be any croissants.
The barista frowned and said, “Give me a minute.” Disappeared behind the counter, and reemerged with a triumphant whoop, bringing Carrie Ann an absolutely huge croissant on a small white plate that barely held the pastry.
“Last one,” the barista said. “Great timing.”
“Thank you.” Carrie Ann tried to reach into the pocket of her soaked jeans for her wallet—that and her cellphone were the only things she remembered to take with her when she left Joy’s apartment—but the barista waved her off.
“You can pay after you’re done and you’ve had a chance to dry off. Here’s another towel. Let me know if you get cold. I can adjust the temperature.”
“Thanks.” Carrie Ann was afraid she might cry at the simple gestures of kindness from a stranger, so she ducked her head and dove into her food and drink.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had food or a coffee that tasted so good and so deeply, warmly satisfying.
She ate quietly, staring out the window, absently sipping her fancy coffee. When she got to the bottom, the barista brought her over a second. When Carrie Ann tried to demure, the barista said, “This one’s on the house. It’ll help you warm up.”
Carrie Ann was already warm. Surprisingly so. The temperature inside the coffee shop was almost balmy compared to outside. But the second coffee made her feel even cozier. Her insides felt comfortably toasty instead of shivery, like she’d been sitting inside a sauna instead of walking in freezing rain.
More people started to trickle in and out of the café from the street and the adjoining bookstore. Carrie Ann was aware of the comings and goings, but most of her attention remained outside the window, her brain quiet but in a content way, not the numb, unable to process way that had shut her down for the last few days. A contentedness that felt like a reprieve.
When she finished the second coffee and set the mug down, she continued to stare out the window for a time, reluctant to leave. It was still raining, still cold outside. It wasn’t cold in here. And her brain hadn’t been spinning in circles of devastation. Just sitting and people watching and not worrying, even for this brief moment, felt so good she didn’t want to let that go.
She reached for her mug, intending on returning it to the counter and paying for her food, only to find the drink was full again. She frowned and glanced around. The barista was busily working behind the counter, three people were in line at the register, and as far as Carrie Ann had seen, the barista was the only person working. She hadn’t seen anyone walk up to her table, and while she might be a bit zoned out, she was certain she would have noticed someone trading out her coffee.
She frowned at the cup. It wasn’t completely full. It looked like she’d sipped at it already. Maybe she hadn’t finished her last mug after all, just thought she had because she wasn’t really paying attention.
Taking a tentative sip, it tasted as delicious as what she’d already been drinking, and not too hot so it wasn’t right from the espresso machine. Obviously, the coffee had been sitting there already, and she’d just been mistaken about having finished the full cup.
Silly. But at least she now had an excuse to continue sitting here for a bit longer.
At some point in her musings, the giant cat had wandered over and was now sitting in the chair across the table from her, not paying her any attention, just curled up on the un-used seat at her table, sleeping. His soft purring rumbled quietly and provided a nice soothing accompaniment to the other cup clinks and conversations and the whirring of the espresso machine.
Glancing around, she realized the man at the back of the café was still pounding away at his computer, but the older woman with the erotic poetry book had left. There was at least half a dozen more people scattered around the various tables now, a couple of teenagers with their heads together over one’s phone, a woman with a laptop tapping away much less frantically than the man in the back, an older couple exchanging books from a pile on the table between them.
The older couple left her feeling a bit misty eyed. She’d assumed, on her wedding day, that’s what her life would be like. Growing old with her husband, sitting in coffee shops after they retired talking about books and maybe planning their next trip to somewhere fun and exotic. She hadn’t expected her marriage to last less than five years. She certainly hadn’t expected her entire life to explode before she reached thirty.
And yet even those sad thoughts, the things that had kept her numb and tired and too miserable to even notice how wet and cold she’d been getting on her walk, none of that seemed to drop her back into the numb misery she’d walked in with. Just a little sad for what could have been, what should have been.
Instead of that, she had this now. Whatever this was.
She glanced down at her coffee, the mug still half full surprisingly, the foam on the top still fluffy and fresh.
What was this now?
A couch to sleep on for the moment and friends who wouldn’t let her go homeless. Enough experience as a bookkeeper that she knew she’d eventually find a job. A place to live… Maybe somewhere nearby. This was a nice neighborhood. She wouldn’t mind having a bookstore and coffee shop within walking distance. She had the nest egg her grandmother had advised her to save, so she wasn’t broke. And she was rid of a man who, in hindsight, really hadn’t ever liked her very much or treated her particularly kindly.
Since walking into this café, she’d been treated with nothing but kindness. And lovely coffee. And warmth. And a really excellent croissant. Her stomach was no longer churning acid. In fact, she thought she might get another pastry. And her numbness had melted away, leaving her sad, even melancholy, but…
Surprisingly okay.
Whatever this was inside this little beacon of light and warmth and delicious smells, she was grateful for it. Grateful for the giant gray cat’s steady purring, and the hot foamy cappuccinos and the delicious food and the man pounding his keyboard in the back and the barista with the towels and the quiet hum of noise and movement between the café and the bookstore.
She was grateful for finding this place. She’d never seen it before. Hadn’t even known the bookstore was here. But having found it, the place felt like somewhere she’d always come, someplace she felt comfortable. A home-away-from-home where she could get her thoughts together without feeling overwhelmed.
She’d definitely be coming back more. Frequently.
Though, next time, maybe a little less wet.
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Thanks for reading CARRIE ANN AT THE CAFE. I hope you enjoyed it! If you’d like your own personal eBook copy of this story, you can find it for sale here. You can also peruse the previous Café stories that are individually available for sale here. And don’t forget to check back on March 15th for the next Free story from The Café!
CARRIE ANN AT THE CAFE Copyright © 2025 Kat Simons
All Rights Reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.