The delivery truck arrives at 2:47 PM, which is thirteen minutes early, which shouldn't matter except that I'm in the middle of explaining pour-over technique to a customer who actually wants to know, and Marcus from Riverside is already unloading by the time I get to the door.

"Fifty pounds Sumatran," he says. "Sign here."

Fifty pounds is a lot of beans—five ten-pound bags stacked on a hand truck that's seen better days, the kind with a slight wobble if you don't account for it, which I don't, because I'm signing the clipboard and trying to angle through the doorway and also noticing too late that there's a lip in the threshold I've tripped over approximately seventy times since opening.

The hand truck catches. The hand truck tips. And fifty pounds of Sumatran beans—earthy, dark, absolutely not meant to be airborne—go everywhere.

Not just everywhere in the general sense. Everywhere in the specific, physics-defying sense where beans are rolling down the sidewalk and into the gutter and—this is the part where I make a sound that is not a word—through the open door of Whitfield's Antiques next door.

"No no no no no—"

I'm on my knees before I've finished the sentence, scooping beans with my hands, which is ineffective because they just roll through my fingers. Marcus is saying something about another delivery, and the customer I was helping has come outside with her phone like she's considering whether this is Instagram-worthy or just sad.

I crawl through Earl's doorway on my hands and knees, following the trail past a grandfather clock and a stack of vintage suitcases, until I find myself face-to-face with a Victorian armoire that has approximately three hundred Sumatran beans nestled in its carved scrollwork.

This is when Earl appears.

He's seventy-something, been running this shop since before I was born, and I've waved at him maybe four times since I moved in. He's always just been there—the antiques guy, the neighbor, the person I keep meaning to introduce myself to properly and never do.

He looks at me. He looks at the armoire. He looks at the beans scattered across his floor.

"Sumatran?" he says.

"What?"

"The beans." He bends down—careful with his knees—and picks one up. "Sumatran. Full city roast. Earthy."

I stare at him. "You know coffee."

"Forty years in the antique business. Learned to appreciate the things that get better with age. Coffee beans. Furniture. Neighbors."

He helps me collect beans. We work in silence for a while, the companionable kind. When we're done, he straightens with a small groan and looks at me properly for the first time.

"You're the coffee shop girl. The one who took over the old bakery space."

"That's me. Rena."

"I know. I've been listening to you through the walls for four months." He says this matter-of-factly, like it's normal. "You talk to your espresso machine."

"Betsy," I say automatically. "Her name is Betsy."

Earl nods, like naming appliances is perfectly reasonable behavior.

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.

I fell down. Literally. Covered in beans. And Earl helped me up without making me feel stupid about it.

"Come by tomorrow," he says. "I'll show you the 1920s coffee grinder I just got in. Hand-crank. Beautiful piece."

"I'd like that."

He nods again. "Welcome to the block, Rena. Officially."