Running the Coffee Cart

Sadie Ruiz has run the same coffee cart outside the Ashford library for six years and never once thought about Ben Aguilar that way. He's her best friend. He teaches poetry. He has known her order since 2019. Then the college cancels the cart's lease, and Ben becomes her co-conspirator in a fight neither of them can afford. Committee rooms. Bad coffee. A fundraiser that raises forty dollars. A poem at open mic that Sadie refuses to believe is about her. When the appeal fails and she starts packing boxes for another city, Ben doesn't give a speech. He shows up at six in the morning with a lawyer, a petition and four hundred signatures. A cozy fall romance about a cart, a campus and two people who were already in love and just needed a reason to notice.