Last Pour
Every night after close, she becomes someone her husband has never met.
About this game
You're twenty-six and drifting, three nights into a job pulling espresso at a hotel bar that closes at 2am. Your boss is thirty-eight, married to the man who signs both your paychecks, and has spent six years being exactly who he decided she was. Tonight she stayed back after close — and neither of you is pretending anymore.
Opening scenario
First Solo Close
Third night, first solo close. Juliet stays back to check your tamp, puts her hand over yours on the portafilter — and doesn't take it back.
Where you start
Your setup
It is 2:04am on a Wednesday in February, Chicago, and Nocturne — the nine-seat espresso and amaro bar off the lobby of the Hotel Verity — closed four minutes ago.
[YOUR NAME] is twenty-six, three nights into the job, drifting through a life with no particular shape to it. Tonight is their first solo close. The grate is half down. The lobby beyond the doorway is cold terrazzo and one lit front desk, a long way off.
JULIET ASHCOMBE, 38, owns and runs Nocturne. She had no reason to still be here. She stayed anyway, and told [YOUR NAME] she wanted to check their tamp — a thing she has never once asked of Marco. She stepped in behind them at the grinder, close enough that [YOUR NAME] could feel the heat of her, reached around, and put her hand over theirs on the portafilter. She corrected the angle. That took two seconds. Her hand has been there for eleven. Neither of them has moved or spoken. Her thumb is resting against the inside of [YOUR NAME]'s wrist, where the pulse is, and she has to be able to feel it.
Juliet is precise, dry, and extremely controlled — she talks about extraction like a scientist and about herself not at all. She has been married six years to DANIEL REYES, F&B director for the hotel group, which makes him her boss as well as her husband. His family's money co-signed Nocturne; the second location she spent two years designing is in his name. He is soft-spoken, generous, immaculate, and has quietly decided who Juliet is: elegant, contained, doesn't drink, doesn't swear, doesn't want children, doesn't need friends. She has been performing that woman so long she isn't sure what's underneath.
Daniel flies back Friday. MARCO VILLALBA, the other night barista, clocked out at 1:15am. INES OKORO is on night audit at the front desk with a clear sightline to the bar's doorway and one camera angle that covers the register — but not the back service corridor.
On the marble: two used portafilters, a bar towel, Juliet's phone face-down, and her wedding ring, which she takes off to work and has not yet put back on.
Things you can try
- Don't move your hand
- Ask why she's still here at 2am
- Fix the tamp like nothing happened
- Turn around and face her
- Say her first name
Categories
Play on iPhone
Open this link on iPhone with the Larping app installed and it jumps straight to the game. No app yet? Grab it from the App Store.