The office coffee machine. You know the type. A behemoth of chrome and plastic, perpetually dripping, perpetually requiring a specific, arcane ritual to coax a lukewarm, vaguely coffee-like substance from its innards. For some reason, I’ve become its reluctant shaman. If it splutters, if it clogs, if it just decides to flat-out refuse, it’s always me. The unofficial, unpaid coffee machine repair person.
It was a Tuesday. A quiet Tuesday morning. The hum of computers, the distant murmur of early birds, but mostly silence. The machine was, predictably, dead. Not just dead, but stubbornly dead. No lights, no sounds, just a gaping, dark maw where the cups usually sat. I grabbed my toolkit – more of a random collection of screwdrivers and a pair of pliers – and dove under the counter.
The air down there was stale, thick with the scent of old coffee grounds and dust. I was contorted, peering at wires, trying to remember the diagram I’d once vaguely glanced at online. My hands were covered in grime. Just fix it, get out, get a real coffee somewhere else. That was the mantra.
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Then I heard them.
Voices. Soft, hushed. Coming from just around the corner, near the supply closet. I froze, my head still jammed against a cold metal pipe. My immediate thought was to make noise, announce my presence, but something held me back. Curiosity, maybe. Or just the awkwardness of being caught in such a ridiculous position.
“Are you sure no one’s around?” A whisper. Familiar. Too familiar.
My heart gave a little hitch. No, it couldn’t be. Not that voice.
“Relax. Early. Besides, who would even care?” The other voice was equally hushed, laced with a casual confidence that grated.
I gripped a cold wire, my knuckles white. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. My position under the counter gave me a perfect, unobstructed earshot, while keeping me entirely out of sight.
“It’s just… it feels so risky sometimes.” My partner’s voice again. Clearer now. Unmistakable. My breath caught in my throat.
Risky? What was risky? My mind raced, trying to find an innocent explanation. A surprise party for a colleague? A secret project? My rational brain, for a split second, still tried to protect me.
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“That’s part of the thrill, isn’t it?” The second voice chuckled softly. “Besides, we’re good at this. We always have been.”
We always have been.
The words hit me like a physical blow. The air felt thin. My entire body went rigid. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even blink.
Then I heard shuffling. The faint rustle of clothing. And then, a soft, unmistakable sound. A kiss. Not a quick peck. A lingering, intimate sound that tore through the quiet morning like a siren.
My partner. Kissing someone else. In the office. My world tilted. The grimy pipes, the dusty floor, the broken coffee machine – it all seemed to swim before my eyes.
“We need to be careful,” my partner murmured, a tremor in their voice that I’d never heard before. A mixture of longing and fear. “What if someone… saw?”
“No one saw,” the other voice reassured, closer now, just feet from my hiding spot. “And even if they did, who would believe it? We’re practically family.”
The blood drained from my face. My fingers, still clenched around the cold wire, felt numb. Practically family.
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A chilling wave of nausea washed over me. I knew that voice. Oh, GOD, I knew that voice. It was the voice of the person I’d known my entire life. The person who stood beside me at my own wedding. The person who shared my childhood memories, my family holidays, my very DNA.
IT WAS MY SIBLING.
My sibling. And my partner.
The realization was a punch to the gut that stole my breath. No. NO. This can’t be happening. My head began to pound. My vision tunneled.
“I still feel guilty,” my partner admitted, a sigh. “Sometimes.”
“Don’t,” my sibling said, their voice suddenly soft, almost tender. “We both know this is… right. It always has been.”
Right? ALWAYS HAS BEEN?
A cold, horrifying clarity slammed into me. This wasn’t a sudden, reckless mistake. This wasn’t a moment of weakness. This was calculated. This was ongoing. The words “always has been” echoed in the small, dusty space, each syllable a hammer blow to my chest.
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All those holidays. All those family dinners. The knowing glances I’d dismissed as inside jokes. The way they’d always been a little too close, a little too comfortable. I’d laughed it off. “They’re just like siblings!” I’d told myself, beaming, proud of how well my two favorite people got along. I’d encouraged it. I’d reveled in it.
The jokes. The casual touches. The way my sibling would always offer to help my partner with something. The way my partner would confide in my sibling, sometimes even before me. It wasn’t affection. It was a cover.
I could hear them moving away now, their voices fading, the door to the supply closet clicking shut. But the sounds they left behind, the whispers, the kiss, the agonizing words, were screaming in my ears.
I stayed there, huddled under the counter, long after the office had fully come to life. Long after the clatter of keyboards and the murmur of conversations had filled the air. I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
My hands, still covered in grease and dust, trembled violently. I felt like I was going to throw up. My entire life, every memory, every shared laugh, every intimate moment with my partner, every childhood secret with my sibling, was replaying in my mind, warped and poisoned.
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The broken coffee machine sat there, mocking me. I had come to fix it. And in doing so, I had stumbled upon a truth that had shattered everything I thought I knew about love, about family, about betrayal.
I never told anyone what I heard. I never confronted them.
Instead, I eventually crawled out from under that counter, fixed the damn coffee machine with shaking hands, and walked back to my desk as if nothing had happened. As if my world hadn’t just been detonated into a million shards of broken trust.
And every single morning since, when I walk past that coffee machine, I don’t smell coffee. I smell deceit. I smell betrayal. And I remember the unexpected lesson I learned that day: that sometimes, the things we try hardest to fix aren’t the machines, but the gaping holes left in our hearts by the people we loved the most. And some breaks, you realize, are PERMANENT.
