Jim didn't need to be by himself to run these errands. He wanted to take El with him, actually, to give her a bit more taste of the outside world. They had a thing where he'd take her places—nothing too much, just maybe one or two new places in a day—and let her ask questions and learn how things worked and get comfortable with real life away from the nightmare she'd been raised in for twelve years.

Today he decided to take her to the coffee shop. She'd had another rough night which meant a rough night for Jim, so he needed coffee. He explained the concept of caffeine to her while they drove into town. After that, they were going to go to the grocery store to pick up a few things.

But when he saw how excited and happy she was to see Will, he didn't want to drag her away. And Joyce had offered to let El stay there and Jim could pick her up later. The prospect of getting to come back and see Joyce again today was the real deciding factor. He could go to the grocery store by himself and then pick up El afterwards.

Joyce. Will's mom, Joyce, was his coffee woman. Pipsqueak coffee woman was Will's mom. It made sense, now that he thought about it. She texted just like she talked. She had a sass to her that he liked. He liked a lot of things about her.

And that decided it. Jim knew that Will's dad wasn't in the picture—he'd overheard Will telling El that it was cool that she had a dad but no mom and he had a mom but no dad. Jim also knew that there was a pretty good chance Joyce might be into him. He wasn't stupid, he saw the way she looked at him. And their conversations had been just on the verge of flirting every time they'd seen each other.

He was going to ask her out.

All through the grocery store, Jim was distracted thinking about how he'd ask her and where they'd go and what they'd do. He was getting a little ahead of himself, probably. It even crossed his mind that he'd have to lean down pretty far to kiss her goodnight. Yeah, definitely getting ahead of himself.

Somehow, he'd ended up buying Eggo waffles and a box of cornbread mix. Jim had no idea how that happened, but there it was, getting rung up with the lunchmeat and Wonder Bread he needed to get for El's school lunches. She probably hadn't ever eaten Eggos before. They weren't exactly waffles. Kinda their own thing. She'd probably love them. The cornbread probably required extra ingredients that he didn't keep in the house, but maybe that could be a weekend thing they could do together sometime. That might be fun for her.

It was weird for Jim to be a dad again. He'd told El not long after she came to live with him that he'd had a daughter before. Sara, his perfect baby girl. Only Sara had gotten sick and died, and Diane, Sara's mom—he didn't think of her as his wife anymore—had wanted to start a new life with someone else. Jim left the city and left his old life and ended up in his cabin in the woods doing his work and living his life all on his own. And then came Eleven.

The drinking stopped, mostly. The anonymous sex definitely stopped. And the hopeless feeling of trudging pointlessly through life stopped. He had a new family with her, and he had a purpose in helping her learn and adjust and heal and grow up.

And for the first time in a good five years, Jim had finally met a woman he actually wanted to talk to and get to know and maybe imagine some kind of future with. All the women he'd been with since the divorce had been useful for a night and nothing more. Tinder was great for that. But Jim hadn't actually had any romantic feeling inside him since Sara got sick. He didn't blame Diane for leaving. Everything that had made him worth having bled out of him during those long months and months and months in the hospital. But after everything, El had healed him as much as he was trying to help heal her. And now there was Joyce.

Jim parked his truck back at the coffee shop and stood a little taller as he walked in. El saw him right away and called him over. "Hopper, look at what Will can do on his computer!"

"I'll be there in just a second, I gotta talk to Joyce first," he told her.

The kids went back to whatever they were doing on the laptop, and Joyce stood by the sink in the otherwise empty coffee shop. She looked up as he approached. "What do you need to talk to me about?" she asked, drying her hands.

"I wanted to see if you'd like to have dinner with me on Friday night," he said in a low voice. He didn't really want to be overheard by their kids in case he crashed and burned. But he didn't think that was too likely.

Only Joyce didn't smile and say yes. Her dark eyes went wide and scared, and she blurted, "Like a date?!"

Jim panicked. "Well, our kids are friends, we ought to get to know each other better. And we gotta eat, so dinner could be good."

"O-okay, Friday night," she eventually agreed. She looked stunned.

"Friday," he confirmed with a nod. "I'll probably see you when I come in for coffee before then."

"I don't work Sundays," she told him. "But I'm here all day Monday through Friday."

"I'll see you Monday, then."

Shit, why did everything feel so awkward now? He completely fucked this up. Shit, shit, shit.

Jim turned and called to his kid, "El, let's get going." Time to get the hell out of that coffee shop before he ruined anything else.