Coffee Boy

Happy new year everyone! I hope you had a pleasant Christmas and that 2013 has been good for you so far.

I know I have readers who are holding out for the next instalment of A Fantasy Story (hi!) but, unfortunately, that's not what I'm here to deliver today. It'll come, I promise. I have lots of ideas for it, I just needed a break.

So, to kick-start what will hopefully be a writing-filled year, here is a piece I wrote just before Christmas.

Enjoy! And keep an eye out for more posts this month, there will definitely be at least one more because I wrote at least one more thing!

♥Nancy♬

Coffee Boy:

It was a quiet day at the office, which led to it being a quiet day as an assistant. As Matt walked from the office to the coffee shop down the street, he realised that the whole world was quiet today. There was barely a soul on the street and only a handful of quiet customers in the coffee shop. Hubble Bubble was a small, suburban coffee shop and it was usually pretty quiet, but today it was practically dead. A high-pitched bell jingled as he walked through the door. Straight ahead at the counter, the coffee girl perked up at the sound of the bell. She quickly fussed around with cleaning cloths and moving milk jugs, but Matt had seen her leaning on the bench before he’d pushed open the door.

 “Hi,” she called out, and gave him a wiggly-fingered wave. “Coffee?”

 “Yes please,” he said, arriving at the counter. He unfolded the piece of paper that he’d carried from the office and put it down in front of the girl. He spun it around so that she could read it. “My boss wrote a list. She said you’d be able to understand it, it’s all fancy coffee names, I don’t know.”

 “Thanks,” said the girl, taking the list and scanning her eyes down it.

Matt peaked at her name badge. Katie. Would it be creepy to call her by her name? Probably. He decided not to.

 “She used to own a coffee shop,” he said, “my boss. Which is weird, because she doesn’t drink coffee.”

The girl, Katie, smiled. Matt’s heart starting to feel warm, fuzzy and off-beat. Was it his heart? She was pretty and he was reacting in... other places, too.

 “I don’t drink coffee, either,” she said.

 “Well in the interests of full disclosure to my caffeinated-beverage-technician, I definitely do drink coffee. I’m that one, down there,” he said, leaning over the counter and pointing wildly at the list.

 “Matt,” she read, off the coffee list, “coffee. Black.”

 “Yeah,” he said, “sorry.” Then he said, “Katie?” testing the name waters.

She stopped working on the coffees and turned to him. “Katie,” she confirmed, pointing at her name badge. She got back to work on the last coffee.

 “Are you working long today?”

 “No, I finish at four. No big deal, really.”

 “Any big plans for after?”

 “Just enjoying being free.”

 “I would have asked you out for coffee,” Matt said, “only I know you don’t drink it. So...”

Katie grinned as she put the last cup of coffee into a cardboard coffee holder. “Pity,” she said, “I would have said yes anyway.”

 “Oh. So...?”

 “Well you’ve missed your chance now, haven’t you,” she said, as she tapped at a calculator to work out the cost of all that coffee.

 “Oh,” Matt said, a little embarrassed by his failure, but also how obvious his disappointment was.

 “But I’m working the same time tomorrow,” she said, “if you wanted to try again.”

Matt’s grin lit up his face.

They completed the coffee transaction and he walked back to the office with a spring in his step, glad that the street outside was quiet because it meant there was no one there to see how he was grinning like an idiot.

“What’s happened to you?” asked his boss, taking her hot chocolate from Matt’s coffee tray.

 “I asked out the coffee girl.”

 “She said yes?”

 “No, I screwed it up and she said I missed my chance.”

 “Well fair enough, really. A pretty coffee girl isn’t going to agree to a date with every baby-faced office drone who asks her out, is she?”

 “I guess not. But, I mean, she didn’t just say no. She said I could try again tomorrow.”

Matt’s boss sipped her hot chocolate, and smiled.

 “Don’t screw it up,” she said. Then she handed him a pile of papers. “File these for me.”