Once Upon A Coffee

Part 1: Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures

Professor Hendricks was a certifiable asshole.  As Dillon Lange climbed the stairs to his second floor apartment, he ran through a number of other less than flattering descriptions for the man who didn’t give a damn that Dillon’s project partner had a ruptured appendix, thus blowing their chances of finishing the midterm project on time.  At least if they expected to finish it together.  

“You should’ve planned for this,” Hendricks had said when Dillon met with him to plead for leniency since Noelle was still in the hospital.    

Right, because a ruptured organ was so easy to predict.  Noelle felt awful about leaving him in the lurch, but she was so doped up on medication, she could barely stay awake, let alone string a coherent sentence together.  During his brief conversation with her about it, she’d fallen asleep twice and woken up with a lurch, shouting “Save the crazy cat lady!”  Totally not the frame of mind they needed for a project on macroeconomics.  Because Dillon wasn’t an asshole himself, he’d said he’d take care of the project and that she should focus on getting well.

God, he missed undergrad when he could still live from class to nap to party.

The thump of machine gun fire greeted Dillon before he even got the door open.  

Half crouched on the futon, half standing, his roommate Owen clutched the Xbox controller with all the intensity of a drone pilot on a mission as war raged on the flat screen TV.  “Come on, dude!  You’ve gotta close in on the flank, I’m getting slaughtered here!”

Battlefield?  Titanfall?  Hell if Dillon knew.  He hadn’t had time for video games since he started his MBA at the University of Mississippi.  He was at least two editions of Assassin’s Creed behind.

Owen grunted as Dillon shut the door.  “Hey man.  How’d it go?”

“Lousy.”  Dillon dumped his keys in the Cool Whip bowl that served as a catch all by the door.  “No extension.”

“That bites.  No, no not you,” he spoke into the headset perched in his shaggy dark hair.  “Well, yeah, getting ambushed at the spawning point bites, too.  I’m comin’ to you.  Hang on.”

“Are you gonna be at this a while?  Because I’ve got a crapton of work to do on this project if I’m going to make the deadline.”

“Huh?  Oh, well we’re in the early stage of this campaign.  I can’t walk away right now.”

Of course, he couldn’t.

Heaving a put upon sigh that was completely lost on his roommate, Dillon made a beeline for his room.  No way could he work here with all this noise.  Loading up his laptop and all the books he’d need for this project, he retrieved his keys and headed downtown to hole up at his favorite coffee shop.

There was, predictably, no parking on the Square.  Not a shock.  The weather was gorgeous and sunny, and everybody in Oxford was out enjoying it.  Couples and groups teemed like ants along the sidewalks.  None of them had an epic midterm deadline hanging over their head.  As he drove past Uptown Coffee, he saw patrons spilling out the doors, effectively squashing that plan.  Hooking a left back toward campus, Dillon considered camping out at the library, but he needed caffeine to get through this.  Gallons of it.  He didn’t want to have to pack up and relocate once he got set up.

This called for drastic measures.

Forty-five minutes later, Dillon rolled into the sleepy little town of Wishful.  He’d stumbled upon this little jewel on one of his rambles in undergrad.  Boasting a population of only 5,000, it reminded Dillon of his hometown in Texas.  Friendly, quirky, and, most importantly, quiet, it made Oxford look positively metropolitan in contrast.  

As he pulled into a parking space in front of Lickety Split Ice Cream, a family of five wandered by, talking and laughing as they did their best to catch drips from their ice cream cones.  Dillon gave fleeting thought to ice cream.

A reward when I finish, he decided.  That presupposed it would be open when he finished.  If that wasn’t optimism, he didn’t know what was.

Gathering his gear, Dillon walked the short distance to his actual destination.  The Daily Grind was cool and dark and blessedly empty but for a pair of old guys playing checkers in the corner.  Somebody was moving around in the kitchen at the end of the counter, so Dillon took the time to peruse the menu tacked up to the pallet board wall.  

“Welcome to The Daily Grind.  What can I get you?”  The barista, a college-age guy with spiked, frosted blond hair, offered a flirty smile.  The name tag pinned to his purple apron read Daniel.

“Whatever you’ve got that will get me through an epic midterm deadline.”

Daniel nodded soberly.  “You want the zombie killer.  Would you like anything to go with that?  A muffin?  Scone?  Blueberry crumble bar?”

“Am I going to have any stomach lining left after drinking it if I don’t?”

“Iffy.  I’d soak some up with carbs.”

“Then I’ll have a slice of that friendship bread.”

“Heated?”

“Sure.”

The barista rang up his order.  “Did you drive over from the university?”

“Yeah.  Needed to get out of town to get some quiet so I could finish a project,” said Dillon.  

“You’ll certainly get that here.  I suggest you set up upstairs.  You’ll miss the afternoon rush that way.”

“Is there much of a rush here?”  Dillon couldn’t imagine that in a town this size.

“Honey, you do not want to get between some of these soccer moms and their afternoon caffeine fix.”

“Noted,” Dillon chuckled.

“You go on up.  I’ll bring this when it’s ready.”

“Thanks.”

The second floor of the coffeeshop was empty.  Dillon picked a booth by a window and spread out his stuff.  By the time Daniel brought his order, Dillon was already up to his eyeballs in Noelle’s notes on her portion of the presentation.  It was gonna be a long day.