A week passed. Leo considers himself lucky. His teacher gave him another chance to write the essay. Another week in which he can complete the task and get a good grade. He's been told that he has something called "potential" and that's why he got a second chance to come up with a good idea. He doesn't know what this "potential" means but he's not in the mood for asking himself useless questions, making him overthink everything.
This morning he feels motivated. He imagines everything that he should write perfectly in his head. Like a movie. But when it comes to writing nothing really comes out of him. He feels useless. Like a kid that is learning the alphabet, making simple mistakes and not being able to write the letters in the correct order. It's like he drives himself crazy and the words written on paper are in some long forgotten language that only people who acted like monkeys ,and ate each other, spoke.
He doesn't feel as useless if he's at the café. At least he orders something here and helps the economy instead of sitting home alone with a bag of chips.
He didn't even visited his father on Tuesday like he planned to. The reason is that Arthur didn't answer his phone and Leo got tired of trying to talk to him. At some point he got angry and tried to call him again but his mother watched his every move carefully. He wasn't in the mood for another lecture on the fact that his father is probably in trouble again and that he is a bad influence on him. To hell with it.
Naomi feels restless. At the beginning of this week her boss hired a new guy as promised. Mondays are usually busy days so she had to teach him a lot of stuff in little time. She didn't had any time to rest.
Leo was surprised to see the new face of the café. He first saw him while he was taking orders behind the counter. Naomi was watching him carefully with a piercing gaze that sent shivers down Leo's spine. Without her will, Naomi looks like she's about to murder the guy even if he makes the smallest mistake.
He's a tall boy with dark brown messy hair and black eyes that are looking at the floor most of the time. His hands are clumsily pressing the buttons on the coffee machine making Naomi crazy and wanting to angrily take him away from there so she can get the job done faster.
He only made eye contact with him once and Leo could sense the fear that something might go wrong in his eyes. The boy acts like the ground will break under his feet when he steps towards Leo's table.
Leo looks up noticing the height difference between them that seems even crazier when he's sitting down. The boy's lips form a thin line and he clears his throat.
"W-what would you like to order?" He flinches a bit right after finishing his sentence and Leo smiles at him in a reassuring way.
"It's okay. I get that you're nervous. I mean... New job... New people"
The other looks at him a bit surprised but then he smiles back at Leo while a small laugh leaves his lips.
"Y-yeah.... I'm a bit nervous... I just hope it won't get in my way of doing my best at this job"
"I'll have a pumpkin spice latte please"
"Okay" He writes it down in his notebook and turns around ready to leave.
"Um wait... I wanted to ask you...what's your name?" Leo scratches the back of his head.
"Oh... It's Aaron" He smiles while walking towards the counter stumbling and almost falling on his face when Naomi calls his name.
Leo opens his laptop and sighs looking at how he wrote just a little part of his essay. The pressure is even more noticeable right now because the teacher gave him another week to complete it and he shouldn't blow it up. Essays are the worst. It's just a bunch of words written down that don't really make sense even if you want them to. You write the same thing over and over again just to have the number of words that you need.
He looks up from his laptop seeing his latte in front of him and Aaron pointing at his laptop with an awkward smile.
"I thought you were working so I didn't want to disturb you" Leo nodded and started typing random things on his laptop just to avoid the awkward silence that was now in the air.
He hated awkward silences more than anything. People just looking at each other not knowing what to say or what to do. It's painful to watch and even more painful to experience it. Leo's eye starts twitching when he's nervous, and this silence definitely makes him nervous. He doesn't want to make Aaron think that there's something wrong with him.
"Thank you" Leo finally says and before he could say anything else, or think about something to talk about so he can avoid de awkward silence, Naomi needs Aaron to help her with something.
After taking the day off, Nicholas happily comes to the café and orders the latte macchiato he loves and sits across from Leo with an open book. It's an old and rusty book. You can hardly see the words anymore but Nicholas seems determined to read it so Leo doesn't say anything and just takes a sip out of his coffee.
"That's the new guy?" Nicholas finally says taking his eyes off the book for a second to look around him, only to notice the new boy nervously preparing coffee as Naomi instructed him to.
"Yeah.He seems a bit jumpy or... Nervous? I don't know"
"I would say anxious" Nicholas said with a finger raised in front of Leo.
"Isn't that the same thing I said?" He looks at Nicholas with a bored look but the other just shakes his head.
"No no.... You said it differently"
"Dude..."
"Hey Leo I think today I'm going to work an extra hour because I have to help Aaron. You can leave without me if you want to" Naomi sits down next to them exhausted and pats Nicholas' shoulder.
"I think I'm going to stay here until you finish your shift. I don't really have anything to do at home anyway"
"I know you're not going to wait for me that late because you want to get some sleep as soon as possible right?" She smirks at Nicholas who just blushes and his his face in his book.
"I'm not a horrible friend because of that right?"
Naomi just shakes her head and sighs with a weak smile on her face. Leo knows that she is tired but can't do anything about it. She wants to get everything done. More than that, she can't leave Aaron all alone on his first day when he's still struggling to take orders and talk to the costumers.
"Well... Back to work I go" She slaps herself lightly across the face and stands up with her fists clenched.
YOU ARE READING
Pumpkin Spice Mocha
General FictionLeo doesn't need much except a good book and a coffee to relax. He always puts his family and friends first no matter what and he never had trouble getting close to new people. That was until an anxious boy, Aaron, that has trouble opening up, appea...
