breathe - jevon

3. Receipts

My headphones blasted a tune into my ears I had heard many times before, and if I was being honest— Tame Impala was starting to fill a chunk of my brain with its lyrics everytime a familar phrase from one of their songs crept into my mind.

I ran a hand through my head of curls, my other hand cracking open the door that led into the one and only Coffee Mill.

The bell above the door frame rang a melodic tune upon my arrival, and I pulled off my scarf, the yarn rubbing uncomfortably against the thick skin of my neck. Devon glanced up at me from where he was behind the counter, a smile crossing his face. And, in the moment, it barely occurred to me that it wasn't the usual customer service smile most waiters, baristas, and waitresses usually gave me when I first saw them. There was something about it that made my stomach fill with butterflies, and I offered a kind-hearted smile in return.

"Welcome, what would you like?" Devon greeted me, the weariness of his tone making it glaringly obvious that he had somehow slept less than me the night before, and the deep grooves beneath his eyes proved that point perfectly.

I glanced over his head at the menu, "Just a coffee." I said, pulling out my wallet from where it was sitting in my pocket. Devon nodded, exhaling a steady breath. "Dark roast?" He asked, looking up at me with a smile on his lips. I laughed, "Not only a psychic but one with a good memory."

He let out a hollow laugh that shook his shoulders. "What can I say, I'm a man of both worlds." He added with a tilt of his head as he finished putting in my order and met my eye, "Can I get a name for that?" He asked, ignoring the bell on the door ringing once again, signaling a new customer was at bay. "Jake." I responded, the peak of my eagerness slowly inching into my voice like a parasite finding it's host.

He gestured his chin gently up and down, a distracted nod of sorts. "That's gonna be $4.89. Would you like a receipt?" He looked down at my hands, his eyes catching onto the thick silver ring wrapped around my ring finger particularly. "Mhm." I said, tapping my card to the screen mindlessly. He printed the receipt, eyeing the machine as it churned out the piece of paper and he grabbed a pen from the mug beside him that had the company's logo printed on the polished clay.

I ran a hand through my hair as Devon scrawled something down on the receipt in a neat handwriting, and I waited patiently for my card to approve in the terminal. My wallet snapped close with my card inside it, and a small ding came from the transaction slide just as Devon clicked his pen closed, the tip retracting inside the blue body of it.

"That'll be out to you in a moment." Devon said to me, his eyes traversing my face curiously as he slid the receipt across the counter to me, his brown pupils darting from my left eye, to the bow of my lips, and dancing right back up to my right eye just as he turned around and his longing stare disappeared in the blow of a candlelight.

I waited at a nearby table as Devon took the other customer's order who had come in after me and started up the coffee machine. I pulled out my phone, reaching for one of the earbuds around my neck, sticking one of them in my ear and letting the other one fall limp against my chest.

The music I had been listening to on the way here resumed, and I leaned my head against the brick wall behind me, my fingers toying with the receipt, zero regard for the words I had no idea were written on it.

A long strand of my hair caught on the crook of a rough red brick behind me, and as I began to crane my neck downwards again, causing pain to turn me inside out again as I winced at the mere thought of my hair getting pulled out by the plaster. Mostly because it reminded me of my dad, and how things with him went down last time I had seen him, which was 2 years ago before I turned 17 and moved into my Chicago apartment with Lexy just to escape Hackensack and my past.

"Dark roast for Jake." Devon's voice came, pulling my tired head space away from itself, switching me back into business mode, as cliche as that sounded.

I stood up, pushing my chair backwards with an uncomfortable skidding from the hardwood floor it ricocheted off of. I picked up the cup, the heat it radiated burning my palm momentarily before I took a sip and the cold insides of my mouth adjusted the heat throughout my whole body.

I removed the straw from my lips, and on my way towards the door, I spared one last desperate glance back over my shoulder at Devon as I left, and I was not only relieved, but also surprised to see he had been reciprocated my gaze tenfold, a smile I knew all too well shining against his already beautiful features that flowed through my brain freely everywhere I went.

It wasn't until after I had left, that I uncrumpled the receipt to see if my order matched what was in my hands at that moment, when I noticed a note at the bottom of the page, and my mind stop processing everything going on around me for a moment, my eyes glued to the proposition handed to me by the barista I somehow managed to obsess over in less than 48 hours.

(773) 948-9178 call me
- devon (aka psychic) :)