Kickstart My Heart

5

They drove separately and she told him to meet her at a little coffee shop called Brewing Buddha, which sounded like a typical hipster hangout to Sam. He expected strange coffee names and flavors, Milky Chance to be playing over the speakers, and a brooding crowd of teenagers. What Sam didn't expect was for the Blueberry Muffin Latte to be his new favorite coffee. It tasted exactly like a blueberry muffin and that was actually a good thing.

"Do you like it?"

"Holy fuck. How do they do that? This place is on to something here, not like those scented candles that try to be Farm Fresh Apple and end up smelling like some old lady's perfume. It is a blueberry muffin. Did they blend one up and mix it in here or something?"

"I really have no idea." She did that cute, childish giggle of hers again. "But you're right it's like Grandma's baking in a cup."

"This is money," Sam said.

"So I take it, you'll come back?" Peyton asked, biting her lip. She did it in such a minimal and fleeting way Sam thought he imagined it or she did it subconsciously. But he liked it.

"Without a doubt."

They shared a smile and grabbed a table by the window to work at. Once their laptops were open they fell into a comfortable and productive silence as they sipped their coffees. Sam didn't know how much time had passed but he was chest-deep in a rambling paragraph about how the bedsheet-ghost movie they had watched last month could have been resurrected if the script had been started from scratch, when Peyton gasped so loudly out of fucking nowhere and startled the ever-living shit out of him. She gasped as though a car almost crashed right through the glass doors of the coffee shop and just nearly swerved away at the last minute. Sam jumped back and knocked his coffee all over his crotch.

"What? What is it?" he yelled, looking up at Peyton as he scrambled to his feet.

She was still sitting, looking wide-eyed at Sam with her hands over her mouth. "Nothing, Nothing! It's okay, I-" She abruptly started laughing but was trying to suppress it. "I'm so sorry! Are you-" she laughed harder. "Are you okay?"

Sam grabbed handfuls of napkins from the counter next to their table and patted his pants. He glanced over to his laptop and it was okay. He sat back down and stared into his coffee-soaked lap for a second. He looked up at Peyton with a sunken, defeated look. "So you just gasped for shits and giggles?"

"No-" she couldn't breathe, she was laughing so hard. It took her a few moments to collect herself and Sam found it amusing. "I'm so sorry, really. I'm sorry to laugh too, that was just so unexpected-"

"You're telling me," Sam said.

Peyton laughed softly this time and Sam didn't want the sound to stop. "I didn't mean to spook you. I do that sometimes...I just excitedly remembered something-"

"You just do that? You just gasp like that when you remember something?"

"Yeah-" Peyton let out a short and deeper chuckle. Sam loved that she had different categories of laughs. "Yeah, I do. I'm sorry. At least, maybe next time you'll be better prepared."

"Oh, I don't think I'll ever be prepared for that!" Sam smiled at the thought of her gasps becoming a regular and common occurrence in his life. "Well? What was it that you so excitedly remembered?"

"Oh! I'm throwing a Halloween party at my apartment and wanted to invite you."