Tea {Fitzsimmons}

Nobody Actually Likes Coffee

Midterms were the worst. Legitimately, the worst possible thing Fitz could think of, besides maybe the time when his roommate thought it would be funny to throw all of his pristinely organized tools into the campus pool. It wasn't that Fitz wasn't prepared, because he was. He had something of a photographic memory, or at least that's what his mum always said. In most classes he didn't even bother taking notes. Retaining facts and figures came easily to him. He could almost recite the textbook word for word, so anyone that knew him wouldn't understand why he was huddled over it at 11:00 PM, sipping bitter coffee with the rest of the school when there was a fresh layer of snow outside, perfect for sledding down the big hill on lunch trays.

The answer was simple. Fitz was a chameleon. The first week here he had learned all about blending in with the crowd. Since then, he hadn't found a real friend at university, so he followed his idiot roommate, Chad, around like a stray puppy. Chad's friends liked to tease Fitz a lot because he didn't go to the gym instead of class like the rest of them. Fitz didn't really care since his GPA was higher. The abuse was tolerable. At least he didn't look alone. He choked down the remaining black coffee and turned the page of his textbook in time with the people at his table.

A bell rung behind him around midnight, and he turned to the door, expecting another one of Chad's friends to arrive with a six pack and a bottle of cheap whiskey. Instead a girl walked through, her hair dripping wet despite the temperature outdoors teetering towards deadly. He recognized her from his English class. She was a prodigy, too, only twenty years old and on her second PhD, like him. And he'd heard her debating with their professor after class. She had the most beautiful, homey accent, and the most awful stubbornness. She also insisted on doing projects by herself, and was always the first into and out of class, so he assumed she was alone, too. He would've introduced himself if she wasn't so bloody intimidating. He'd approached her on several occasions, only to be scared away by her sharp tone towards another student or the rigid glare that seemed to be permanently resting on her face.

Now her face looked soft with exhaustion, eyes droopy and skin puffy, as she stumbled all the way to the counter and waited for an equally tired barista to greet her at the counter. Fitz looked back down to the memorized page on thermodynamics, not wanting to appear as though he were staring. He hadn't gotten a good glance at her in the four years they had been there together, and now that she was so close he realized she was, by most social standards, attractive. Her face was nice and symmetrical, her height to width ratio extraordinarily average. And her irises, despite being a hardly romanticized brown color, were glimmering with a subtle curiosity for everything around her. She must be a science person. Biochemistry, if he were to guess. (Her backpack hung low on her back, so he assumed it was full of class textbooks, and the only track at this college that would require so much reading would be biochemistry. Also, she wore a badge to the science lab.)

"You don't serve tea anymore?" The entire shop seemed to be watching her now, and Chad and his friends were snickering. Fitz made a mental note to turn off his alarm for the early tests tomorrow.

"I'm afraid we never did, ma'am. Can I interest you in a chai latte?"

"So you do have tea," the girl argued. A few girls at the table beside Fitz's giggled as one pulled up a camera phone. Fitz began to close up his textbook and put away his things, deciding he couldn't just watch and not do anything.

"Just the chai latte, ma'am."

"That has tea in it, correct?" The barista nodded. "I'll take the tea then."

"I can't do that."

Fitz stood up, drawing some attention away from the tea debate, but just as he was at the door he heard Chad whisper not-so-quietly, "Simmons the Spaz."