First Draft Romance

CHAPTER FOUR

Roz is surprisingly chatty the whole Lyft ride. Not with me, of course.

She spends the entire time ignoring the traffic inching past our window and focuses on chatting up our middle-aged driver. Somehow, Roz doesn't talk about herself, instead asking him all about his life.

His polite façade goes from courteous to exuberant as he opens up about how he immigrated from Jordan and retired from his engineering job and how his wife used to be a dentist and now his daughter is a graphic designer in Minnesota and he loves, loves, loves his new job (except for drunk people).

Roz doesn't mention her job once, smoothly evading each of his questions and redirecting the conversation back to him.

I watch her out of the corner of my eye, almost in disbelief, because I just don't understand how she can do this. Talk like that. Talk about someone else, when her own story is so incredible.

I try to look interested in my phone, but I'm too jittery. To try and counteract the overexcited energy buzzing from my spine all the way through to my fingertips, I begin bouncing my leg up and down, my expression neutral.

I think Roz glances over once or twice, but she doesn't say anything, thankfully. Just keeps on chatting with Emad the Lyft Driver.

She still hasn't said a word to me when Emad stops.

They have an incredibly heart-felt little good-bye—Emad is very nice, thanking her for talking to him, which is ... fuck, it's stupidly sweet. Why does this make Roz even hotter?

He smiles and waves bye to us, and as Roz and I walk down the sidewalk, I see her rate him five stars, then type in a custom tip amount of ten dollars. Ten whole dollars. That's literally a third of my net worth right now. I can't imagine the inner workings of her brain, the little voice that tells her that ten dollars is a completely normal tip amount.

Rich people. Damn.

We walk in silence next to each other. I feel ridiculously underdressed. As if Roz wasn't already a New York ten, she's wearing one of those timeless trench coats and a pair of large sunglasses, pushed up back over her curls. Her lips are stained a timeless cherry red, her eye makeup minimal, her cheekbones a warm auburn.

I'm wearing last week's blue sweater overtop a white button-up, a look I'd hoped looked intellectual yet professional when paired with my black high rise pants.

Yeahhhh, I don't think I've done a good job here. But hey, I tell myself. At least I didn't cry on the subway. Little wins.

"Here we go," Roz says. "Should we have lunch while we're here? I will. Or brunch? Shall we be brunch girlies? Maybe. Yes. Brunch. Absolutely."

I look up at the minimalist sans serif font in the giant window before us. And I gulp. Audibly, I think. Café Crotchety. We're walking into the Café Crotchety.

It went viral a few years ago because of its tongue-in-cheek design. The wallpaper is all black and white pictures of people making grumpy faces, each no bigger than your thumb. It's got a bare-bones kind of industrial vibe, all concrete and exposed brick and long bench-style tables. And the coffee is good, apparently. As well as fucking expensive as shit. I definitely don't have the money to eat here.

Roz holds the door for me, and I walk in, numb, barely able to mutter a quiet "thank you."

Okay. How expensive can a small dark roast be? I glance up at the screen behind the cash register and give Roz the world's wobbliest smile.

Four-fifty? For a small coffee? In this economy?

That's, like, six percent of my savings. It's less than, like, a millionth of a percent of Roz's.