The Friendship You Needed

~={ COFFEE }=~

𝑻𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒈𝒆𝒓 𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔:

𝑰𝒏𝒇𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑺𝑯

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Y​̳/​̳𝙽​̳ ​̳𝙿​̳𝙾​̳𝚅​̳

I walk into my favourite coffee place, mentally preparing myself for the day to come, but before any of that I need coffee. At this point it is a dependence, I swore I would never be like this, young foolish me thought I would be able to sustain myself off of the sleep or lack thereof that I get. 

I walk into Bird and Branch, just as I had religouly for the past month. I walk in, the scent of freshly ground coffee filling my lungs, giving me the slight hope that maybe I can make it through today. The place buzzing with people, not uncommon, but slightly unwelcome when I felt like crap. Last night was rough, moving to  New York has been hard. No supports around, no one to talk to when the nights get dark so there are days where I resort back to some bad habbits I'm not proud of that that was yesterday. Today is a new day right?

"Hi" I saw to the young women behind the counter who I had spoken to a few times before. "Can I please have a black iced Americano take away thanks." I hate talking to people. I know customer service jobs can be really shitty, so I try and make their jobs as pleasant as I can make it, but it's so hard to say it, especially before the cafine has had time to do it's thing. 

"Sure can, may I have a name for that one?"

"Y/n"

"Coming up Y/n, that will be 4 dollars thanks."

I instinctively reach into my jacket pocket for my card to pay. Fuck. It's not in there. The panic beings to set in. I feel around all of my pockets and manage to dig up 3 dollars in cash, but that was all I had. 

"I'm so sorry, cancel order, I don't have enough on me to pay. I left my card at home. I'm so sorry to inconvenience you. I will come back later. Have a good day." My checks flushing with blood and before I could spin around and walk as fast as humanly possible out the door and get as far away from the store as I could get I hear a voice chirp in from behind me.

"Hey Alex, add it to my tab," he looks at me and gives me warm smile. "And one for me as usual thanks." He reaches his phone out to pay before I could protest before turning to me. "Only because you have good taste, that's my order too and I get times can be tough. Don't stress it."

He looked familiar, i had seen his face I swore, but I was in such a state of panic that I was too far gone to register anything and simply went into auto pilot.

"Thank you so much, you really didn't have to. I swear I am not broke or anything it's just one of those days," I say flustered with the whole situation. 

"I know I didn't have to, but I wanted to," he says with the warm smile coming back into his face. "Hey Y/n, I'm Aaron, nice to meet you," he says extending his fist out, for what I could only assume was for a fist bump.

I return the gesture, still confused, but something about his demeanoir seemed to settle me, that there were no stakes for this conversation, that I could relax.

"Anyways, you from this neck of woods?" He asks as we walk to the other side of the counter were we wait to collect the coffee.

"Erh, um no. I only moved recently. I needed a change of scene but starting to think it was a bad idea, that's what being young is for right, making decisions and then regretting them," I say trying to lighten the mood. "It's great here though, the people and all, it just hard being away from everything you have ever known."