The Asphalt Cafe At 5 AM

Part Five

Jade didn't want to stay away from the Asphalt Cafe for so long, but whoever said that showbusiness was easy clearly had never worked in Hollywood. Getting up at four in the morning, just so that she could be on set by five was a painful task.

Yes, Jade had finally gotten her big break. It had been a long shot, just for her to be considered, because this had been a highly anticipated reboot, but they were finally redoing The Scissoring. She'd heard rumors about it, but she'd never thought that she'd actually get a chance to be in it. Much less the lead.

The only downside of becoming the main character in her favorite movie since childhood was that she had to work every day. And, since she'd never even learned Beck's phone number, she had no way of talking to him about it.

Not until nearly three months later, at least, when they had finally finished filming.

Things changed since then. when she finally burst into the Asphalt Cafe at five in the morning on the dot. She was unpleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't the familiar head of gorgeous hair attached to the person behind the counter, instead it was a curly head of black hair that was unrecognizable to Jade.

"Excuse me?" She asked, causing the man -if you could even call him that. He wasn't much more than a boy- to nearly jump out of his skin. Clearly he hadn't expected someone to be here this early.

"Hi, yeah, sorry. Can I help you with something?" He asked, facing her with a stutter in his voice. He adjusted his glasses, pushing them even higher onto his only-slightly-larger-than-average nose.

"I was actually wondering if maybe you knew what happened to the last guy who worked this shift? It's been awhile since I've been here and I'm trying to get in contact with him. He's a pretty boy, nice head of hair. Do you know him?"

"Beck?" He asked, a smile spreading across his face, "Yeah I know him. He helped fix up my car in exchange for my shift. Stick around until seven, he usually gets here early. I'm sure you'll see him, as long as you don't have anything else to be doing."

Jade had spent the last three months with 'anything else.' Now she was determined to track down Beck and apologize.

"Umm, if you're going to stay, though," He piped up, bringing Jade back to reality, "you'll need to buy something. Not that I don't think that you know Beck, it's just that there are rules against these sort of things-"

"Yeah, I know." She mumbled and dug her wallet from her chunky black purse. She'd managed to convince the costume department to let her keep at as a sort of souvenier. "Can I get a black coffee with two sugars and a blueberry muffin?"

He retrieved her food and beverage, getting it to her in twice the time it normally would've taken Beck. But she didn't care. She had the rest of the day free, it's not like she had anywhere better to be right now. So she forked over the cash, took her drink, and sat at what had been her usual seat.
The time passed slowly. It was as if God -or whatever there was that controlled time- deliberately said 'hey, let's mess with Jade specifically and make it feel like seconds lasted hours and minutes lasted days.' But time did pass eventually, even if it felt like it took an eternity and a half.

"Morning, Robbie." She heard the all-to-familiar voice greet as the bell signalling the entrance of another person rang like music to her ears. She watched Beck pass, not even bothering to look up from his black pear phone. It was one of the older models, but not as old as the 2G.

"Beck," She called, hoping to pull his attention from his phone. And pull it she did. It was insane, how quickly his head snapped from the phone screen to Jade. She didn't really have a plan for what she wanted to say to him afterwards, all the ideas she'd come up with in the past two hours fleeing from her mind the minute her eyes met his chocolatey brown ones.