Café au Lait (slow updates)

two.

chapter two

But once in a while you meet someone who’s iridescent, and nothing else can compare. ~Unknown

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Sometimes, we just meet someone who’s just so different, so uniquely startling that we can’t help but think about them for the rest of the day.

Or week.

Or weeks.

Of course, in my case, it doesn’t help that I see him pretty much every day.

He’s a regular customer now, every day he religiously comes in at half past nine in the morning for a large coffee drink.

He and Haley have gotten along famously. Every time he picks up his drink, they have a lengthy conversation, trickles of laughter escaping from the back of the store and drifting towards me. Taunting me.

I do my best to ignore the two of them until Caffeine Boy leaves.

He never fails to say good-bye to me, and I always mumble one back as the door closes.

It’s been a few weeks since the speech incident, as I like to call it.

Obviously, he hadn’t taken my advice to heart.

I’d been annoyed the first week, but quickly I learned to just accept and bare it all with a disapproving grimace, which he also religiously ignores.

It’s nearing the beginning of August, and with the impending doom of the new school year drifting above my head, I resolve to make the best of the rest of the summer as I can.

I’ve finished all my summer work early on, seeing as how I don’t have much to do the majority of the time I’m at work anyways, so now in the time in which we don’t have any customers, I’m stuck talking to Haley and putting up with her proddings about Caffeine Boy.

She won’t even tell me his name.

Not that I want to know or anything.

The morning rush has already come and gone, and I’m up front wiping down tables. They hadn’t needed much of a wiping anyways, but seeing as there’s nothing else to do, well, I’m intent on making these tables the shiniest they’ve been in twenty years.

It’s not like I’m watching the clock or anything.

It’s not like I’m waiting for the door bells to tinkle and for him to slide into the store, breezily cool.

No, I’m simply bored.

Waiting for my lunch break.

Yes, that’s it. I’m waiting for my break, when I can get out of this stuffy, coffee-smelling store and meet up with Myra.

But at precisely nine thirty in the morning, the bells chime and the door squeaks open, revealing a smirking black-haired boy.

Caffeine Boy.

He takes a quick glance around the store and I resume my wiping, swiping at the table’s edges and making sure it’s squeaky clean.

His eyes stop at me, and he takes a double take.

I frown. It can’t be that surprising that I’m out wiping the tables rather than manning the till. So what is it? Is my hair’s a bird’s nest? Is there something on my shirt?

I subconsciously touch my hair to make sure it’s in place as Haley hurries over behind the register. “Hey!”

His head swivels towards her, and he gives her a large grin, striding over to stand in front of the counter. “Hey.”