365 Cups of Coffee

Four: Hazelnut Frappuccino, Drizzle of Caramel

    For dinner, I have a clam chowder and fried scallops, topped off with a hazelnut frappuccino with caramel from Starbucks.  My parents ask me how my day was, and I tell them it was great and that I really love the area.  They, of course, ask me what is in the brown package, and I tell them it’s a book.  When they ask me what the book is, I tell them it’s a book in a series I’m reading and that I don’t want to take it out because I don’t want to get grease stains on it from dinner.  I feel bad lying, but at the same time . . . I don’t want to tell them Daniel gave it to me. 

    “You seem a heck of a lot happier than you were this morning,” my dad observes.  “What did you do?  Spend your time reading in a coffee shop?”

    “Not exactly,” I say.  “Better.”

    My smile gives it away, I’m sure.

    “Did you make a friend?” my mom winks, and I blush.  Sometimes, I swear to god, she is so embarrassing.

    “Yeah,” I admit. “His name is Daniel.  I kind of bumped into him in the coffee shop.  Like literally.”

    “Does he live around us?” my dad asks, and I shake my head.

    “Sort of.  He lives in Durham.  He’s going to be a junior.”

    I’m pretty sure my parents are so happy I’m actually talking to people again that they don’t even really care if he’s a decent guy or not.  I’ve always had a good choice in friends though, according to my parents, so at the same time, I’m sure they know he’s great.  Which he is.  He’s funny and he can take my mind off things for while, which is exactly what I needed.  I’m excited to finally have a friend for the first time in a while.

    Once we’re done eating, we go out to get tickets for the concert, which starts at seven pm.  When my hand gets marked to indicate I paid, I follow my parents to a spot to watch the concert and then tell them I’m going to go sit by the ocean a little and write.  I feel inspired all of a sudden, and besides, I want to see the book Daniel gave me. The brown paper bag is crumpled up top by now; I’ve been holding it tightly all afternoon since I received it.  Once I’m sitting on the curb, I unroll the bag carefully and pull out the book.

    “365 Reasons I Fell in Love with the Writer,” I read aloud. 

    Oh my god.

    The cover has a girl who is lying in the grass surrounded by books, and the title is scrawled in a handwriting cursive font all across the right side.  So this is what he was reading in the store.  It’s one of those super-cheesy young adult romance novels, but I can’t help but giggle giddily. 

    “We met in my advanced freshman English class.  On the first day, the teacher assigned everyone in the class seats until he learned our names, and we just happened to end up together.  The whole class, she scribbled messy notes in the margins of her notebook, but for most of the class, I noticed she was writing something else, something that most definitely didn’t have anything to do with what the teacher was telling the class.”

    I let myself flip the pages to a different chapter.

    “Ways to woo a writer:

    1. Talk to her about books.

    2. Take her to a bookstore and buy her a book.

    3. Read her writing.

    4. Write something for her.

    5. Sing her a song.

    6. Sweep her off her feet when she’s least expecting it and spin her around, over and over until you grow so dizzy you fall down.”