Wide Awake Café

01. Beans

Wide Awake Cafe

Chapter 1:Beans

John

Can I save a beat in time?

Can I save a record rhyme?

Can I bounce within three lairs:

of coldness, sorrow, despair?

Fuck, what the fuck am I saying. I need help.

Jonathan Laurens scoffed at the journal that used to bring him so many beautiful pennies of thought.

Now all it gave him was petty garbage, like the shit he'd just scribbled down on his last page.

He stared bitterly at it before he picked up his coffee and took another large gulp of the burning, black tar; it scraped against his throat and burrowed itself like a bullet down into his stomach. He ignored the taste. He ignored the burn.

All he needed was a good fucking piece of script and he could go on his merry way out of the godforsaken town that sold him the piece-of-trash journal and "gifted" his piece-of-trash brain. His mind was plagued. He stood again and approached the counter to get another coffee, black and burning hot- just like before. Like always, when he would seek the wholesome refuge of his local coffee shop for his downtime- more like his most troubled time, as it was the time he would be writing. He just couldn't write anymore.

He couldn't understand it, either. Just months before he'd gotten a promotion and spotlight in his workplace and at his class and now- now he couldn't even write a spare stanza of a poem.

A sigh passed between the ruby red lips of the barista. "Whaddya want now?"

John grinned. "Cup of coffee, Miss."

She grinned, a dimple showing cheekiness to contrast with her exhaustion of her work shift. The shop only held a handful of people now, but contrarily just a few hours before had told of a large rush of patrons. Her face looked as if it shone, but it wasn't of a good; the shiny skin just gave clue to a sweaty workday. "You've had a good four stands just today, J. Laur," she cocked her head to one side, studying the boy.

He grinned sheepishly. "Long day. Lot of work to do still." She laughed. "You've been here for just about the whole day! My lands, boy- it's just about midnight!"

John shrugged, the large coat he wore swallowing him in its heat. "The night never bothers me."

She shook her head. "Take a break if you know what good for ya, boy."

"Why must you repeatedly call me 'Boy'?" John whined to the barista, his stance sharply dropping as he hunched his back in embarrassment.

"'Cause, you're one of the crazy regulars who never leaves until he's drained the tanks dry of hot java. It's a given right, if you want to keep coming in here and stealing all the brew we've got, boy." John guffawed. "Alright." he tossed the subject aside; he needed his coffee. "One large black, please and thank you, Theo... Theodosia, dear," he ordered, finally taking the time to figure out what her nametag actually read.

She hummed. "A bit slow, but better than others," she sang. "It'll be up in a minute, Johnny."

"Laurens!" he corrected, raising a finger to her. She shrugged halfheartedly.

He turned to go back to his booth just as the door to the owner's office opened. The local celebrity George Washington walked out with his arm around the shoulders of a much shorter boy with longer, dark brown hair and a stubbly chin and jaw. George was laughing at something the boy had supposedly said before the left the office, his broad shoulders shaking heavily as the boy shrank in on himself little by little, a bashful blush overtaking his face. "You're gonna do good in here, Alex," George patted him on the back, his whole body rocking forward and backward with the force. He let out a shaky laugh.