Switching Sides

“You ever have writer’s block at the worst time possible? When you’re desperate and impetuously waiting over a blank sheet of paper deadly grasping a pencil?” Melanie sighed over her barely there term paper. 

Josh chuckled and reached into his backpack for a spare pen, “No, and can you relax please? You’re always so tense. Why don’t you take a break? Maybe if you take it off your mind something will eventually come to you.” 

“Like that works, especially for you. You always hand your papers in time.” Melanie shoved him gently and laughed. 

“Yeah, but the point is I don’t care, you do.” Josh wrinkled his freckled nose a bit and dug his eyebrows down.

“Which is why I’ll end up in a house and you in a box,” she said so matter-o-factly.

“Hey there, being lazy will eventually take me somewhere." He cuckled a bit darkly, as took his wool coat off and draped it behind his chair. The warm coffee shop was filled with the intoxicating smell of a rich chocolate that drifted through the air. It embraced a person and lured patrons in for a hot drink. 

“Yeah, like that spot between the Rite Aid and the pet store.” Melanie threw her sunkissed brunette hair back a bit and shifted in the wooden chair.

“Being wired isn’t going to get you anywhere anyway. Do you even know what you want to do with your life?” Josh wispered slightly, looking off to the patrons buying books on the opposite side of the store. 

“Not entirely. I was hoping my aspirations and goals would eventually lead me somewhere.”

“Oh, so you do have some flaws, huh?”

“I never said I didn’t” 

“I only assumed” 

“So what do you want to do with your life ‘Mr. 20 Questions’?” The sides of Melanie's mouth twisted a bit, one side higher than the other. She looked down and fiddled with the gold class ring her mother gave her a while back. 

“I want to travel. It’s a whole different world out there outside of New York. The way people live, sleep, eat, and dream even. I just want to leave and maybe wakeup the laziness that I harbor. Hey the mid-day naps they take in Europe, I wouldn’t mind that.” His eyes grew large and sparkled a bit; traveling was a passion of his. 

“What’s wrong with New York? You have everything you could possibly ever want. People travel from all over the world to come here. You don’t know how good you have it.” She scoffed slightly, still examinig the details of the ring. 

“I know I have it well, but I want out. It’s too much of a routine for me.” 

“That’s because you allow yourself to keep a routine.” Melanie grabbed her scorching Starbuck’s cup a little too quickly and sipped it a little too fast. She felt her tongue boil a bit and quietly groaned over the thought that her tongue is going to be burned for a few days. Both her and Josh were sitting at a free table at the crowded Barns and Noble’s Starbucks Cafe on 44th avenue waiting to meet Josh’s twin brother Tom. You’d think it would be difficult distinguishing the two, but Melanie believes she can do it with her eyes closed. How you may ask? It’s because the two are so different in the way they talk, think, and speak that you wouldn’t even think for a second that they were related; if you were blind and managed to look passed the fact that they looked like they had been Xeroxed to match identically. Suddenly the door flew open allowing a great current of a bitter, winter air to storm through the door and letting the warm heat of the bookstore to flood outside. There, in the threshold  a thick black wool coat and a knock off Burberry scarf being worn by a  man who stands scanning the room, not moving a bit since he opened the door.