Seven Days

Monday

She loved espresso beans; the smell, the taste, even the feel of the air around them - caffinated and musty. For that reason, she always bought her own bags and kept them all in her tiny apartment, and every once in a while, sometimes before making coffee and sometimes not, she'd reach over and open the bag, smelling that fragrance that she loved.

She was an author, and somehow insisted on working on two or three projects at the same time, setting nearly impossible-to-meet deadlines with editors and publishers. That kind of life, knowing a constant deadline is looming up, would drive most people crazy, but it was what made her flourish. Strangest of it all, she was a known procrastinator, and often finished all her work in the night or day before she was due to turn it in.

She had picked her job as a writer due to her inability to get up in the morning. Her jobs before had been many different things; clinic receptionist, barista, even an English teacher for a year or two, but all had involved her getting up early, which had probably started her near-addiction to espresso beans. In those working days, she had relished weekends, dozing peacefully until about 10 or 11, sometimes noon if the week had been a hard one.

The red alarm clock, bought mainly for aesthetics, sat on her old wooden nightstand. It was faulty, and the alarm didn't work most days. It had been her eleventh birthday present - she had always been one of those kids that loved old things - and she hadn't the heart to fix it or throw it out. It felt good to know she had at least one thing that was exactly the same, even after all these years.

On the nightstand next to the alarm clock sat a journal; small, black, and spiral-bound. One of dozens that lay around her house, half-filled or full, messing up her always-messy desk spaces, taking up room on the bookshelves. Family members and friends always got her journals for birthdays and holidays, and since she always bought herself cute ones when she saw them, her house was chock-full. It was one of these that she grabbed to put in her purse, along with a chewed-up yellow pencil. She didn't really need the pencil, due to the fact that there were about six others in her purse at the moment.

She paused with her hand on the doorknob. Like most people who work with their brains more than their body, she didn't want to go to the gym. She'd much rather sit and exercise her mind on new story ideas and jot them down in her notebook than get all sweaty on a treadmill with a trainer yelling at her.

Damn it. She checked the time on her phone. 10:40. She was supposed to meet that trainer ten minutes ago. Cursing, she tore open the door, forgetting to lock it, and ran down the stairs. The gym was across the street, and she would just have to run.

Hauling her purse over her shoulder, she broke into a sprint. Brakes squealed next to her, and she gasped, almost dropping her purse.

A car had almost hit her; an old Toyota. Even in the moment she could appreciate the little bits of rust-orange on the faded blue paint; it was a car she wouldn't mind having. A boy stuck his head out of the driver's side door.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine!" she called back. Nice to see that, unlike most people, his first response wasn't to yell something about assholes and screech around you, burning rubber in your face. "Thanks!"

He gave that little sideways wave and waited for her to walk across the parking lot before starting his car and driving off again and out of sight.

She was suddenly aware of how messy her hair was.