Toast

Chapter 2

After work I decided on trotting off to the café down the road, to drown my sorrows... with coffee. The door opened with a small ting of the bell and the waitress at the counter smiled at me. 

"Can I help you?" She chewed on her gum noisily, slightly putting me off thinking of an answer to her question. 

"Uhmm..." I stared at the menu board, trying to decide on something. "I'll just have a cappucino, thanks." I smiled and got out some change from my pocket. 

"Okayyyy," She drawled out the end of the word, typing the amount into the till. "Regular, or large?" I looked up. 

"Uh... just a regular, thanks." I held the change in my hand ready, waiting for her to finish prattling. 

"Right-y oh. So, that'll be..." She stopped and frowned. "Oh yeah, eating in or out?" 

"In, thanks." Did it matter really? I looked up at the menu. Apparently, it did. Eating in was an extra 60p. Okay, so you had to pay extra to use their precious china cups, did you? I scolded myself for being so sarcastic and looked expectantly at the waitress. She tapped more things in and finally looked back at me. 

I handed her the change and collected my (rather small) cup of cappucino. 'Should've gone for the large,' I thought to myself. 

Sitting down in a corner booth at the back of the café, I opened my notebook at an empty page. I picked up a pencil and pondered on what to draw, pencil poised at the paper.

I took a sip of the cappucino instead and looked around me to see if there was anything interesting: a group of, rather large, men sat around a table, guffawing and drinking coffee enthusiastically. They looked out of place. You didn't expect them to be sat at a small café at 10 o'clock at night; they should be in a pub, drinking beer or something. 

I supposed I was stereotyping, but they were the perfect thing for my pointless scribblings. Grinning, I made a few faint lines on the paper, preparing to draw a (very) exaggerated charicature of them all. 

* * *

Finishing my drawing, I admired it proudly. I'd managed to switch the coffee cups to pints, and the booth to bar stools. I was especially proud of the main bloke. He was the loudest one, who had chucked a pack of cards on the floor, calling it a '52 card pick-up' and I felt that I had depicted him quite accurately. 

I had the feeling that someone was looking at me and lifted my head. A man, quite good-looking, was watching me from the other side of the café. He was tall and pale with dark black hair that flopped over his face. My meeting his gaze made him a bit nervous and he shifted in his seat, showing off a faint hint of a toned bicep. I was screaming in my head that a man, with some hint of attractiveness (and muscles!), was looking at me. I smiled at him, hoping for a reaction. 

To my surprise, he stood up and walked in my direction. I wasn't expecting this!

"Hi." He said. His voice was deep and... well, a bit sexy, actually. 

"Hi..." I replied. "Uhh.. d'you want to sit down?" I cursed my nervousness. I could never actually speak a whole sentence without saying 'uhh' or 'erm'. It was ridiculous, and it also meant that I could never flirt properly without sounding like a child.

"Sure," he answered and sat down opposite me. "I noticed you drawing... looks good." He leaned over the table to see my sketch and laughed. I assumed he was laughing because the cartoon was funny, not because it was appallingly bad. 

I realised I was staring and staying silent, which would probably look creepy so opened my mouth to speak - he cut me off. 

"Do you want a drink? Something stronger than a coffee maybe?" 

"You mean an espresso?" Kicking myself for being such an idiot, I gritted my teeth and started again. Thankfully, he found it amusing and laughed. "Sorry.. I was being an idiot." 

"No... no, it's... it's fine." He grinned at me, showing his teeth. Running his hand through his hair, he leaned further across the table and looked straight into my eyes. "Well, uhh.. this may sound forward, but I have some wine at my place..." 

I looked at him. He was being serious. An attractive, single (I assumed), toned, man that was my age was actually asking me to go to his apartment for 'a drink'. I  knew exactly what he would want to happen, and I'm not sure I wanted to stop it... 

My mind flickered to Magnus briefly, but I knocked him out of my mind. 

"Well... slightly forward, yes... but I... I don't see why not." I smiled, trying to look alluring, and probably failing. 

"Okay then." He got up and, very gentleman-like, he helped me out of the booth. "Oh, yeah. I'm Peter." He smiled beautifully again and I wondered why on earth he wanted to ask me back to his flat. But I didn't care... I really, actually, didn't for once. I mean, why not? Why the hell not?