Take What You Need {L.H.}

The Latte

Luke hated having to drive around with Ashton.

There was nothing wrong with his driving ((that Luke would admit to publicly, anyway)), but Ashton had a bad habit of getting "ideas" while he was driving.

"You should go meet her." Ashton said with a straight face, looking towards Luke.

Luke shook his head, convinced that it was a horrible idea that could lead to nothing but trouble. He had a good thing going with Annabelle and he didn't want to ruin it. Who knows how she would react by his supposed justure of good faith.

"Absolutely not." He said, finally.

"Mate, we're in the area already. You might as well go see what she looks like." Ashton navigated the road, stopping at a red light.

"No way. That's like... Listening to talk show radio hosts. You have a certain picture of what they look like and googling them kinda kills that dream of what you thought they looked like and who they were. You find out more than they want you to know and I like my mental image of her." Luke said, staring out the window.

"Well I want to see this girl you're talking about." Ashton said, turning on the street that lead to the coffee shop.

When Ashton heard Luke talking about this girl, he did extensive "research" on who she was. Eventually, Ashton found her Facebook from 3 years ago that had 1 post, 1 comment ((from her mother)), and a picture of her when she was a baby. He also found out that she worked at the coffee shop, which led to him "offering" Luke a ride in the city today.

"Well you can stay in the car because I'm doing this." Ashton said while he was parking.

Luke, who was already becoming more curious by the second, suddenly decided that he might as well go inside, right?

A slow and painful 3 minutes later, Luke found himself in line behind Ashton, who was pretending to read the menu and laughing at the dumb names for drinks.

"Can I help you?" the girl said, looking at Luke. She seemed a little startled, but Luke guessed that it was because she was just swamped with orders. He looked at her name on her hat, which read "Anna-Banana" in neon green letters, and suppressed the urge to smile.

"I'll have a... I don't know, actually. What's good?" Luke, who noticed Ashton taking in the whole scene with a very amused face, suddenly decided this was a bad idea.

"I guess I can recommend one if you want." She said, shifting her hat downward a little.

"Sure." Luke saw Ashton take a selfie next to the creepy fake cat mounted on the wall to the left.

"You look like a cool guy I guess, so maybe an Iced Maple Latte? It comes with a complementary Canadian flag."

Luke laughed at the whole idea of a Canadian flag being the best marketing technique they could come up with, but he went with it anyway.

"Can I get your name for the order?" She asked both Ashton and Luke after Ashton ordered some obscurely named drink that came with a flag of a dog on it.

"Jake." Luke blurted first.

She looked at him skeptically, causing him to continue blabbering.

"From State Farm. Well I don't work at state farm. That commercial haunts me. I don't even like khakis."

Ashton looked at Luke, wanting to laugh, but told Anna that his name was "Chill Will from Brazil."

After 10 minutes of selfies, weird looks from old ladies, and 15 wasted mini marshmallows, Anna-Banana appeared at their table with the drinks.

"Don't like drink it too quickly." She said, placing drinks in front of them.

"Why?" Ashton asked.

"Because," Luke tried to come up with something really quickly. "It can cause a latte problems."

{a.n.}

In light of my unfortunately awkward encounters with boys, I wrote another chapter.

I think this is riiiiight about the halfway(ish) point.

Written while sitting in the library.