Lemon, Lemon

Coffee Confessions

Gwennie raced across the stone pathway bisecting the manicured garden that separated one wing of the mall from the other, weaving through the crowds of families, couples and the occasional small dog who were enjoying the afternoon. The hem of her short skirt flapped against her thighs, and the straps of her sandals cut into her feet, the soles so thin she felt every bump and groove in the stones. Her lace blouse, borrowed from her older sister Liza, was plastered to her torso with sweat, and she snatched the barrette out of her hair before it could slide down the side of her head completely. She was definitely not dressed for any kind of athletics, and even though she'd tried her best, she wasn't looking all that hot for someone who was supposedly going on a date either, showing up all sweaty and sticky and disheveled like this.

She couldn't slow down, though. She was over half an hour late. It was a miracle that Sam wasn't currently burning up her phone, which she was gripping in her other hand. But to be fair to Gwennie, she hadn't known that she had a date that afternoon until about an hour ago. She and her sister had been shopping around in a different mall for a dress for her to wear for the twins' birthday party when her cell phone rang.

"Gwennie! Starbucks at the Town Center, 4 p.m. sharp, got it?!" Sam shouted, forcing Gwennie to hold her phone away while her sister and another shopper glanced at her curiously.

"It's Sam," Gwennie had said by way of explanation, one hand covering the sound of Sam's screeching.

Ate Liza raised an eyebrow. "I heard. Oooh, that boutique over there looks promising. I'm going to check it out, so just follow me when you're done."

"Sam, what're you talking about?" Gwennie hissed into her phone as soon as her sister moved away.

"I did it, Gwennie-pig," Sam gasped. "I said I'd help you out, didn't I? Well, I knew you'd be too shy to actually ask him out on a date, so I did it for you. So you'd better head over to the Town Center right now—"

"You what? A date?" For a heart-pounding moment, Gwennie thought of Keno and the way he looked as he bent over her hand, his lips almost brushing her skin, his eyes warm as he asked her to dance with him.

No, no, Sam doesn't want me talking to Keno, she thought, giving herself a mental shake. So this can only mean—

"Yes! With Jayden!" Sam squealed, again forcing Gwennie to hold her phone away. "I contacted him and asked if it would be okay for us to hang out at the Town Center this afternoon. It was just a shot in the dark, you know, since he's probably studying for midterms, but he actually said yes! You could've blown me over, I swear! So now that I've set you guys up, you had better—"

"Wait, wait, Sam, you contacted Jayden? How...?"

"Okay, you're not going to believe this, and I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner but with midterms and all it kind of slipped my mind, but that Saturday after we went to St. Anthony and Keno let us in, Jayden walked right into our store with Mrs. Oliva. You know, that nice old lady who lives in the house with the red roof a block away? It turns out she's Jayden's grandma. A water pipe had broken in her bathroom, and she called Jayden over for help. It was so funny because she kind of expected him to know what to do by instinct just because he's a guy, but it was obvious he didn't have a clue either..."

Gwennie listened in astonishment as Sam narrated events in a rush. At a loss, the grandmother and grandson duo had walked to Sam's family hardware store to buy some kind of replacement pipe, armed only with a how-to video on YouTube and Jayden's determination not to let his doting lola down. Unfortunately, only Sam and another store clerk had been around at that time. Fortunately, Sam had grown up helping her dad and elder brother out and watching the neighborhood repairmen fix things, so she went over with Jayden to Mrs. Oliva's house, and assessed the flooded disaster in the bathroom with a practiced eye while reporting over the phone to Mang Benito, a plumber who often brought his clients to their store to buy materials.