The Coffee Date

Chapter 5 - Meet Coffee Dates

It was the third day she was doing this. While many would find it creepy or borderline stalking, Hazel thought of it as a step out of her comfort-zone and into her newfound happy-zone.

She found herself sitting once again in the same seat at the same time. The table to the far left in the right hand corner of the shop; the table leaned right up against two large glass panels, of course, at 7:45am. Sharp. Hazel could blame it on excitement, or on the idea that not getting her same table filled her to her scalp with anxiety of where she would sit instead. Would he even be able to find her if she was sitting somewhere else? Would he look? Would he care?

She was insane. That was conclusion she had come to. She took a good, long look at herself in the glass window beside her and fully realized how mental she was being about everything. About one man. She was losing her old self, changing her ways, gaining new-found hope, and for what? For one man she barely knew? Something about him had changed her. Something about him was drawing her to him. But what?

It was like a subtle nag. Like a mother pushing you through the front doors on your first day of kindergarten or friends nudging you towards that boy you like. The push forwards was forced, but you continue on at your own will. Her chestnut eyes swirled closed as she imaged her own school days with those exact moments.

If only she could go back to those days. Back before all the madness and terror. Back to the normal. Back to the innocence. Back to her parents.

Her eyes opened again, now a storming sea of sorrow. In reality what she missed most since her parents' passing was the joy they brought to everything. Any little thing that went wrong they somehow found a way to survive through with a smile and turned it into a laughable memory to share at the dinner table. Nothing ever phased them. Nothing ever phased Hazel. Until all of her positivity was taken away.

A clink at the counter snapped the girl out of her memories. The ding of the cash register had pushed her eyes up towards the clock.

8:05.

He was late.

At least in her mind. In actuality he probably wasn't late at all. She had just assumed the time from previous days was his norm. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. There were a million possibilities of what could have happened to him, but the most daunting was wavering right in front of her eyes.

He wasn't coming.

She glanced down at the cup across from her seat, waiting patiently with a lid on and "DR w/ C" written on the side. It wasn't expensive, of course not, but it was the mentality behind it that was expensive. The hope. She didn't have a whole lot of that to give away anymore.

Slowly it became 8:10. Then 8:15. Then the realization that she had been wrong.

A clang from the front door ricocheted her thoughts off the walls of the room and hit the female's ears with force. She could almost feel her stomach reel backwards from the hit as she glanced up.

It was him.

Her eyes mixed with the blue as he grinned and started towards her, one hand slid into his business suit pocket, the other lazily resting against his side.

"I-I wasn't sure if you were coming in today, but I got you coffee just in case. As a thank you." She sounded so pathetic. Rather creepy too. Assuming he was going to arrive and buying him a coffee by going off of a hunch? She must have seemed manic.

"A thank you for what?"

She blinked in confusion. He couldn't have forgotten could he? He had bought her a coffee a day earlier. No only that, he had given up coffee he was bringing for someone else. Could something like that really slip his mind? Was the incident really that insignificant?