Coffees with Luke & Audrey

III

“I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.”

— T.S. Eliot

A frustrated sigh escaped her lips as she ripped out her paper, crumpling it, and tossed it at the bin. Only, due to poor aiming and avoiding physical activity at all costs back in school, she missed, and had only just gotten up to retrieve it when he entered. Brushing his dark fringe out of his eyes, he caught sight of her half-standing/sitting awkwardly, to the paper near the bin, and made the connection. He bent down and threw it ceremoniously in the trash, moved towards his table. Stopped. Walked by his usual seat and instead settled in the one across from her like it were his table and not hers.

They had not spoken since she invited herself to his table, three months ago, and he had stopped looking over at her.

“Can I help you?” she asked, trying to sound politer than last time.

He shrugged and signalled the waitress for a coffee. For some reason, she took great interest in the way he liked his coffee. He turned back to the table, frowned, and called the waitress over again.

“Actually, could you make that two coffees?” He caught Audrey’s questioning stare. “How do you like yours?”

She prided herself on her intellect, so it was not a very proud moment when all she could do was blink multiple times. “You’re paying for my coffee?”

He looked amused. “No. Just thought you needed one.”

She frowned. Though she did not want to be pampered, it was an odd gesture: getting someone coffee that they may not have wanted and then informing them they’ll have to pay. It’s assumed when someone orders your drink, they’ll pay. But then she remembered she didn’t even know this boy/man/person across from her, so really it would have been odd for him to buy her one anyway.

“I might not want a coffee,” she said.

He glanced at the notepad between them where, due to irritation, she had scribbled with the pen so hard a hole was raggedly made through several pages. “If that’s not a sign of needing coffee,” he said slowly, “then I don’t know what is.”

She chewed the inside of her mouth, thinking this over, but she took too long and he ordered her a coffee exactly like his. Together, they drank – him reading his book and her doodling aimlessly on the notepad. The drink was terrible, but she endured it because maybe this was how friendships were made. With a bad cup of coffee and terse conversation.

It was once she had scrawled through three pages and he read through two chapters did she speak what was bothering her.

“I don’t even know your name.”

His brown eyes flickered to hers. Hesitated. “It’s Luke.”

“Luke,” she repeated, nodding slowly.

“Yours?”

“Audrey.”

“Audrey,” he repeated like she had done.

A quietness settled between them, and they did not talk until it was time to leave, where brief goodbyes were exchanged. As she walked home that evening with the sun setting in the horizon, she realised she could still recite the way he liked his coffee.

Black.

No milk.

No sugar.

Without cream.