Barista - Chapter 3

3

 

Eric wanted to throw his laptop through the window. He wasn’t getting anywhere. This latest book had been one stall and restart after another. Every idea that came to him had been done before, by somebody else or by himself. Every scene annoyed him. His characters were always just smiling and nodding, maybe, if things got really crazy, pointing.

For the first time ever, he was blocked.

He packed up around eight and stood. Stiff from sitting all day again. He surveyed the people around the café. Sometimes just looking at a random person prompted a new idea. But he’d been staring at these same people for the last two hours.

He put his laptop in his backpack. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Meredith / Awesome behind the counter. She had been watching him. As soon as he looked over, her eyes darted down and she brought her phone up, pretending like she’d been texting the entire time.

He’d been kind of a dick to her earlier. He knew baristas didn’t make a ton of money, and it wasn’t her fault the café overcharged for everything. Knowing he would be back soon—probably tomorrow—he decided to swallow his pride and try to make nice.

She saw him coming and put her phone away.

“Hello again,” she said. Her voice was flat, no intonation, like she was trying to hide her dislike of him. Immediately he regretted coming up here.

“I just wanted to apologize for earlier,” he said. “I was short with you. Sorry about that.”

His words had zero effect on her. Meredith just stared at him, open-mouthed.

He waved his hand in front of her eyes. “Hello? Saying I’m sorry. Okay?”

She came back to reality. She was pretty cute. “Apology accepted.”

He laughed nervously. She looked like she wanted to say more. Her eyes were all over the place. For a brief moment, he got the crazy idea to ask her out. Maybe dinner. Somewhere cheap, though. His sales had been slow the last few days and, like he always did, he was beginning to worry that the well was running dry. Yet another reminder that he needed to get more books out there. Like the one he’d been working on for a month solid.

Now wasn’t the time to ask a girl out, no matter how cute she was. Eric was smack dab in the middle of starting his own business and the bills hadn’t stopped coming in.

And just as importantly, she was kind of nuts. He’d seen the crazy in action, like when she’d asked a mother to leave the café because she was being mean to her toddler.

“Alright, see you later.”