Barista - Chapter One

1

 

“I don’t drink coffee. Do you have anything else?” Eric said.

The barista’s lip ring twinkled under the overhead light of the coffee shop. Her name tag read, Awesome, but he had his doubts. He’d been in a lot of these places over the years even though he hated coffee and had observed baristas in their natural habitat. Most were pleasant enough to their customers but had an overblown sense of importance when it came to their jobs. If coffee suddenly disappeared, the world wouldn’t end. But they acted like it would. And he’d heard so many of them snicker at those folks that just “didn’t know any better,” because they preferred a non-descript house blend to the more exotic (and more expensive) other beans they constantly pushed on their customers.

And this one, the one who labeled herself Awesome, who thought she was all cute and hip and whatever, he’d seen her true colors last week when she’d given that woman hell about ordering a coffee because she was in her second trimester.

She wasn’t Awesome, not by a country mile, unless of course she meant it in an ironic way.

“You do realize where you are, right?” Awesome said.

She would have been cute, if she lost the lip ring she got ten years ago in high school and while she was at it ditched the anti-snob snobbish hipster attitude. She had cute, pouty lips and a button nose. He wasn’t sure about her hair—she always had it pinned up under a baseball cap while she was working—but it was a dark and looked promising. She had a tiny little cushion of gut on her otherwise thin frame and it looked cute on her.

“I’m in a book store,” Eric said.

“You’re in a coffee shop inside a bookstore,” she said. “We sell coffee.”

“You also sell overpriced chocolate, overpriced bottled water, overpriced desserts, and overpriced croissants.”

Awesome looked left toward the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, like she was making sure nobody was listening.

When she looked back at Eric, there was nothing friendly in her smile. “You need to work on your French r’s. They’re more in the back of the throat. Cwwoissant.”

She craned her neck and touched where her Adam’s apple would have been.

Eric said, “Do you have anything else to drink?”

“You know we sell overpriced water.”

“With caffeine. Tea? Soda?”

“Jonesing, huh?” she said.

Eric sighed. “Yes.”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

He shook his head.

“Guilty conscience?” she said.

“Are you serious?”

The manager poked his bald head out of the EMPLOYEES ONLY door. “Meredith, is there an issue?”

Meredith / Awesome shook her head no. “Just helping this customer here.”

“Okay.” The man gave her a long look then disappeared back behind the door.

“Sir, I’m sorry but we’re out of tea and we don’t stock soda.”

“Thanks.” Eric went back to his seat on the other side of the café, where his laptop was waiting for him. He unlocked it and went back to work.

Or tried to.

There were two words on the page: Chapter One. And that was it.

The otherwise blank screen stared back at him.