"Coffee" - A Short Story

[This is something I wrote a few months ago. It was the result of a prompt that I get emailed to me every day. The prompt was, "A scene in a coffee shop." I think I did rather well. Will you read it and tell me what you think of it? Thank you!]

***

The day started out much like any other.

Maria glanced up at the clock, grabbed her messenger back, and headed out the door. She walked the mile and a half to the local coffee shop, just how she started every morning.

She sat down at the table in the darkest corner and arranged her writing supplies on her desk. She took out her notebook (blue covered, college-ruled, magnetic flap), her six pens (two blue gel-pens, two black gel-pens, and two erasable black pens), her doodle sheet (covered with words such as shy, murderous, kittens, playful, bloodbath, and tweeters, along with a few stick-man sketches of characters), and her little frame of inspiration ("WRITE - some letters make a word. WRITE - some words make a sentence. WRITE - some sentences make a page. WRITE - some pages make a chapter. WRITE - some chapters make a book." -Kathy R. Jeffords). 

Then she got up and walked to the counter.

She stood at the register and stared, waiting for someone to notice her. (She never took the initiative.)

"Hey! Sorry about that," the cashier laughed, coming over to Maria. "I didn't see you."

Maria let a small smile flash across her face. "I'd like the usual," she whispered.

"I'm sorry?"

"The. Usual," Maria repeated, a little louder this time.

"You've never been here before," the cashier apologized, even though Maria had been coming to the coffee shop every morning for the past three years. "I have no idea what your usual is."

Maria did what she had to do every morning: She told the cashier what her order was, and the cashier smiled and rang it up. 

Maria liked routine. In fact, if the cashier somehow started remembering her, she would probably freak out and run away.

***

Maria sat back down with her steaming cup of coffee, and stared at her notebook again. She glanced through the past few pages.

It was a dark and stormy night. Too cliche, was written beside it.

There are many ways to make a grown man scream, but normally, it took a lot longer than three seconds. Just not working.

She dipped one toe into the puddle in front of her. "Blood." She shuddered. But still, she had to walk through it if she wanted to see Joseph again. What on earth was I thinking?

Maria sighed. Her book was getting nowhere. This was the seventeenth notebook she'd used in the past three years, and none of her stories ever got beyond the first sentence.

The door chimed, and Maria looked up from her scribbles. There was a man standing at the counter that she had never seen before. 

She looked at her watch; it was 9:27 on a Tuesday morning. Normally, on Tuesdays Jonathan came into the shop at 11:02, and before him, Shelia came at 10:33. Usually it was just her and the cashier until Shelia appeared. Not today, though.

The man was wearing a dark brown winter coat and had a multicolored scarf around his neck. His hair was black, as far as Maria could tell, underneath his fedora. He was wearing heavy-looking boots.

"Hello!" the cashier sang. "Can I help you?"

Maria listened as the man ordered a cup of coffee, and decided that the man wasn't going to become a regular customer. There's nothing about him that would fit into my routine, she told herself. If he starts coming here, then we're going to have a problem.

She went back to her writing, and didn't pay attention to the man any more.

***

About two minutes later, the chair across from Maria scraped backwards, and someone settled into it. Maria looked up, panicked, and saw that the mysterious man was sitting in it, sipping his coffee and staring at her.

"So, who are you?" the man asked.

Maria felt all the color drain out of her face. "M-m-muh..." she stammered, pushing her chair back. "Mahhhhh."

"Calm down!" The man leaned forward, his hat tilting back and his face worried. "I'm not going to hurt you!"

Maria scrabbled on the table in front of her, shoving her notebooks and her pens back into the messenger back. It was only 9:34, but this man had interrupted her routine. There would be no chance of any more words going into the book today.

She knocked over her coffee in her mad scramble, and it spilled all over her and her writing materials.

This was too much. She started to sob.

"Hey! Hey, calm down." The man stood up and knelt beside Maria. "It's going to be okay. It's just a little coffee. Your notebook will smell like coffee for a bit, but it won't damage anything."

Maria leaned away from him. "Guhhhh."

"It's all right! I'm not going to hurt you!"

Maria shook her head, feeling the tears dripping down her cheeks. This man had ruined her day, and her notebook. There was no way she was wearing any of these clothes again, either; she would always remember this moment.

"I-I-I...I h-h-haaaah... I haaaaave to-to-to guh...guuuuh...goooo!" She stumbled over the words, feeling their unfamiliarity as they left her mouth. She felt humiliated; she had made a complete mess of herself in front of this stranger, who seemed like he was only trying to make conversation with the lonely young lady in the corner.

"Please don't go. Let me at least help you," the man said. 

"W-whuuuu..." Maria cursed silently, then forced her mouth to form the words. "Who. Are. You?"

"I'm Tom." He smiled. "Looks like you've got a bit of a stutter, huh? Is that why you wouldn't talk to me?"

Maria nodded furiously. Her stutter had been the bane of her existence in high school and college; after all, what guy wants to go out with a girl who can't even say his name? For that matter, who wants to call on a girl who will take five minutes to give a simple answer? "P-pro-problems," she managed to squeak out. My stutter's only gotten worse since I stopped talking. She hadn't said anything other than "The usual," to the cashier in about three years. Everything else she did was done by writing.

"Will you tell me your name?" Tom asked, his green eyes shining. 

Maria took a moment and made herself calm down a little more. "M-maria," she managed to say, barely tripping over the word.

"That's a beautiful name, for a beautiful girl." Tom stood up, and held out his hand. "Miss Maria, would you mind if I walked you home?"

Maria looked at the disaster of the table, and then back up at Tom's outstretched hand.

"I...I w-w-would like that, v-very m-much." She allowed him to help her up. He waved for the cashier, who went and got a mop for the floor. Then, shouldering her messenger bag, Tom led Maria out the door.

"I'm new in town, if you haven't noticed," Tom said as they walked down the street. Maria still smelled like coffee, but she seemed to have calmed down a bit. "I thought I was imagining things when I saw a beautiful young lady all by herself at the coffee shop. Tell me, are you there often?"

"Every. Day." Maria forced the words out, managing not to stammer at all. 

"Brilliant!" Tom laughed and patted Maria's arm. "Would you mind some company for the next few days...or, rather, for however long you'll have me?"

Maria studied him for a moment. I could use a new routine, maybe, she told herself. "I w-would like t-that."

***

When they reached her house, Tom left her at the door and turned to walk back down the street.

"W-wait!" Maria called after him.

Tom turned around at the mailbox. "Yes?"

"W-would you like to c-come inside and have a c-c-cookie?" She cursed her inability to pronounce c's, but much to her surprise, Tom walked back up the driveway. 

"I would like that."