A Cup of Coffee by Dawn

Here I am sitting by myself in the middle of the night. Thankful that the café owner gladly let me stay for a while, the truth is I’ve been running away from home for a week now. Sitting alone in this city is so safe that my parents might have thought that I was playing at my friend’s house. Isn’t it amazing? How they didn’t file any report to the police just yet and didn’t even make an effort to find their one and only daughter.

I look around at the crowded place. Everything was covered in black and brown, everyone to me looking dead and pale as they wave at me. Greetings to me the only living one in the room as I smile, “Hi Greta!”

“Hi Luce…” the young lady with a bandage around her head walk closer to me, she was smiling as she sits beside me, tucking her hair back and taking a peek on what I work on. “A new story?”

I simply nod, still enchanted by her pale skin and beautiful brown eyes. “I finally able to type a new story after a while…”

“The title is…” she leans even closer to my laptop, Love Story, didn’t know that you were a romantic type of person,”

I shrug at her words, “I don’t even know…”

“What is the story about?” now she fully looking at me, turning her chair around, seems so ready to pay attention.

“You sure you wanted to know?” I squint my eyes at her. I’ve been writing several stories and let her read them whenever she’s here. Greta Mueller was never a fan of story with a sad ending, her eyes will be as fiery as the fire. Blazing at me as she files her complaint at me. Whining at how everyone deserve at least one happy ending and I never gave any of my character one.

“Is this another sad ending story?” She’s looking at me dead in the eye, back to the laptop, and finally back at me before making my heart stop with her cute little smile. “Its your story and I will always be excited for them”

I barely can hold back a smile. I bite my lower lip, trying to look away to hide the natural blush on my cheek.

“So yeah… the story is about a girl falling in love with a pretty ghost…”

“Oh…” she nods, as if she knows what I mean when I start to talk.

“That girl had the ability to see ghost whenever midnight comes,” I continue, “And she accidentally met this beautiful ghost with beautiful brown eyes,”

“Did she instantly fall in love?” she asks,

“Actually… she didn’t even know what love is,” I said, “Growing up in a dysfunctional family with no one that wanted to be her friend because of her ‘creepy’ capability, she didn’t even realize that she was smitten by this ghost,”

“That sounds cute…” Greta started to smile,

“Excuse me? You find it cute?” Greta laughs at me and said, “It’s just cute to me that a ghost needs to appear in her life for her to realize what love is,” completely ignoring my reaction, she commands me to continue the story.

“So yeah…” I pause for a while before continuing my sentence, “Without her realizing, she started to go to where the ghost usually stays, a place where she used to work, an abandoned café by the forest that was already long forgotten,”

“Eventually, they grow closer and talk to each other even more often. The pretty ghost had slowly become more comfortable with this human, and she finally gained her trust that the pretty ghost literally showing up to her room whenever she’s not coming to the café,”

I turned to check on her expression. She was now leaned on her arm, looking at me with a gentle smile and a hint of knowing in her eyes, “I love how the story goes so far…”

“You do…?” I hesitantly turned back to my laptop, feeling shy as I felt her eyes haven’t left me after I drop the question.

“I do… but where’s the conflict?” she tries to pull my laptop closer to her, “Seems like you haven’t gone there?”

“Yeah…” I nod, “But I’ve had the idea in mind already…”

“Really?” she smiles, lean closer to me as she said, “Alright tell me after I got this thing done,”

Her light feet bring her outside faster than anyone. She waves at me as she’s gone through the darkness of the forest. “Poor you” I can feel someone else sitting right beside me, another regular costumer of this café, Anthony.

“Hi Thony…”

“It’s Anthony you fool…” he took a small sip of his hot coffee, “My father didn’t give me that name for you to short it into some pony name”

“Well Thony and Pony kind of rhyming with each other-”

“Oh, hell nah you won’t call me that you little shit”

This old guy is pretty much rough but he’s quite caring. We always spend our time with me teasing him while he will scold at me. I wonder why he always sit with me and Greta. Knowing already how much we love to raise his temper. Maybe… he is just one lonely old guy.

“You know it won’t end well right…” his sentence cutting me off of my train of thought. A familiar sting greets me as a painful smile paint on my face, “You know how it’ll end, but here you are either way”

His cold hands land on my head, caressing my hair as he said, “You’re indeed one strong soldier,”

“Now you become soft? Huh?” trying to hide the pain, I try to joke with him a little but his answer caught me off my guard.

“Because you need it kid,” his cheeks and forehead wrinkled at the time he smiles at me. He’s patting my shoulder and whisper, “Good luck”

I notice Greta by the door, smiling at me and wave at old Anthony. She sprints toward us while Anthony leaving, decided to sit with some other old veteran in the room. “What did you guys talk about?” she asks as soon as she sat back to where Anthony just sit.

“Nothing much…”

“Oh! It’s almost dawn already!” she looks outside, pointing at the sky,

“Really?” I took a glance at my watch then look back at her as she said, “So… do you want your coffee now?”

“Yeah…”

“I wonder… why a cup of coffee by dawn?” she asks before going to make me a cup of coffee, “You never told me”

I never gave her the exact answer, with a smile on my face, I said, “Because only when the dawn is coming, only at that time, all of this will come to an end”

Now you... Yeah you, the one who read this, have you figure out the lie? I think its quite obvious. I’m not a good liar anyway or maybe, Greta is just too dead to realize how much of a fool I am for her.