Coffee Thoughts

"One iced coffee..."

The waitress set the translucent plastic cup in front of Sandra, who received it with a nod.

"And one hot cappuccino..."

Carefully balancing the steaming cup in her hand, the waitress placed it beside Cassie's half uneaten muffin. Cassie beamed at her, and the waitress smiled back before retreating towards the kitchen.

Sandra swirled her straw around a few times, listening to the way the ice cubes in her drink clinked together as she did. Cassie smiled often, to almost everyone, while Sandra found it hard to muster a genuine (or fake) smile when it came to strangers.

But Cassie had...well, Sandra found it hard to even describe it, but her smile somehow made things appear...brighter? She was just a happy person, and happy people, Sandra reminded herself, annoyed her.

Across the table, she observed as Cassie resumed picking apart her muffin, small brown crumbs adorning the surface of the white plate. Much with everything that Cassie did, there was some sort of method to her madness, each piece roughly the same size (comparable to a gumball) before she stabbed it with the fork and ate it.

It drove Sandra mad to watch Cassie eat as she did. At the same time, she found it endlessly fascinating to watch. She found a lot of things about Cassie fascinating. Was it normal to have such conflicting feelings?

Partially in an attempt to break up the silence (which she hated) and partially in an attempt to silence the odd thoughts racing through her mind, Sandra began to speak.

"So," she began, "what did you want to talk about with me?"

Cassie looked up from the sparse remains of her muffin dissection. "I thought you wanted to talk to me," she said, emphasizing the 'you' in her sentence.

"What?" Sandra asked. "Where did you get that idea from?" She took a sip from her iced coffee to stop herself from blurting out something embarrassing.

"Well, you did text me the other day, saying that it would be nice for us to talk." Cassie laughed softly, a bemused expression in her eyes. "Don't make me pull up the receipts."

"Y-yeah, but you were the one who initiated this," Sandra shot back, gesturing at the scene around them. The back of her ears felt hot and were undoubtedly red. "You told me that you wanted to try out this coffee shop and talk."

"I did. And now we're here." Cassie beamed. "So. Let's talk."

"Actually, I did have something I wanted to talk to you about-"

"aha!"

"Okay, okay, don't rub it in." Sandra took another sip of her coffee.

Cassie watched as Sandra swirled her straw around. The sound of the ice cubes clinking against each other was strangely soothing. On the other hand, the erratic way Sandra swirled her coffee, halfway, then pausing, then all the way around, with seemingly no real pattern to her movements, bugged Cassie. At the same time, she also found it...endearing? Cassie pushed the thought down.

"Cassie?"

Sandra's voice jolted Cassie back to the present. "Yeah? Sorry, I zoned out," Cassie offered sheepishly. She finally picked up the cappuccino, only to find that it was now lukewarm. She set it back down on the table.

"I was just saying that, uh, I'm going to be leaving town for about a week."

"Oh. Wow," Cassie said, settling into the booth. "Where are you going to?"

"Just back home to Maryland, visiting my parents." Sandra paused. "I mean, it's not a big deal or anything," she continued hastily. "It's just a couple hours away anyways and a week is pretty much nothing. It's not a big deal; I don't know why I mentioned it."

Of course, it's a big deal! Cassie wanted to say. It's a week! A whole week!

Instead, she said: "Cool, I'm glad you told me." Then, as an afterthought, Cassie added, "I'll be fine."

Sandra's eyebrows furrowed and she tilted her face, confused. For a moment, that expression (and quite frankly, how adorable it was) distracted Cassie again.

Friends find each other adorable, Cassie reminded herself. That's why they were friends.

"Well, why wouldn't you be fine?" Sandra questioned. She forced out a laugh that immediately sounded a little too shrill, and she cringed. Sandra didn't even know why she had asked the question. Or maybe she did and didn't want to think about the real reason she had.

Cassie scratched the back of her neck briefly before setting her hand on her lap. "Um...well...we're friends." She let out a brief chuckle that sounded forced. "I'm always fine. I'm not going to turn into some sort of...wreck... 'cause you're gone."

"Yeah, yeah, that makes sense," Sandra agreed, nodding a bit too enthusiastically for her taste. "No, I feel the same way. Totally. We can just catch up next week or sometime after that."

"Cool."

The two of them sat in silence for a few moments, Sandra staring at her drink once more, tracking the perspiration on the side of the plastic cup, and Cassie looking at some distant, unknown point outside of the window beside their booth. Neither of them looked at each other.

Suddenly, they both turned to face each other, blurting out in an overlapping stream of words:

"But maybe we should-"

"How about we-"

Sandra and Cassie paused, then burst into laughter. It felt good to laugh, freely, genuinely, with each other. It felt natural.

"No, no, what were you going to say?" Sandra said once they had calmed down a bit.

"Well, maybe you can text me when you get to Maryland," Cassie suggested. She looked down, feeling her cheeks heating up. "Just to make sure you're not, like, dead or kidnapped or anything."

"Yeah, of course! Thanks for, uh, looking out for me," Sandra responded. "I mean, you should also text me. When I'm in Maryland. You know, I'm always down for cute pictures of those dogs you meet when you take your morning run."

"You got it."

The two of them lapsed into a brief stretch of comfortable silence. Sandra sipped her iced coffee. It was watery by now but she didn't care.

Honestly, she would never say it out loud, but-

Cassie took one last bite of her muffin. It had crumbled a bit more as it had sat on her plate, but it was good nonetheless.

Besides, Cassie didn't care.

Because the truth was-

They needed each other.