Once Upon A Coffee

by Kait Nolan

  “You like the small town life,” he said. There was no question about it. Her expression was one of comfort and satisfaction with her place in this tiny world.

  “I do. So many people grow up and they’re hell bound and determined to get away from where they grew up. I was really happy to come back. I like the fact that I run into my third grade teacher at the grocery store or my best friend’s parents at church on Sunday. Roots are important.”

  “I miss them.” The words slipped out before he realized. But hell, it was true.

  “Where are you from? Originally, I mean.”

  “Little bitty town in East Texas called Rango.”

  Her eyes crinkled again. “Like the lizard in the movie?”

  “Exactly like. It’s ’bout this size. Part of why I come over here once in a while is because Wishful reminds me of home.”

  “What would you be doing if you were there now instead of in school?”

  “Working at the feed and farm supply probably. Running cattle on the side.”

  “That’s a big jump from architecture.”

  Ah ha, so his mysterious competition—and when had he started thinking of this girl’s real date as competition?—was from MSU.

  “Yeah, it is,” he agreed. It was the truth, in a general sense.

  “What do you do on a cattle ranch in the fall?” As her bottle green eyes sparkled, Dillon could see she was imagining a Hollywood version of a dude ranch.

  “This time of year, we’d be baling hay for winter. Making sure the herd is up to date on immunizations and such. It’s not glamorous by any means. Most folks who raise cattle have other jobs too. It’s hard to make a living at that on its own anymore.”

  “My granddaddy raised dairy cattle forever, same as his daddy and granddaddy before him. But they had to close the dairy, before I was born. Now he farms. Soy. Corn. Cotton. It’s all a tough business these days.” She paused to sip. “So will you go home once you finish with grad school?”

  Dillon shrugged. “I don’t know. Depends on how things unfold, I guess. Where I wind up getting a job. Whether it’s just me to think about or if I’m in a relationship when I finish.” And where had that come from? “Lots of unknown variables. What about you? Are you settled here for good?”

  She smiled into her coffee and glanced back up at him through sooty lashes. “I am until somebody worth leaving for catches my eye.”

  ~*~

  What on earth possessed her to say that?

  As she looked down into her mug again, she caught a flash of Ross’s smile. Oh, yeah. That was why. He had a great smile—an inviting curve of lips that made you feel like you were sharing some kind of juicy secret.

  He made so much better an impression in person than he did online.

  “Why didn’t you have a picture up on your Perfect Chemistry profile?” She couldn’t resist asking and hoped it wasn’t a sensitive subject.

  The oddest expression crossed his features. “It wouldn’t have been me.”

  Huh. He hadn’t struck her as much of a philosopher in their previous conversations. “Well, I guess we do tend to place too much importance on physical appearance.”

  “Why are you on one of those sites? You can’t tell me you have trouble finding dates.”

  “Wishful is a little bitty pond, in case you haven’t noticed. Of the guys here in my relative age bracket, I already dated half of them in high school. The other half are either married, dated friends of mine long enough that it would be weird, or they just don’t ring my bell. We don’t get a whole lot of new blood, as it were. I’m sure your hometown is the same.”

  “True,” he agreed. “In a town that size, we had to revoke the whole no dating your friends’ exes rule, otherwise nobody would’ve had anybody to date. Most folks either married their high school sweetheart or hoped to meet somebody in college.”

  “Exactly. And since I didn’t do that while I was at Ole Miss, online dating helps…cast a slightly wider net. And it’s nice to theoretically have a system to match you up on some kind of criteria that suggests compatibility.”

  “You think an algorithm or whatever can actually do that?”

  “Don’t you?” she asked. He was on the same dating site, after all.

  “I don’t think it’s a substitute for real, in person conversation. It might be able to match you with somebody based on—I don’t know—similar values or movie tastes or political views. And, sure, maybe you end up hitting it off. But I don’t think there’s any true substitute for a chance meeting where you feel that indefinable spark with a complete stranger—and you know they won’t stay a stranger for long.”

  The moment stretched between them, pulling taut with awareness and unspoken things. Avery felt her skin prickle and thought if she reached over to touch his hand right now, she’d feel a snap of electricity.

  The thump of footsteps on the stairs broke the spell. Avery glanced over to see an unfamiliar guy step into the room. Tall and exceptionally thin, he had a mug in one hand and what appeared to be a sketchpad in the other. She gave him a polite smile as he paused to survey the room, then moved to take a seat in a booth by the other window.

  “Well, there’s definitely something to be said for serendipity,” Avery admitted. “Whether it’s facilitated by outside sources or not.” She thought about the wish she’d made in the fountain and smiled. Maybe the old fountain still worked after all.

  Ross lifted his mug in a toast. “To serendipity.”

  Avery clinked her mug to his.

  Conversation shifted back to books. They both had diverse tastes—she liked urban fantasy and romance, he liked sci-fi and more traditional fantasy—but there was sufficient crossover that they had plenty to discuss. Avery had to appreciate a man who could as readily debate George R. R. Martin’s no character is safe policy as whether The Hunger Games was a reasonably accurate political forecast for the distant future. But she really knew she’d found someone special when he confessed to being one of the original backers of The Veronica Mars Movie and said he owned the entire series on DVD.

  “Season one is as close to a perfect series of television as I’ve ever seen,” he declared.

  New guy checked his watch and fidgeted, tapping a pencil lightly against his sketchpad. The sound wasn’t quite loud enough to be truly annoying. He looked nervous. Waiting for somebody, she guessed. Knowing very well how that felt, Avery silently wished him as much luck on his date as she was having on hers.

  “Hey,” said Ross, “I saw an ice cream parlor a bit down the street. How do you feel about banana splits?”

  “They are one of the singular joys in life,” said Avery. “Extra peanut butter?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Then why don’t we relocate,” he said.

  “I support this plan,” she said. Ice cream was always a good idea.

  Ross shut the laptop he’d shoved aside sometime during their conversation and began to gather up the notes scattered across the table. As he started to stuff his bag, Avery’s attention strayed to the books he’d brought. A compulsive reader, she angled her head to get a better view of the titles. Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations. The Return of Depression Economics.

  How odd, thought Avery. “Economics?” she asked. “Are you taking business classes on top of the requirements for your architecture degree? Doesn’t that make you a glutton for punishment?

  Ross stopped stuffing his bag and gave her a sheepish look. “Ah, about that.”.

  “Excuse me.” The newcomer stood by their table. “But are you Avery?”

  Avery had a very bad feeling as she cautiously answered, “Yes.”

  “I’m Ross,” he said, with a look that clearly said Party Foul to her companion. “Your actual date.”

  ~*~

  Avery’s face cycled through a number of different emotions—distress, embarrassment, maybe even disappointment—before she finally pinned him with a horrified glare.
“You’re not Ross?”

  Dillon gave a what-can-you-do? shrug. “Guilty.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” she demanded.

  “You didn’t ask,” he said. Wrong answer.

  She shot to her feet, hands fumbling for her book and coffee as she looked to her real date. “I’m so sorry for the confusion! I got here early and we simply don’t get that many new faces in town. Daniel said—well it doesn’t matter. We made assumptions. I thought he was you.”

  “No harm, no foul,” said Ross, though the glance he shot back at Dillon suggested otherwise. “Shall we?” He gestured for her to precede him.

  “Thanks for the coffee and conversation,” said Dillon.

  Avery made a little hrmph by way of reply. She left her daisy behind as she followed Ross.

  He expected they’d head downstairs, but instead, they settled at a table on the far side of the room.

  Well hell, thought Dillon. He’d certainly blown that. As soon as the other guy had come up the stairs, Dillon had suspected it was probably her real date. He’d had crazy idea that if he could just get her out of there…

  What, he thought, that she wouldn’t be pissed when you told her the truth later? That she felt that spark, too?

  Cursing himself as an idiot, he began laying his notes back out. Break time was over, and he had plenty of work to keep him busy.

  Avery looked over at him as he opened his laptop again, her eyes narrowed. At what? His effrontery at actually staying put while she had her date? He was here first. She was the one who’d interrupted him, with her smiles and enthusiasm and chatter about books and small town living. He had work to do. He could’ve been a complete jerk and sent her packing when she sat down, but no, he’d been polite. Conversational.

  And interested, damn it.

  Dillon’s gaze strayed back to Avery. He couldn’t hear their quiet conversation over the music that piped through the speakers, but she certainly wasn’t as animated with Ross as she had been talking to him. She was nervous again. Beneath the edge of the table, her hands twisted in her lap. Her smile seemed a little strained around the edges.

  Was that his fault? Had he made her feel even more awkward over that blind date than she already did? Dillon felt a prick of guilt at that. He hadn’t intended to make things more difficult for her, just wanted to enjoy the chance circumstance that had brought her to his table.

  It didn’t matter. What was done was done and couldn’t be taken back.

  He had work to do. Determined to finish what he’d come here for, Dillon whipped his books back out, opened his files and did his best to focus on the task at hand. His grade and Noelle’s were counting on it.

  He lasted all of fifteen minutes. The damned flower sat there in his periphery, its bright orange petals taunting him, indirectly dragging his focus back to Avery.

  She wasn’t even laughing. What kind of a date couldn’t at least make her chuckle to put her at ease?

  Catching her glancing his way again, Dillon made a goofy face. One corner of her mouth twitched before she quickly shifted her attention back to Ross. The guy seemed to be recounting some incredibly detailed…something…with visual aids. He was drawing on the pad he’d brought, and Avery was struggling to look appropriately serious, nodding and interjecting the occasional question. Those long, slim fingers tapped against her mug.

  Dillon tucked the daisy behind his ear, laced both fingers under his chin, and batted his eyes at her in a wholly exaggerated fashion. Though she didn’t look directly at him, he knew Avery could see him from the corner of her eye when she let loose one short bark of laughter that she quickly covered with a coughing fit.

  “You okay?” asked Ross.

  “Yeah, yeah. I just swallowed wrong. Please, go on.” Eyes on her date, Avery made a shooing motion at Dillon from beneath the table.

  He smothered a grin behind one of the books.

  You are a bad bad boy, he thought.

  Vowing to behave, he turned his attention back to the computer screen and pretended to work for a few minutes, weaving Noelle’s notes in with his own and making notations about where he needed to expand points with support from the class texts.

  This whole situation needed musical accompaniment. Something other than the low key jazz favored by the coffee shop. Dillon dug through his eclectic and extensive music collection until he found what he was looking for. Yes, this will do very nicely. He hit play and Celine Dion belted out the chorus to “All By Myself” loud enough to echo off the high raftered ceiling.

  Avery and her date both turned toward him with WTF? expressions.

  “Sorry! Sorry.” Dillon plugged his headphones into the correct port on his laptop and managed not to laugh. The devil made me do it.

  Avery laid a hand over Ross’s and gave him the first genuine smile Dillon had seen her muster since she left his table. “You wanna get out of here?”

  Ross looked over his shoulder at Dillon again. “Sounds like a great idea.”

  Jealousy was an ugly shade of green.

  They rose and headed for the stairs.

  Look back, thought Dillon. C’mon, look back at me.

  But Avery never turned as she descended from view. The last thing Dillon heard her say was something about an example of antebellum architecture she thought Ross might like to see. Then they were gone and his window of opportunity slammed closed for good.

  ~*~

  “—and then he walks up and says he’s my date. I’ve been sitting there for forty-five minutes talking to this guy and he never said a word to correct my assumption. It was mortifying.” Avery’s footsteps thudded against the stairs for emphasis as she climbed toward the third floor of City Hall.

  Brooke slurped her to go cup of sweet tea. “What did your actual date say?”

  “He was remarkably cool about the whole thing. Really polite. Which is more than I can say for Mr. Fake Date. We’re sitting across the room, trying to get through all that initial blind date awkwardness, which was completely made worse by my gaffe, and the guy is making faces behind Ross’s back. Ross was giving this completely earnest explanation of some architectural history thing, and it was all I could do not to fall over laughing.”

  “There are worse things than a man who can make you laugh,” observed Brooke.

  “Not when you’re on a date with somebody else,” insisted Avery. “I tried my best to cover, but I’m sure Ross thought I was the rudest thing ever. I finally just suggested that we go somewhere else, just to get away from him.”

  “And did that actually make the date with Ross the architect go better?”

  Avery grimaced. “No. I might could’ve gotten past the multi-generation Bulldog legacy if we had a lick of chemistry or mutual interests, but bless his heart, once we blew past all the mutual pop culture references, we had absolutely nothing in common. He didn’t even try to kiss me. I doubt I’ll be hearing from him again.” And that was a relief. This way she didn’t have to find a way to turn him down gently.

  “Probably just as well,” said Brooke. “Lack of creeper vibe aside, I still don’t trust a guy who wouldn’t put his profile picture up. At least the day wasn’t a total loss. It sounds like your fake date went better. You must’ve had something in common to chat for almost an hour without things getting weird.”

  We had tons in common, thought Avery with no little bite of regret. “Like that matters. I don’t know his name or where he’s a student or even what the heck he was doing here.” And if she’d wondered for half a minute whether the yearbook photos from Rango, Texas were somewhere online, she’d quickly put the thought out of her mind. She was not going to embarrass herself further by trying to track him down.

  Avery and Brooke stepped into the reception area of the mayor’s office to find a courier juggling a vase full of flowers.

  “Can I help you?” asked Avery.

  “Oh good. I’m not supposed to leave these without a signature,” he said. Setting the flowers on her desk, t
he courier offered her a clipboard. “Just sign at the bottom.”

  Avery scribbled her signature. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long. We tend to get kind of scarce around lunch.”

  “Enjoy,” he said, and disappeared down the hall.

  The mix of cream tulips and bright Gerbera daisies was unusual and happy. “Cam must’ve sent his mom flowers,” said Avery. “He’s such a sweetheart. Always doing stuff like that.”

  Insatiably curious, Brooke peered at the name on the card envelope. “These aren’t for Mayor Crawford. They’re for you.”

  “What? Who’d be sending me flowers?” She crossed over to pluck the card from the holder and eased it out.

  Let me make it up to you. Tosca. Tuesday at 7 PM.

  Avery’s mouth dropped open.

  Brooke looked over her shoulder. “It isn’t signed.”

  Avery flipped the card over to verify, but no, it wasn’t signed. The florist was out of Oxford.

  “You’ve got a secret admirer,” Brooke sang. “Kind of a strange combination of flowers.”

  “Cream tulips are for apology,” murmured Avery.

  The flowers had to be from her fake date. She’d never told Ross where she worked and he’d never seen the Gerbera daisy she’d brought. She’d forgotten it at Mr. Fake Date’s table. A flutter of excitement trembled in her chest.

  “They’re from him aren’t they?”

  She didn’t have to ask which him Brooke meant. “I think they must be.”

  “And he’s asking you out! Properly. With style, I might add. Flowers that must’ve cost a pretty penny to deliver this far from Oxford. A dinner invite to the nicest restaurant in town. Are you going to go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh come on,” said Brooke. “This is, like, the ultimate form of flattery. He liked you.”

  Avery didn’t deny she was flattered. He’d remembered details, made an effort because he actually wanted to see her again. And there had been that moment, that serendipitous spark before the real Ross had showed up.

  Yet…she hadn’t gotten past the annoyance and embarrassment over what had happened at The Grind. How long would he have gone on lying to her if they hadn’t been interrupted?