Table for Two
By Laura Briggs
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2016 Laura Briggs
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover Image: “Meeting at Pauline’s”. Original art, “Couple in the cafe” by Rvvlada and “City cafe” by Paseven. Used with permission. http://www.dreamstime.com/
Title Page: “Cozy Café”. Original art, “City cafe” by Paseven. Used with permission. http://www.dreamstime.com/
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Table of Contents
Table for Two
Two's a Crowd
May I Join You?
Cup of Kindness
Table for Three
Café Rules
Chai and Yoga
Pumpkin Spice Macchiato
Holiday Blues and Berry Scones
Midnight Caffeine
Bud Vase
Mean Brew
Simple Espresso
Rainy Afternoon
Satellite Café
Coffee Critique
Homecoming
Pumpkin Pancakes and Tiger Stripes
Flavor of the Week
Ugly Sweater
Jewel Pastry
Daisies
Table for One
Cafe au Lait
Comfort Zone
Table Talk
Rosebud
Coffee for Two
Special Excerpt from A COTTAGE IN CORNWALL
Table for Two
June
Danielle Lowell sighed. Half the city seemed packed into the coffee shop Pauline's on a Saturday morning, where the weekend special was the 'Island Blend with Starfruit.' When she had first discovered this place, it had been quiet and cozy, but the past few months had transformed it into a trendy hangout spot.
At least Pauline's is finally getting good business, she told herself, thinking positive as one of the customers stepped on her toes, and another narrowly missed plastering Danni's bear claw pastry against her shirt.
There has to be a table somewhere. She peered over shoulders and around the coffee mug display. Gotcha. She weaved her way through a party carrying several of the cafe's tote bags, towards an open chair near the windows and the retail coffee display, desperate to sit down, only to discover the table was already taken.
The chair pushed closest to the wall held a second customer, who was wearing a pair of MP3 ear buds as he read an open journal. A half-empty cup of Pauline's plain Java Joe blend in front of him. Disappointed, Danni stopped in her tracks, her hand still on the chair's back. A table for two, half-occupied — and maybe by someone who didn't want to share.
Half empty coffee cup was good, however. Even if he didn't share, it meant he was probably leaving soon. Danielle smiled at him, but he didn't see her. A leisurely second passed before he noticed her standing there. He removed his ear buds.
"Mind if I sit?" she asked. "This is the only available chair in the place."
His expression didn't change — he didn't smile back, which surprised Danni the most, actually. Even in the city, people usually responded to a friendly smile. He looked at her with the same casual seriousness he'd been perusing his page a second beforehand. "Sure," he said.
He looked about her age, maybe a little older or younger, depending on whether that little frown ridge on his forehead, beneath his chestnut curls, was permanent. He inched his coffee and journal a little closer as if to make room for her things.
"Thanks," she answered. She busied herself with gazing out the window as soon as she sat down. Strangers do that, she thought. They try to absorb themselves in a separate environment to keep the stranger closest to them from feeling uncomfortable in the mutual silence. This was hard for Danielle, who was used to talking to people. It was part of her job in publishing, talking to authors to encourage them, or redirect their focus to a different part of the story, for instance.
She wiggled her stir stick through the whipped cream on her mango frappuccino and pretended to be absorbed by the scenery. One customer, two customer, three.... she counted the people exiting Pauline's with their weekend orders. Across from her, the stranger glanced up from his journal again.
"Are you waiting for someone?" he asked.
"Me?" She was startled into speech. "No."
He took a leisurely sip from his coffee cup. "I just thought that's why you were waiting for me to leave," he answered.
"I'm — I'm not waiting for you to leave," she said. Um, that might be a tiny lie on your part, Danielle, she thought, feeling guilty for her motives in sitting here. "Stay as long as you want. It's a free country. It's your table. I'm just ... borrowing a chair from it."
He smiled. He had almost laughed at this, she thought, but had let it fade at the last second. "It'll be all yours in ten minutes, tops," he said. Pushing up the sleeves on his workout shirt, he turned the page of his journal.
She couldn't help but notice his physique was muscular, making her wonder if there was a pair of jogging shorts under his jeans — a little reading and coffee prior to a run in the park, maybe. His journal was a personal one, she realized suddenly. A softcover notebook with handwritten pages, a pen lying beside his coffee cup.
"Do you journal?" she asked. "I mean, is that a personal diary?"
He looked up. "Sort of," he said.
"That's amazing," said Danielle. "I've always heard it keeps your thoughts clear and focused. Sort of like therapy on paper." She smiled at this idea.
"I never thought of it that way," he said.
"Me, I've always been too impatient to keep one for more than a couple of weeks. My life is too boring to put on paper most of the time — or too busy for time to write it all down."
"Mine's about business," he answered. He took another sip from his coffee, and that's when Danielle realized that she was annoying him by talking.
She stopped before the next words on her tongue could emerge, a question about his business. Her tongue clicked before her mouth snapped shut. Between pinched lips, she sipped her coffee, not caring that it smudged her pink lipstick, the fun shade she reserved for weekends. I was just being friendly, she thought. He could have just sat there quietly in the first place if he didn't want to talk.
She studied the toes of her shoes and thought about her list of personal errands before she was supposed to meet a couple of friends for lunch. She nudged her chair closer to the table to avoid the crush of customers packing themselves into Pauline's. She wished she could push it the other way and put more space between herself and the silent stranger.
He took another sip of his coffee and made several notes at the bottom of his page. Tinny-sounding music echoed from the music player ear buds lying on the table. "Do you work in business?" he asked Danielle, suddenly.
"Sort of." Her tone was less friendly than before.
He glanced up. "You work in the city?"
"Sometimes." She took a sip from her cup, then gazed through the window again.
She knew she shouldn't give him the same frosty treatment he'd given her. After all, plenty of the writers she dealt with were sensitive and cranky, and she always responded cheerfully. But something about this customer had irked her on this beautiful morning. Maybe because he made her feel she was inconveniencing him by sitting here.
He was looking at her again, as if still waiting fo
r an answer, not that he'd asked the question yet. "What do you do for a living?"
She took her time answering, adjusting her cup's position on the table. "Um, I work with people," she said. "I help publish books. You'd probably find it really dull to hear about, actually."
She'd offended him that time. Way to go, Danielle. Champion of the 'fighting rudeness with rudeness' campaign, she thought. Have t-shirts made next time, will you?
"O-kay," he said. He closed his journal. "Well, I won't bore you with any stories about sales performance in return." He pulled his jacket on, one which had been slung over the back of his chair. "I'll let you enjoy your coffee in peace."
"You don't have to go," said Danielle. She felt guilty about probably driving him away, even though she didn't really want him to stay. "I should probably be going, anyway." She checked her watch. "Places to be, you know." She tried to give him a nice smile to make up for her tone a few minutes before. "I'll leave you to your journaling."
Collecting her cup and her bag, she got up and gently pushed her way towards the exit. She tried to glance back casually, to see if the stranger kept his table, but the rack of coffee samples blocked her way. Probably he took his jacket off again the second she walked away.
A shame he was a little snobby and impersonal. At first glance, he had been attractive. Danielle had felt the urge to make sure her long, blonde ponytail wasn't frizzy at the top, and that whipped cream hadn't dotted the corner of her mouth from the coffee drink — but that was before any interaction with him had killed her interest.
You weren't exactly charming, you know, she reproached herself. One little cold reply and you pegged him for a snob. You certainly showed him how politeness works around this town. Maybe if you'd given him a second chance, he would've made up for it...maybe that's what all those questions were for.
Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things that two people in a big city just made bad impressions on each other. It happened every day, in fact. She'd remember next time and try harder with the next person with whom she shared a table.
And as for today's stranger, she'd just have to put that encounter aside. After all, how often was she wrong about people, anyway? Not often enough for this to be an exception.
Two's a Crowd
Pauline's was only three blocks from his apartment, otherwise Logan Whittaker might have grabbed his weekend coffee someplace a little less crowded. He liked to cafe hop anyway. Being a regular with a regular table wasn't essential to him — he didn't want to be one of those people made irrationally angry when someone else took their 'spot.'
He picked Pauline's for a different reason than the 'Java Joe' selection he had sampled there last Saturday. He went back out of curiosity, to see if the girl was there, the blonde-haired one who had shared a table with him before.
He told himself that he should pick some other place, one closer to the park where he jogged. But this week he wasn't jogging on Saturday, and he convinced himself this drop by was all about trying the new peach scones advertised on the sign outside.
It was just as crowded this weekend as last. Apparently, this place's menu was like a magnet for drawing customers. Logan was sixteenth in line for a coffee and a scone, and was lucky compared to the customers who were waiting outside. Make a note to try someplace new next weekend, he told himself. She wasn't that interested in you, anyway.
Maybe it had been his imagination. Picking up on people's body language wasn't one of Logan's best skills. He was wrong most of the time, so most of the time he simply didn't bother. And by the time he'd pulled himself out of his own head, it had been too late to be sure what her first smile and words had meant.
He scanned the faces of the customers around him, pretending to look for a table. She had been tall, he thought. Long hair, grey eyes. So far, nothing. She probably wasn't a regular here.
He collected his order when his number was called, then gently pushed his way towards the most remote corner of the cafe, the one where he'd managed to snag a seat before. He had his journal in his bag, at least. It was probably time to write about something besides how tense the atmosphere at his job was growing. He had intended to write down personal things instead — that was the whole point of the exercise, like the girl had pointed out. But, like he had pointed out, it hadn't taken that turn for him.
Stay empty, stay empty, he willed the only available chair he spotted in the whole place. Someone cut ahead of him a second before he reached it. Logan backed up hastily to avoid a coffee collision and made contact with a second empty chair. One which belonged to the same corner table as before, where the same girl from before was now seated.
She was here after all. In a bright pink off-the-shoulder shirt that belonged in the eighties, and a pair of bakelite hoop earrings that were probably vintage. A yoga mat, a pair of stretchy leggings, her long hair in the same ponytail as before — she was on her way to or from working out. From the look on her face when she spotted him, she was not thrilled to see him here.
"Hi," he said. "Sorry." He glanced around, as if his reason for coming to this place hadn't been to catch a glimpse of her, and any other table would do. "There's no other seat," he began.
"Take it," she said. "No one else is using it." She motioned towards it with her paperback book — a romance novel, he thought. Maybe one she helped publish — didn't she say she worked in publishing? She wore reading glasses, a horn-rimmed pair with dark frames.
"Thanks." He sat down, setting his coffee a short distance from her own cup. It looked like something tropical and fruity. No 'Java Joe's' caffeine boost for her.
He cleared his throat. "Nice day," he said. "Sunny."
"Mmmhmmm," she answered, not looking up as she turned the page of her novel.
No surprise there, he thought, after their dull exchange the first time. However, she lifted her eyes a moment later and smiled at him. Probably just to be polite, but it made him switch tactics from silence to speech again.
"You're on your way to a yoga class, I take it?" He glanced towards the rolled-up mat beside her chair.
"Just finished," she answered. She took a sip from her cup, then gazed out the window.
"Good book?" he asked. Pointing at her paperback.
"Yes," she answered.
"Did you ... publish it?" He racked his brain, trying to remember if she described her job before. He didn't think so. "Edit it?"
"No," she said. "Someone at my company did, but not me. I'm just a fan."
She looked as if she was ready to dive back into its pages again after this explanation. He stirred his coffee, trying to think of something else to say.
"I've never read a romance novel," he said. "Are they all alike?"
Her brow crinkled. "What do you mean?"
"I've always heard that the story's the same in each one," he said. "You know. Same girl, same guy, same romance every time." His sister and various girlfriends from the past had described them in a way that made each one sound like it was only a string of passionate encounters and vague plot points in between.
"That's just an impression people have," said the girl, in a voice which made it sound like she had a firm and passionate opinion on this issue. "It's not true, really. Stories and characters are diverse across the genre. Some can be really complicated, just like mysteries, for instance. Or westerns, or science fiction novels."
"Do you publish those, too?" he asked.
"The publisher I work for has titles in every genre," she answered. "So, yes. Even nonfiction stuff." She took a sip from her coffee cup, gazing out the window. Avoiding meeting his eyes, he thought.
"The author you're reading right now. Complicated? Or diverse?"
Unless he was mistaken — and he often was — she was beginning to be interested in answering him. Maybe I wasn't wrong about her signals before, he thought, with surprise.
She thought about it. "Megan O' Faling's stories are complicated," she answered at last. "They're Irish, but they're contemporar
y Irish. A lot of times there's racial themes, or tension between English and Irish characters from lingering stereotypes. She likes scenery, so she describes a lot of it. She makes the surroundings seem like a part of the story. I would definitely recommend her. To people who don't necessarily like love stories, even."
That passion in her voice. It seemed to fill her with light and energy with each word, transforming her whole self in mere seconds. He felt curious to know the person that passion created.
"You must really love your work," he said.
"I do," she admitted. "Do you like what you do?"
He laughed. "At times. Mostly, it's a big headache right now." He paused. "No chance you publish books on computer software, is there? Maybe explaining the programs my company designs? I've been told by a couple of non-computer geeks that it would help." Logan smiled after this. Someone once told him he had a nice smile — disarming, they described it — and he found himself hoping it was true.
"Maybe," she answered. "I'll check around and see." She went back to her book.
Rats. He was losing her. He tapped his pencil against his journal, trying to think of something to write if he opened it. It's been six months since my last relationship, and today I'm beginning to understand why I'm having a hard time meeting new people ... that seemed like a promising start to an entry. Certainly more helpful than his thoughts on the company's bug-laden new firewall design that was due for release in two months, and what a headache it was trying to fix all its mistakes.
Across from him, the girl turned a page in her romance novel, but her eyes weren't moving back and forth across the page. Maybe she was simply pretending to look interested in the words.
"I design software, in case you didn't already guess that," he said, simply to end the long pause. "Skylark Systems. We build programs for all kinds of platforms. Antivirus programs, animation tools. Even games."
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