August 2022 Story - Coffee Time (Ch. 3) (Patreon)

We settled on a place downtown called Herbie’s, nestled in between a drug store and a shoe shop. It was pretty late around 10:30 PM, so the streets had thinned out, but it was Friday and so the bars were lit up and warm. Even so, there weren’t many people at Herbie’s. It was the kind of place that older people went to, what with the vintage and antiquated look. The walls were adorned with memorabilia from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, and antique furniture lined the aisles.

My heart thumped like crazy from the moment I asked her out. I couldn’t believe this was happening, but I had done it. I dove off the diving board without looking down. She had agreed nonchalantly and expressed her fondness of beer, and how Morgan’s overbearing nature gave her a need for a drink.

As we sat down at the bar in the corner on a couple of stools, my heart continued to throb, and my body shook. I had to calm down. Now that I was this close to her, I could really feel her presence. She had a distinctive body odor that I found attractive. Everyone has their own unique smell in a way. I honestly thought she put on perfume, but it was just her natural scent. It made me want to cuddle with her.

Without her Starbucks getup, she displayed grace and sensuality. She was dressed to the nines in a beige turtleneck and black leggings, very fall-like clothes.

“I hope they have the nitro brew I like…” she said, scanning the board with all the beers on draft. Then she lit up. “Oh yes! Come. You like beer, obviously, right? Now try a coffee stout. You’ll love this.”

Against my protest she bought it on the house, yet another expression of thanks for reading her novel. The bartender poured the heavy stout from the draft, and the creamy top looked really enticing.

“Well, I do love stouts,” I said.

“Then how can you not like coffee? Coffee is basically one step closer to stouts.”

“I dunno. I never thought of it like that. Taste is weird. I always liked cherry-flavor things but hate eating cherries.”

The bartender served us our pints and we clinked glasses.

“To our writing,” she said, grinning.

“Heh. To our writing.”

I guzzled down the creamy substance and…holy shit, it was the best beer I had ever drank. It was rich and creamy and thick. I obviously tasted the coffee, but it wasn’t that overwhelming. It had a delicious roasted taste that went down the back of my throat.

“Wow,” I said, wiping my lips. “That shit is good.”

Barbara clapped, ecstatic. “See?! I told you! Now we’re getting somewhere.” She took another swig. She swallowed it with such satisfaction that, out of context, it sounded sexual. “God, I could drink like five of these. Too bad I’m driving.”

We took in our surroundings. Two elderly couples were sitting at the far end. Two guys were sitting in the middle, probably in their thirties. Behind us, a couple families ate at the tables. Barbara looked at me and said, “You people-watching again? So am I.”

She then pointed to the two guys. “What do you think their story is?”

I rubbed my chin. “Hmmmm.”

“Like. If you could write a story about them. What would it be about?”

First thing that came to mind was something sexual. “They’re on a date.”

“Why? Because it’s two guys hanging out? Ugh, that’s so typical of you. Every guy thinks that hanging out with another guy alone is gay. What if they’re both hitmen? Or grieving over the loss of a loved one? Or—”

A loud gurgle traveled up her throat. She stopped midsentence and held in a burp. She went “oof” like last time and said, “Excuse me.”

She was already almost done with her drink. She realized this and said, “Damn. I really want another one. I know that’s a bad idea though...”

“Take an uber,” I suggested.

She blanked for a moment, then laughed. “Oh, no, that’s not actually what I was thinking. I was thinking about what coffee does to me.”

I raised a brow. My heart thumped again, this time for a slightly different reason. I may have started to get a boner. “What do you mean?” I asked, stupidly.

She grimaced. “People who love coffee tend to ignore admitting the obvious truth. It turns our stomach upside down! We poop so much!”

I blinked twice. She had actually said that out loud without any hesitation. She even went on. “No coffee drinker likes to admit that they fart and poop a lot from coffee.”

Barbara noticed that I was silent. She then looked away. “Haha. Sorry. I know it’s gross. My ex hated it when I talked about poop a lot. But I just think it’s natural and people shouldn’t feel ashamed about it. You know Cocoa-Puffs? I always thought they looked like squirrel poop. That ruined Cocoa-Puffs for him. I wonder if that’s why he broke up with me.”

When I still hadn’t said anything, she looked very flustered and said, “Haha. Did you know my name can mean ‘strange foreigner’?” Then immediately added in a low tone, “I’m not making this any better, am I?”

I burst out laughing. I shook my head. “Maybe not to any other guy, but I don’t mind.”

She sipped her beer a little demurely this time, avoiding eye contact, but then she smiled at me again. “Good.”

Holy shit. She talks about shitting and farting on the first date. I have to be with this girl.

Were we on a date though? That was a good question. I zoned out for a moment thinking of where to go from there, thinking about my prospects with her if we actually become a thing, getting wrapped up in fantasies, questioning the odds of having run into her in my life.

“You know…” I said, slowly, “you’re the kind of person to write about in a book.”

I don’t know where that came from, but I’m glad it came out. The thought just popped into my head. And it was true! They said manic pixie dream girls were a myth. Barbara Rodriguez was the closest thing to that trope.

She looked at me with a stunned look. She put a hand on her breast, touched. “Wow. That’s…that sounds so beautiful. That’s such a beautiful thing to say.”

Was it? I didn’t know. It just came to me. I mean, here I am writing about her, right? Everything about her was so inspirational to me. She even put a hand on my arm and leaned forward a bit saying, “That’s honestly one of the most poetic things I ever heard. That should be a famous quote or something.”

“Oh. Er. Thank you.”

“It’s so different from the usual boring stuff like ‘You’re so pretty’ or ‘You’re gorgeous!’ You know? There’s a poem I’m working on about the weight of saying ‘You’re so pretty’. But what you said really makes me curious about the stuff you write. When are you going to let me see?’

Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy.

“Uhhhhhh.”

“It’s okay. I don’t want to pressure you. But I am awfully curious.”

“Maybe one day,” I said. “In the distant future.”

“Well, I’m willing to wait!” She then narrowed her eyes. “But I may not be able to help it if I wait too long. I can be terribly impatient and curious.”

We ordered another round. Barbara started to get looser around me. She was a bit of a lightweight and wobbled when she got up from the stool. She then said casually, “I have to go shit now, so I might take a while.” She giggled on the way there. I watched her stagger to the bathroom.

I gave myself a pep talk while I was alone.

You can do this. I know you’re really nervous as hell but just calm down. She seems to be into you. Don’t presume anything but don’t sell yourself short. Just be cool. Be cool. Alright? Be cool. Oh my God I actually asked a girl out to a drink. This is the first time I ever did that. What if she doesn’t want to do anything from here. What if she’s too drunk to drive? Should I drive her home? Pay for her uber? Would she find it weird if I drove her home?

Barbara came back and we drank some more. I brought up the fact that she said she needed to drive back home. She frowned and looked down at her third empty glass. “I haven’t had this much fun in ages. I think I’ll just get an uber and leave my car in the parking lot. The town—urp—cops are lazy here. They won’t do anything about it. It’s not impossible to walk to Brappaport from here either. Something tells me my sister won’t drive me tomorrow to get my car.”

The night quickly devolved for her. She got so drunk that every time we talked about writing she would interject with how much she hated her job and was unsure about her future.

Her voice wavered and she sat slouched leaning over the counter.

“Sometimes I worry that I made the wrong choice, but I hated learning to be a lawyer. Political science got soooo tedious. I didn’t want to be a shill for anybody. I just wanna write books and live in a house in the woods with dogs. Big dogs. But I have to work a shitty barista job to do that. That’s why I’m working right now while also studying. But I can’t be a barista forever! And then Brianna is already in the Biological Honors Society or some shit like that. How is that possible? I think it’s so ridiculous and unrealistic that we’re expected to know what we need to do with our lives right after high school. I don’t even know how to do my taxes. They never teach you that!” She put her hands on her head and moaned at her predicament. She had gone through five beers and was very flushed. She then put her hands on my arm again. “Am I complaining too much? I’m sorry. I’m complaining too much.”

“No, you’re good. You have every right to complain. Work sucks. You make some good points.”

Barbara seemed unusually touched by that as well. She said, “You have no idea how validated I feel right now. People always say I complain too much. My sister says that.”

“Why?”

She then rolled her eyes. “I don’t really wanna talk about her. But she’s a piece of work.” She flicked her glass. “Sometimes I just wanna…UGH.”

“Duly noted. We won’t talk about her.”

The bar didn’t close until 2 AM, but Barbara had to call it a night around 12:30. Rather, I was the one who suggested calling it a night. It had been a long time since I hung out that late, and despite her being so drunk that she couldn’t stand up it turned out to be quite nice. I agreed to stay with her for her uber. Before she called it, she had to get things from her car. She very drunkenly opened the door and half-fell into the backseat, her butt pointing right at me. She grunted trying to find one of her bags underneath the seats.

PPPRRRpppPPPppPpPppPppPffffhhttt!

The fart was very audible. I could tell by how it sounded that she had lost control of her sphincter and just let it out naturally, without any strained force behind it. She didn’t say a word about it. She was either too drunk to fully realize that she had farted or she didn’t think I was close enough. Either way, it got me hot and bothered, especially since she farted not twice, not even three times, but four goddamn times. She just let them rip, these loud sloppy sounding farts that sputtered a lot.

When she sounded like she found what she was looking for, I turned away and stepped away a few more feet, pretending like I wasn’t paying attention.

I had to help her close the door, since her sense of distance was really thrown off. She laughed out loud as she almost fell. We walked past Herbie’s to a bench on the sidewalk. There, we waited for her uber. We took in the scenery – the dimly lit streetlamps, the empty roads, and the pretty stores that sold fine clothes, jewelry, and toys.

“I always liked this town,” I said.

Barbara was rummaging through her bag for something. She took out a cigarette and a lighter. As she tried to light her cigarette she said, “Eh. It’s such a white town.”

“I guess.” The demographic was pretty obvious when you went about your day. Then again, I was white and she was Hispanic. I’m sure there were some things she experienced that I didn’t. I watched her smoke and realized that all the girls I was ever into didn’t smoke. I didn’t like to smoke myself but never stopped to consider what if the person I loved smoked.

She noticed that I was staring, blew some smoke, and said, “Is this a turn off for you?”

I shrugged. “It’s whatever.”

“There’s so much shit going on in this world nowadays. I can’t help it. I know it’s bad for me but I’m anxious all the time.”

She sighed, hugging her coat closer to herself. She flicked some ash from her cigarette and said, “Shit world, shit politics, and shit guys.” After a couple puffs, she said to me, “But you’re alright.”

The uber finally pulled up. I helped Barbara to her feet and opened the door for her. She stopped to smile at me. “How old-fashioned. I like it.”

She kept smiling at me through the window after I closed the door. Then we waved goodbye as the uber driver drove off.