“It’s the same sentence wearing a different coat.”
Her eyes rolled, but her smile came back.
Jesus. I liked her smile.
More than was reasonable for a woman I'd only spoken about ten total words to.
“At least let me make it square,” she said, when she had a voice again. “I owe you a coffee. That’s — that’s a thing people do.”
“You owe me a coffee.”
“Yes.”
“All right.” I leaned my hip against the bench. “What’s your order?”
She blinked. “Why do you want my order? I’m buying you the coffee.”
“I know.”
“So you should give me yours.”
“I will.” I let it sit a second. “But a man likes to know one true thing about a new neighbor. Maybe a friend. So, tell me your order.”
Something moved behind her face. She covered it fast, with the worn-smooth sentence. “Oh — honestly, whatever’s easiest. Black, drip, whatever you’ve got at home. I’m not fussy.”
I didn’t say anything. I let the silence sit there between us where she could hear it.
She made it about four feet down the drive — “Well. Thank you. Genuinely.” — before I let her have it.
“Sophia. That wasn’t an answer.”
She stopped with her back to me. I watched her shoulders go up and come down once. When she turned the laugh was already getting loose — a real one, surprised out of her like a sneeze, one hand coming halfway to her mouth and not making it, her head going back half an inch. I’d watched her be tired and careful and caught out and braced. I hadn’t watched her do this. It rearranged her whole face. Beautiful wasn’t a word I went around using. I used it, once, privately, and moved on.
She came back two of the four feet.
“You’re not going to let me whatever’s-easiest you.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Fine.” She blew the breath out. Squared up like she was giving evidence. “Flat white. Extra hot. Caramel shot.”
I kept my face still.
“And before you say anything — yes. I know. It’s ridiculous.”
“Why’s it ridiculous?”
She opened her mouth to fire back the easy answer.
It wasn’t there.
I watched her go looking for it and not find it — watched her take the question instead of swatting it away and arrive somewhere she hadn’t meant to go, a small quiet with no joke in it. Whatever crossed her face then I didn’t have a name for. There was something under the embarrassment that wasn’t embarrassment.
“I don’t know,” she said.
I filed all three. The whatever’s-easiest. The order. And the I-don’t-know, hardest of the three, for what her face had done when I asked.
“Flat white, extra hot, caramel shot,” I said. Easy. “Got it.”
