A Latte to Do About Nothing

Shakespeare and coffee — who knew?

Photo by Chevanon Photography

I was a poor liberal arts student when I met her, working short shifts at the Sugar and Spice Café that sat right inside the train station. While I dog-eared pages of plays and notebooks while waiting for customers, she came upon me one day when I was least expecting her: in with the snowfall, shaking out her purple scarf before she moved her hands to tousle her windswept mahogany hair.

Then her brown eyes searched me out — and my heart skipped a beat when I locked eyes with the young woman I would come to know more intimately than I’d known any other.

But that first meeting, as clandestine as it was, made me almost burn hot coffee all over my hands as I hurried to put the pot back on the burner. Then, all smiles, I turned to find the young woman waiting for me at the counter, her eyes scanning the menu board above my head.

“What can I get you?” I asked.

When her eyes locked with mine again, she offered me a shy smile that would have made any man’s blood boil a little — or maybe I was thinking in equations, already lost in the notes of chemistry I found dancing between us.

But, whatever was happening, she seemed keen to ignore it. She cleared her throat. “I’ll have a white mocha latte,” she said, enunciating the…