Hatchetfield Stories

Thorns

"I'm not-"

But Ted had already left, screaming something about a chai iced tea over his shoulder.

Paul shrugged, both to let Ted know he didn't care and to ease the tension in his shoulders. He walked towards the small coffee shop a few blocks away, ignoring the line that stood outside the Starbucks.

You see, Paul had heard about people throwing up flowers before, some sort of weird love disease, but he didn't know much about it. Flowers growing in your lungs, thorns clawing through your windpipe... No, Paul never paid much attention to the people talking about it.

All he had heard before he turned the volume down as another documentary came on, grossed out by the thought of nature growing inside of a person, was that it was caused by one-sided love. But Paul didn't do love. He hadn't loved a girl since his kindergarten girlfriend.

Except for...

Her.

She smiled at him when he walked into Beanies, swinging the towel she was using to clean the counter over her shoulder. "Hi, what can I get for you? Wait... black coffee, right?"

Paul's cheeks immediately flushed red. She knew his order. He had ordered the same thing every single day for the past four months, but the fact that she even recognized him made him want to giggle and run away like a toddler who just got intimidated by a girl in his class.

"Yeah! How- I..." Not able to find the right words and not wanting to embarrass himself even more, he settled on dropping a twenty-dollar bill in the tip jar.

The woman smiled, turning around to make his coffee, a loose strand of hair, and a hairpin still stuck in it, bounced as she moved.

"So... busy day?" There's no one in the shop. "I mean... the weather is nice?" Well, she has eyes.

But she laughed, sliding the takeout cup towards him. "Yeah, too bad I have to stay inside all day. Too bad we don't have space to put some tables out front, I think it would really get us some more customers."

"Yeah, with the nice weather, and the... sun."

Paul was thirty-one, and he still didn't know to talk to a hot girl. Maybe he could learn some things from Ted, after all.

"Hello?" the barista asked, waving her hand in front of his face.

"Huh, what?"

She chuckled. "You spaced out for a bit, dude. Your total is three bucks."

Paul nodded, handing her five dollars. "Keep the change."

She raised an eyebrow. "You sure? You already tipped twen- You know what, more money for me!" She chuckled, pocketing the bill. Paul let out a forced laugh, desperately wishing he wasn't actually as red as he felt.

Paul took the cup, taking a big sip from the still-hot liquid.

"I'm Emma, by the way," the barista told him, smiling.

"Oh..." Yep. His cheeks were definitely redder than that damn uniform Frank makes his employees wear. "I'm-"

He got cut off by a sharp pain in his chest, and the unpleasant feeling of what he assumed was another flower making its way up his throat.

He gagged, bolting out of the store before he could tell her his name, the coffee spilling out of the cup in his hurry.

Paul gagged and coughed and gasped for air as the flower fell onto the pavement in front of him, leaving behind a strong metallic taste in his mouth. A few strangers looked at him, but he shot them an awkward smile, brushing off the questions they asked.