coffee breaks [ Charlie Barber ]

VI

"Are you even listening, Charlie?"

He looks up at Nicole from his coffee cup. Today you drew a smiley with a heart on it.

"Uh, yeah, sorry. I can take Henry tomorrow, yeah."

Nicole smiles at him as she finishes up her sandwich. "You're a life-saver," she says, quickly checking her phone before stuffing it in her purse.

Charlie's gone soft.

Not the kind of soft that makes him afraid of going to a scary movie, or the kind that makes him be more lenient than he already is with his students.

He's gone soft for you.

It started out small.

Stealing glances at you as you're busy at work, pretending to be busy with his laptop while in reality he's glancing above the screen to stare at you.

Then it escalated.

His mind started racing with concepts— vague figures that resembled you and him, dancing around the living room or baking cookies together.

He knew he was screwed when he started aggressively monologuing about your everything.

Your laugh suddenly was the cure for cancer, your dirty apron was the most beautiful attire and your sailor's tongue could tame a demonic beast to him. The longer he knew you, the more he felt mystified by you.

"Do you realize you're putting this barista on a pedestal, Charlie?"

Charlie twitches.

"I'm not... sure how to respond to that," he mutters hesitantly.

Dr. Linda crosses and uncrosses her legs, pen scribbling down something.

"You must recognize that idolizing a person like this will only leave you dissatisfied when you truly get to know them. Until now you've supposedly seen no flaws, but when you do, you might end up responding very... unpleasantly to it."

Charlie stills.

"...well, how do I not do that?"

Dr. Linda looks at him— no, through him.

"Get to know them, properly."

"...and stop monologuing, you sound pretentious."

_________

Consider this the bridge from coffee shop chatting to actual relationship development 👍🏽 next chapters will be MEATY, and probably have a lot more than the average 1k words