Short Stories Collection

15. Christmas Coffee (Christmas Short Story)

She sat in an empty coffee shop, sipping her now-cold peppermint mocha coffee, as her eyes watched the strangers outside the shop's window. The snow was falling in small, gentle flurries like feathers falling from heaven in the sky, painting the scene like a winter wonderland straight out of a Christmas fairytale. The various colors of lights light up the town square. A fifteen-foot Christmas tree stood in the middle of the town square, decorated with silver and gold ornaments covering every single inch of the tree. On top of the tree is the brightest and biggest star that has been passed down from many generations and was first used when the town was established.

People walked around the town square, fitting in and out of shops, surrounding their tree, putting presents under it, and taking photos of the beautiful, dedicated tree and square. The presents under the tree are collected for a noble cause for the children in the local hospital or for people who cannot afford a Christmas present for someone to enjoy. Every year, the town council collects the presents and gives them out on Christmas Eve in the town hall.

She sighed and set her cold coffee on the shiny surface of the table. She continued to stare out of the window, watching multiple lovebirds pass by, holding each other's hands and staring into each other's eyes. One couple caught her eye. The couple was sitting on the bench, snuggling, and looking at each other with pure love shining in their eyes. The girl with the long, red ginger hair, green eyes, and fair skin leaned in towards her lover and whispered, "Baby, it's cold outside," and giggled. As she watched the male stand up and start to sing the second line of the song, he pulled her up to stand, and they started to sing the whole song together. As they sang, many people around them stopped and watched them sing in perfect harmony. As they sang louder for all to hear, people joined in and sang louder for all to hear in the square.

As she watched from her seat, she saw people smiling, singing, hugging, and even laughing in happiness, which made her feel lonely in the almost empty coffee shop with her cold coffee getting warmer by the minute. She remembered a flashback where her mom and she used to go to a book store to pick up a book or a few and then go to a coffee shop and talk about their excitement for reading new books and drinking a new coffee flavor on Christmas Eve. As she remembered, she started to cry as a few tears leaked from her puffy pink eyes. Her heart sank to the bottom of her stomach, and her breathing was heavy as she was having a panic attack. As she tried to breathe and picked up her phone, she tried dialing her mother's phone number, wishing she could spend some time with her on Christmas day instead of having her mom work a thousand miles away on a big book publishing deal with a new young adult and adult author who will soon become a best-selling author.

as the phone rang. The voicemail said...

"Hi, you reached Veronica King. I am so sorry for not being able to reach the phone." If you can leave your name and number, and I will call back as soon as possible, "Happy Holidays from Blue Sky Publishing!"

With the feeling of being lonely and not hearing her mother's voice, all she can think of is how her mother is in New York City celebrating Christmas while she is stuck in her small hometown in a coffee shop with a stack of books next to her half-eaten muffin and half-sunk cold coffee. All she wanted was to be there in New York with her mother, hopefully meeting some best-selling authors who gained millions of fans and dollars from their work. She told her mom that one day she would take over the publishing company and have her own best-selling books. Her mother told her at a young age that she would never become one and that no one would take her writing seriously.

After many years as a child, she always went to the book store to read as many books as she could. While reading, she took many good notes and started writing short stories, which turned into a few different novels. As a teenager, she found a few different reading and writing platforms that have attracted hundreds of millions of readers and writers across the world. She knew if her mom found out about her writing, she would have to sign a deal with her mother's company, and she wouldn't earn a single dollar, especially when her mom is the one who makes all the movie deals with the top producers of the most popular TV and movie networks.

As she looked down to the table, she saw her very own first published book sitting there on the hard wooden table with her pen name written in shiny, beautiful letters on the most beautiful photo of a Christmas tree from her very own small-town square. All of these years, she will never imagine sitting in a quite beautiful coffee shop with her book sitting right in front of her and not having her mom sitting across the table congratulating her and all of her hard work, especially with going to college and writing multiple novels under a secret name so her own mother will never find out.

She looked back at the town square through the frosted snowflake window and sighed, knowing she could have been out there with the whole town instead of sitting at a table all alone on Christmas. All she wanted was to be with her mom and finally tell her who her secret identity was since her writing had caught her mother's attention from finding out on all these different reading and writing platforms. She sighed and grabbed her cold cup of coffee, and as she sipped the cold mocha coffee, she knew her mother would never get to know what her Christmas present would be or what her daughter's biggest achievements in life were.