The Coffee Shop On Dreary Lane

Reagan's Diary

Embry flips open the front cover carefully, as though it may break just from his touch. Even though it is made out of cardboard and plastic, he is careful. The first page is dated with the year two thousand fourteen. Five years before Reagan arrived at this place.
'2014
My mom bought me a diary. I cannot comprehend why. For snooping? I ain't going to write nothing personal if she's looking to snoop. She might've wanted an outlet for me. I have music already, and I play the saxophone. So I don't understand why I need a new one. I've always appreciated jazz music. Whatever the reason, I guess I'll write here.
My friends and I are planning on seeing a movie soon that I'm excited for. I have a small group of tight knit friends. My friends are Mckenzie, Tyrone, Blake and Yvonne.'
Embry skips over Reagan droning on about their friends.
'Something I'm currently concerned about is my gender. I'm nonbinary, meaning I'm not a boy or a girl. I also have dysphoria, discomfort with my body. I'm not sure how I could admit this to my parents. They're bigots which terrifies me. I use they/them pronouns. Most of my friends are aware of this.'
Embry digests this information. This would explain the answer to his question when they first met. Reagan doesn't write for two years.  Embry wonders what the got caught up with and flips the page.
'2016
I haven't written in here for forever. I haven't had a need to.
School is going well for me. I'm in my second year of college. My group of friends has changed a bit, but I still know and sometimes see Yvonne and Blake. I broke up with my ex girlfriend of two years because our relationship had no end goal, and she had become too invested in her own business to spend time with me.
Oh, there's a sweet guy at my school, in my English class. I talk to him occasionally. He seems a little reckless, but he's intriguing. He likes to skateboard. He has an odd name.  His name is Embry.'
Embry blinks and re-reads the passage. He looks up.
"What is it?" Reagan questions.
"It's nothing, well, it's just, we knew each other before." Embry answers.
Reagan raises their eyebrows and goes back to reading.
'I discussed with him about a book I was reading. I recall saying something similar to, "It's about someone traveling the world and... and how they discover themself. They realize that they want to go back home, but they don't have any home to go back to." He replied, "Sounds like a crappy book. Why did you choose to read it?"
I told him the main characters situation was so close to mine, there was no way I couldn't read it. He nodded and went back to his work. I'm not sure if he was actually working.'
"Knowing me, I doubt I was." Embry accidentally says aloud. Reagan looks up again.
"This is wrong", Reagan says, "because nearly all of this is personal. I thought you would be talking about your favorite comics and skateboard tricks the whole time... but I skipped to a year before this experiment. This is personal. It's about your family, and it's about you. And it's about me. But I remember more, mostly about you. Some about my family. God knows I despised them but..."
"I should stop reading." Embry guesses, as he closes Reagan's diary.
"Yes, and I'll tell you the story of how we all got here."