Tea For Two

11

"I moved here from New York. Upstate, yes, but I still recognize the smell of coffee in my sleep."

I sigh.

"Okay, so I was lying and being sarcastic."

I sit up and Emily unwinds the blankets from her body and spreads them across both of our legs. We must look like a little old couple. I smile goofily at the thought.

"What?" she asks, cuddling just a bit into my shoulder, smiling at me like I'm the best thing that's happened in her teenage life.

Or maybe I just think she's looking at me like that because that's how I'm looking at her.

"I'm just really happy," I say, smiling at her.

"About what?"

"You."

I kiss her again, slowly, and I feel her smile against my lips.

"And that's what I get for dating a sappy, tea-drinking southerner," she teases me.

"And you love every sappy, tea-filled minute of it."

"Speaking of, is that tea next to my alarm clock supposed to be drunk cold?"

"Ah, no. Hand it over?"

She obliges, taking out the tea bags and tossing them underhanded into the small trash can across the room.

"Nice," I comment.

"Yeah," she says, shrugging. "It's like I practice a lot or something."

"Yeah, like you're on a team devoted to throwing stuff," I agree in a fake stoner voice.

She takes a sip of her mug of barely warm tea and pulls a face like she's sucking on a cough drop. She sticks her tongue out like a little kid who's being forced to eat spinach. It makes me laugh.

"What, did your silly southern girlfriend brew the yucky tea too strong for you?" I tease.

"No, my silly southern girlfriend didn't sweeten the strong tea she brewed for me, because she's lazy as hell, and refuses to buy her own sugar."

"You know you love it," I say, snuggling up to her.

"I don't know, Aug," she says, faking a big, pensive sigh. "This sugar thing may just be a deal breaker."

I try to keep the straightest possible face as I deliver the next line; I've watched Nicolas Cage do the very same thing in countless movies, so I figure I can do it now.

"So. It has come to this."

She shakes her head, rolls her eyes, and calls out her door.

"Mom!"

"Yes, Emmy?"

I snicker a bit at her expense, elbowing her in the ribs just a bit, echoing 'Emmy' quietly. She hates that her mom calls her that, but I actually think it's kind of cute; my mother's nickname for me is "August". She's a creative woman, my mother is.

"Could you bring us the sugar, please?"

"Okay, sweetie."

Her mother walks in and smiles at me.

"I see you woke up Sleeping Beauty without much difficulty."

"Yeah... Not really," I say as Emily laughs a bit at me.

"No?"

"I may have hit her upside the head," explains Emily.

Her mother laughs.