Coffee Shop

This is one of the first posts I wrote on this blog, three years ago now, while sitting in a Starbucks.

I’m sitting in a Starbucks waiting for my fiance and feeling a desperate need to be doing something while I wait. I want a book or a laptop or a newspaper like the girl over in the corner. Everyone else here is busy with something while they have their coffee.

Behind me, a group of guys have rearranged the tables and chairs so they all fit at one table. Against the window, a man and a woman have their backs to each other as they sit at separate tables, one reading a book and the other working on a laptop, drinking their coffees. The girl with the newspaper has the already-read portions stacked on the table in front of her. I contemplate asking if I could borrow them, but that would be intruding, so I pull out a pen and a notebook instead.

No one comes in here just to sit – we all dash in for our coffee and out again to whatever we have to do or we bring something with us to do as we sit here. Except for the people like me, who are waiting for a fiance who won’t show up for another few minutes. And so I have some time to ponder the dynamics of the coffee shop.

Funny, this phenomenon of being busy. There are half a dozen of us in here, all with our coffees and our tables, all lost in our own little worlds. And I, sitting here just drinking my coffee and looking around, am feeling vulnerable because I am not obviously lost in my own world. Someone could see that I am not busy and come up to talk to me.

If I were still single, that wouldn’t be such a bad possibility. I’d be wondering what sort of cute guy would walk in and notice me. Maybe we’d both step up to the bar when the barista called out “caramel frappucino,” and then we’d laugh and try to remember who ordered first, and stand there talking until the second caramel frappucino came, and then our conversation would carry over to a table and the rest, as they say, would be history. Sound like a story? Perhaps I should turn it into a novel and sell it to Harlequin.

Instead of finding someone to talk to, I turn to my piece of paper so that I too look busy and lost in my own world, at least until my fiance shows up and pulls me from my ponderings.