Hey there! I wrote this short story back in December and just came across it in my story file recently. I had fun writing this and got a laugh or two out of reading it again so I thought I'd share it. I hope you enjoy!
Let’s be honest here, he was a cool dude. He was dressed dapperly in an all black suit, black button up shirt, and a black tie. His hair was messy enough that it looked like he didn’t care at all about his appearance, but styled enough that he’d probably spent half an hour getting it to be perfectly ruffled. On his face he wore one of those smirks that let you know that he was easily amused and that he wanted you to think he was smarter than you about every single aspect of everything. The dapper look was only half of his coolness though. His attitude was so cool that when he walked down the street you could feel a tangible suaveness in the air around him. His feet in those shoes that could have worked at a formal party or for running on the roofs of buildings danced down the sidewalk with a swagger in his step. The way he slid aviator sunglasses onto his face (to hide any sloppy emotions that his eyes might give away) was so slick that he could do it while simultaneously walking and reading a text from his phone. He spoke to people politely, but there was an edge to his voice that told you the moment he stopped being polite he would make you feel like dirt. Most people felt like dirt when standing next to him anyway. He was cool obsidian and everyone around him was gum on the bottom of a shoe. Not his shoe, of course, he was too smooth to ever step in gum. His presence was ridiculously unsettling. No one wanted to feel like old gum. Everyone wanted to impress him when he stepped into a room. Backs straightened, chins lifted, hands were thrown in pockets, and surfaces were leaned on in an attempt to look casual. When he didn’t even glance at anyone it was clear that he was not interested in their brief facade of confidence. That’s exactly what happened when he strolled into the Coffee Cave during my morning shift that fateful Wednesday. I was frantically trying to restock the lids when he came in, but I didn’t see him for a moment. The lids were giving me a hard time and I was beginning to get frustrated with them and worried because the customers were starting to harass my shift partner, Sadie, about getting their orders so that they could get to work. None of those orders had lids yet. Everyone went dead quiet when he walked into the little shop, but I still didn’t look up, glad that there was some silence as I was trying to get the darned lids to stay in their dispenser. When I finally did glance up I was so startled by his presence that I made the mistake of loosening my hold on the lids. The spring in the dispenser shot forward and fired coffee cup lids onto the floor. Which seemed about right because it is always when you want to put your best, coolest self forward that the awkward clumsy part of you decides to rear its head. I was just glad that I hadn’t spilled cappuccino on my apron or had another run in with the Evil Whip Cream Spray Bottle of Doom. Sadie hissed something at me and I quickly stooped to clean up the lids. Except, that wasn’t what Sadie had told me to do. She had told me to forget the lids and just work on getting orders filled. So I kicked the lids and did as she asked, trying not to stare at the pure coolness that had walked into the Coffee Cave. Other people were trying not to stare, I could tell. We were all pretending that we hadn’t just been graced by the presence of suavity incarnate. And he was pretending not to notice our menial existence. Actually, he might not have been pretending. No one else in the building was anyone worth paying attention to. When he finally got up to the register to make his order, the music over the shop speakers changed from the usual peppy-indie-feel-good drivel that drove me crazy day after day. Instead of listening to some hardly known artist singing about how she was going to make the most of her life, we were suddenly listening to music with a beat that you could just picture the guy walking down the street to, possibly while causing his enemies to disintegrate into ashes of boringness. It was the kind of music that made me wish I’d worn my combat boots to work instead of the no-slip, old person, velcro sneakers I had on. Combat boots would be much better for walking around with this music playing. “Welcome to the Coffee Cave,” Sadie said to him. Her expression was a mixture of a tight smile and a wince. It was like her face muscles did not know how to react to the man in front of her. “What can I getcha?” “Hmm,” he looked at the chalkboard menu behind her and then glanced at me as I clutched a bottle of caramel sauce. I clutched it too hard and it made a wheezing-fart sound before spitting a blob of caramel onto my chin. He winked at me and I hastily looked away, firing the caramel sauce into the intended beverage and wiping my chin off with the back of my hand. “I will have a large cup of black coffee, decaf,” he said. His voice was so smooth that I swear the whole shop leaned in closer to hear more of his speech. He had a British accent, of course, because there is no place on this earth that produces a more awe inspiring accent than Great Britain. “A large black coffee, decaf.” Sadie blinked at him in confusion, though I don’t know why. Obviously this guy would not get a drink with any frills. And caffeine was for losers like the rest of the human race who needed coffee to stay awake. He was clearly already awake. He probably just wanted the coffee for the bitter taste. “That’s what I said, love,” he chuckled. “What does that come to?” Sadie blinked once more to get her mind back on track and finished the transaction. “Uh, what’s the name?” She asked, getting a large cup and her Sharpie. “Jax,” he smiled and his teeth were perfectly white and straight, “with an ‘X’.” I think everyone took in a collective breath as if to inhale the beautiful absurdity of the unusual name. Sadie scribbled it onto the cup and passed the little paper vessel to me to fill. Even though I had other orders that I was working on. Even though there were several people who needed their drinks before he did. Needless to say, those drinks were ignored while I prepared a large black decaffeinated coffee. When the cup was filled I got a clean lid from the back and put it on. Reverently carrying the drink over to the spot where Jax with an X was meant to pick up his order, I did my best to avoid eye contact, knowing it would inevitably lead to tripping or spilling. When I was at a point where there was no way an accident could happen, I held out the cup to him and, with a trembling voice spoke his name to the crowd even though we all knew who the cup was for. “Thanks,” he leaned forward and peered at my name tag, “Sheryl.” “You’re welcome,” I said. It was at that moment that I meant to release the large black decaf coffee into his hand, but his hand wasn’t were it was supposed to be and I missed. My fingers no longer held onto the cup, but he wasn’t holding it yet. The coffee dropped as if in slow motion and I was sure it was going to hit the floor and explode everywhere, but at the last second his foot shot out and balanced the coffee cup on the toes of his leather shoes. This time the gasp in the coffee shop was audible. “You’re a clumsy one, aren’t you?” He laughed and, on cue, my face turned the color of a tomato and felt like it needed a good dowsing from a fire extinguisher. With the skills of a World Cup player, he flung the steaming hot beverage from his foot and caught it in his hand. He then took a long drink from it, which made me wonder if he was even mortal. The cup said “CAUTION, CONTENTS HOT” for a reason. “For your troubles, love,” he said as he dropped a twenty in the tip jar and I could see it was folded into an origami crane. Because he couldn’t just leave a tip like a mere human, he had to do it in a way that demonstrated that he was so sure of himself that he was not ashamed to do a delicate paper folding art. I think I saw another customer swoon. “Thanks,” I replied, dumbfounded by his enormous tip. Most people just dropped their change from their cash transactions in the tip jar, but I think we’ve established that Jax with an X is not most people. He winked again and did a finger gun in a non-ironic but somehow still hip way. Just like that, he was headed for the exit of the shop and probably also the exit from our menial everyday lives. We had been visited by awesomeness and no one in the Coffee Cave felt like their lives would ever amount to anything even a fraction of whatever his life must have been like. He opened the door and I spotted a large black dot slowly fall on a thread down toward his face. The dot could only be the huge, black spider that lived above the door that all of the staff pretended was dead so that we wouldn’t have to deal with it. Perhaps we would no longer have to even pretend. Jax with an X would surely slay the arachnid before he parted ways with our humble establishment. Except… he didn’t. The spider crawled down its web and landed peacefully on Jax with an X’s face. Both the spider and the man were still for a moment and then the man turned back toward us and we could see the creature on his nose. “Excuse me, Sheryl?” he said to me. “Yes?” I answered breathlessly. “What is on my nose?” “A spider, sir.” “A. Spi. Der?” “Yes, sir.” The sound that emanated from Jax with an X’s mouth reminded me of an internet compilation video that featured the famous screaming goats. It echoed through the building and shook us all to our respective cores. As the shrieks continued, his arms flew into the air and the coffee that he had so nimbly caught erupted and splashed on the floor and on the man as well. Luckily, the coffee hit the spider and it flung itself from Jax with an X’s face. Unluckily, Jax with an X was too busy running in panicked circles to realize that the spider was gone. He continued to scream at the top of his lungs and his hands brushed at his face furiously. When he finally saw that the spider was on the ground, he leapt onto a table with all the grace of someone who spent hours learning parkour. The table really wasn’t meant to be leapt on, however, and it tipped over. Jax with an X went sprawling on the floor and landed inches away from the spider, causing more screaming. Unsure of what to do with the coolest man I’d ever seen wailing like a toddler on Santa’s lap at the mall, I cautiously made my way over to him and stepped on the spider, twisting my foot a bit to make sure the deed was final. The screams stopped and Jax with an X, who was now covered in coffee and whatever dirt had been on the floor, quickly got to his feet and swaggered out the door without a look back. The Coffee Cave never saw him again.
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