Between the pouring of cups and the breaking of change, my brain had switched onto autopilot sometime in the middle of the recurrent malaise until I saw someone standing in front of me who shook it like a snow globe.

There, standing next in line, was Grant McDowell, the boy I spent four years wanting to talk to and never found the words.

"H-hi C-can I want you a coffee..." FUCK.

I looked to see Rene shoot me a wide-eyed glance.

"I'll just get a mocha." Grant said.

I smiled and nervously chuckled as I fled to the coffee machine and stirred the cocoa and milk together in a large cup.

"Hey good to see you again!" Rene said to Grant over the counter.

"Oh hey, Rene right? How's life been?"

"Eh, same as always. What are you up to? Are you still in school?"

"Well, sort of. I'm only back here to see my folks for a bit of the summer. I actually just scored an internship at MIT in the data science labs so I'm starting there in the fall."

"Nice! So what is that, like, listening in on people's phones to catch thought crimes?"

"Yeah, they've just got me collecting everybody's nudes."

I knocked the mixed drink on the counter.

"Shit!" I exclaimed, ducking to grab paper towels from the rack on the other side of the counter.

"Looks like you botched your dexterity roll." Grant quipped smiling, the first thing he'd said to me that I could remember.

"hah... hah! uhhh... lucky I have a +2 paper towel!" I stammered, starting to frantically wipe up the spill.

"Heh."

"Sorry about that!" Rene said.

"Yeah, I'm in a bit of a rush. I can just take any coffee you've got." He said.

"Sure!" said Rene pouring a cardboard cup full of the Peruvian blend. "Here it is! On the house!"

"Thanks! Nice to see you again."

"Oh, hey, we do a bonfire gathering on Saturdays out in Sunderland! You're welcome to come sometime if you want!" Rene said as he began to leave.

"Yeah! Sounds cool! Maybe I'll drop in one of these weekends!" he called back as he walked out the door.

Rene's friendly smile grit into a grimace of pity as she looked down on me soaking up the spilled mocha that had leaked onto the floor. "Yikes."

"I know! I'm sorry!" I said.

"No, I just mean, I feel bad. You deserve some good luck, you know?"

I sighed.

"Still, now you've got an incentive to come to the thing this weekend! Maybe Grant will show up!"

It's very hard as an adult to really explain why certain people on the periphery of your life can still come to hold so much power over you. Grant and I had never really had a conversation, and if we did I was always the girl next to the girl he was talking to. Grant was smooth, lithe, and rich. The most genuinely charming boy in town. The kind of person I'd wanted to have in my life back then. The kind of person I'd wanted to recognize those same things in me.

But there I was, a 23 year old loser fumbling over asking the order of a man who didn't even remember me.

As I soaked my shame up from the counter, reliving the seemingly neverending worst four years of my life, I grit my teeth and wished for the moment when I was home and fixed on my materials. Back to my workings that held actual promise.