Coffee

Daehyun/Youngjae, Daehyun POV

The morning crowd on the train is scented devastatingly with cheaply brewed coffee, meshing in saturated breaths and smears of shoulders. Every morning, amid that faded flavour enticing the darkness adorning groggy faces, I stand with a hand around the dangling straps with my laptop tucked under my arm. I am a writer, so beneath the weary, envious glances of the nine-to-five crowd, I exit at a remote station before the train floods with other workers.

The walk down to the coffee shop by the corner is always a sight to behold. The dainty bakeries and tacky minimarts brew a stark contrast with the old, sophisticated yet casual café. Its mahogany exterior and vintage design leaves its furniture antique in taste, spills of coffee dabbing its dated yet elegant chairs. The barista is a fine, young boy with auburn brown hair and thin eyes, standing behind a counter draped with classic ornaments. The morning mingles with the soft conversations over piping hot caffeine, the luxury of unwinding in the rightfully languid dawn a privilege in our present society.

There, I will sit at the space directly facing the table by the glass, in a small, modest corner beside a bookshelf. For the first fifteen minutes, I put on my glasses and muse over the thrill of the insufferable, romance of the naïve and tragedy of the fallen apart. My fingers tap against the muffled whirrs of the coffee machine, grinding mocha beans into palatable dust.

Then, you will arrive. Dressed in usually a button-down shirt, loose over your broad shoulders and draping over your narrow hips. Checkered, meek patterns, I think the plain white one is best. Perhaps a maroon hat over your head, sometimes a cotton cardigan, always a pencil slipped behind your ears. I like when you wear your black skinny jeans and they map the shape of your slender thighs.

The background indie beats are constantly quiet and relaxing, coaxing patrons to recline into their seats. As you place down your paraphernalia at that one table, the one I have a perfect view of, you waltz up to the counter to order a frappé. I then wait a nerve-wrecking minute, let out a tired sigh and stride up to the counter. You will flash me a beautiful, beautiful smile that makes me forget momentarily the fraud I am for weaving idealistic love stories when my girlfriend left me for Japan. I guess perhaps you did look a little like Jieun when I first saw you, but your name is now imprinted into my mind without any associations; you are an entity on your own.

I know your name. Yoo Youngjae. You bleed colours on a daily basis and paint magnificence through coffee-stained, apple-shaped lips. You tilt your head whenever you are in though, rubbing circles into your palm. You crouch over your canvas on the table, brush sculpting a new universe of love and physiognomy.

I will greet you with a "good morning" with the look of coincidence and adamant denial of pre-meditation as caffeine coaxes the eye circles from our faces. Your toned down voice often jars with my churlish volume, no matter how I try to control it in the presence of someone delicate like you. You say, "Good morning." You will turn back around when the cashier asks you for your order and it changes like the volatile season, while I am consistent with black coffee. You once asked why I stick with that peculiar drink on a freshly roasted Wednesday morning. I told you I like bitter flavours but I did not tel you it is because I want to believe the venom inside me for what I create is concocted and not innate.

As we wait for our drinks, I will watch you from a distance, ruminating over the smell of coffee intertwined with the lavender curves of your back. Sometimes, I forget the bull I write is untrue. All the time, I write about the thousand times we meet and fall in love. And it is precisely this I do not approach you. The dismal fact of writers is that we constantly broach the line between reality and fantasy, and even Ernest Hemingway indulged in a bit of tipsy magic so as to let the words flow less cynically. This is why sometimes I think perhaps I will not be able to tell the difference between curious glances and coy gazes. You are a bit too beautiful for me to indulge in, no matter the voluptuous women from my one night stands and their lingering, lonely fingers. I call you pretty in my mind because that is all a little boy can truly describe of spring blossoms and the gentle sound of March wind.

Today is no different. We have finished our customary ritual of speaking barely and I catch sight of your paint clumped fingernails. My fingers rattle against the keyboard faster because somehow the adrenaline rushes to me and you have been glimpsing over much more frequently. I tell myself the love story between a pretty artist and a sceptical writer is not meant to be, yet it is my bestseller. Tragically, my book already has an end, yet we are nowhere near the beginning.

You rise from your seat. So early? I think to myself. You wind past tables, hips sways towards my seat. My breathing hitches and my heart pounds so fast it regulates the atmosphere to a whole new tempo. You stop and lean down, lush lashes fluttering against porcelain skin fit to put Venus to shame. My words bleed out naturally.

"I noticed," you whisper, "you keep deleting what you write." You glance over at my finger stationary on the backspace key. I nod silently, remaining composed though across different universes in paper, I have, embarrassingly, been inside of you more times than I should be bothered by your state of dress.

"What are you writing?" You smile amiably, settling in the chair opposite me. My throat runs dry as the blood runs to my head and makes me lightheaded.

"Romance," I answer monotonously. You nod quietly, tilting your head one side. The way your jawline trails down to meet your chin is more gorgeous than the rings around nebulous stars.

"Do you need some inspiration?"

I lift my head at this. You smile quite bashfully, darting your eyes away for a moment before gently nudging my laptop close. Bewildered as I am, I cannot cement the moment where you lean towards me and capture my lips. You taste like mocha on autumn days by the fireplace. You taste better than the volumes I have written of our romance sparked from an accidental meeting.

I do not part from you as I rise, crouching so our lips are still connected, and I push you back into your chair. I press you against the seat as the table shakes, my coffee spilling as I savour the sweet remedy of Monday blues through nipping of lips. You whimper as I thumb your chin and slip my tongue into your cavern, angling your head better so our lips can meet like they had always meant to.

We pull away when our breaths demand us too, panting hard. Your flustered state, coupled with half-lidded, hazy eyes and blushing cheeks, sends me into the disastrous, counterfeit repose I always hold around you. By this time, I have leaned all the way over the table, edge cutting into my stomach in a bid attempt to close the space between us. We pant. I fall in love twice today, and many times more.

"I wasn't sure if you liked me," you confess shyly. The eyeliner shaping your large, doe eyes reminds me of my inked fountain pens where I write of your beauty that cannot be encompassed.

I answer your doubt by crossing over, pressing you into the chair again and kissing you once more.