He wondered who would be at the
cafe
as he drove there. He likely would not have come, if it weren't for Hazel. Not that he was meeting up with her there. That would be creepy. He was no longer in high school or college. He was no longer even 23. But it was one of the things that she talked about that stuck out to him.
She didn't say much during their driving lessons. When she would speak it felt a bit untrue. Not that she was
lying
to deceive him, but in fact maybe she was saying what she wanted to be true to deceive herself.
This cafe in town though, when she spoke of it, it didn't feel like that.
"Do you ever feel like you can connect better with people you barely speak to?" she had asked.
He nodded.
"That's what I like about this cafe. I feel like the barista there is my best friend."
Then she added, "nothing wrong with my best friends or anything. I don't want you to take this the wrong way--" deception again.
Hazel asked if he ever had such relationships.
"Yeah. I'd go to the bar and feel like the person next to me just got me. Something like that."
"Exactly!" she added excited.
"But over time I learned that--" he thought about how old she was. Changed his mind on what he was going to say. "-- you learn that there's different kinds of relationships. They all have something to offer."
"Mm," she said. This made Georgie feel a bit self conscious. Like she was unimpressed with what he had to say. And this bothered him, but it was better than him saying what he had originally meant to say.
During that drive Georgie had never thought about going to the cafe at all. It sounded like an interesting place, but it was only once he had the night off the following weekend that the urge came to him. He had just performed his first week as nightshift supervisor. Working those late hours shifted his perception of the evening.
Friday came along, his day off... and he didn't know what to do with himself. He couldn't just stay at home. He felt angsty. Marquis was texting him to hang out but he didn't feel like hanging out with him.
Georgie thought about any other friend he might hit up, but there really was nobody. All these years had passed and now it was normal to just have only one friend that you could reliably call and hang out with. This was how people became old like his parents? he thought.
He was taking a walk around his neighborhood when the conversation in the car with Hazel came to him. He recounted it initially without even thinking about the cafe. His mind was just wandering as his feet took the steps, one by one. Some parts of the conversation he'd think about more than once. Then soon it was just one topic. The cafe. The cafe. The cafe.
After he got back home, he brushed his teeth and he decided to go to the cafe. In the car he felt his phone vibrate and assumed it was Marquis. But he wished it was somebody else. He didn't know who that someone else would be, but not Marquis. While sitting in the parking lot of the cafe he checked his phone once more. It ended up just being Marquis again. He was no longer trying to hang out with Georgie but now just sending him jokes and memes. Georgie turned the notifications off on his phone and then checked his face and hair in the mirror once more. Then he sighed and got out of the car.
