She claps her cell phone shut yet again, disheartened at the empty inbox.  She begins to get used to seeing just her background screen, too used to it, a type of ‘used to’ that hit ‘hate’ quite a while ago.  She had now been waiting for him inside Starbucks for forty-nine minutes, even though she showed up forty-nine minutes early.  Along with her restless impatience, her mind briefly drifts to her Mom’s reminder, calling out, “Don’t forget the strawberries!”  Just after nine o’clock at night, she rationalizes that the strawberries and her mother would just have to wait till Costco reopened at ten tomorrow.  That’s just the way things seemed to work out on this particular night.  Yeah.  Rat-a-tat-tat.  Again she taps her fingernails on the generic-looking café table so characteristic of the countless coffee chains in town.  It’s that formulaic-looking wood, the mahogany-type color that looks authentic and original but is actually really phony and clichéd.  She saw it in Starbucks after Starbucks after Starbucks.  Nothing changed.  Who really has this kind of taste anyway? She scowls to herself.  “Fucking suburban sprawl,” she mutters under her breath, only to catch the man that resembled a better-dressed version of Woody Allen stealing glances at her.  For some reason, strangers she came into contact with only slightly nevertheless freaked her out, but only because the awkward line between polite disregard and faint acknowledgment was clearly blurred.  It drove her nuts, possibly due to the fact that she played a sort of mental ping pong game of the possible motivation for the actions of complete strangers around her.  She didn’t know.  These things just happened.  Rat-a-tat-tat.
    It had been more than a freezing day, and it had been all the more emphasized when she had fifty-three minutes earlier waited impatiently for her mom’s Ford Taurus to warm up and defrost for the less than four minute drive to Starbucks.  She of course strategically wore the Sweater He Gave Her, but she was still practical.  She prided herself for anticipating this kind of frigid weather, having smartly layered a fitted tank top, a cotton t-shirt, the Sweater He Gave Her, her mom’s Michigan State hoodie, and her black Old Navy pea coat.  Even though she knew the pea coat wasn’t really all that warm.  She didn’t understand why so many people wore pea coats anyway.  A layer of felt with a flimsy, polyester lining as a poorly designed defense to win the case against the bitter argument of winter was useless and just so pathetic.  “I should probably buy a new coat soon.  Maybe I’ll go to Old Navy or something.  Mom said they’re on sale at Marshalls, maybe I’ll go there.   Yeah.  Then I’ll have a good coat to last me.  Yeah.  That should be good.  And she wants strawberries.  From Costco, right.  Open tomorrow at ten.  Alright then.  Ok.”  Rat-a-tat-tat.
    In the generic wooden chair at the generic Starbucks, she shifts uncomfortably, the now unfortunate victim of wearing far too many layers once indoors.  She criticizes the corny furniture again with her drumming fingernails.  Rat-a-tat-tat.    She fidgets in this unplanned for heat, itching to remove the bulky, claustrophobic layers.  She’s ready to remove some of them, so she pretends to crack her neck, but only to check to see if Woody Allen would allow it.  He focuses on his tea—no wait she remembered, it was a VENTI SKIM NO WHIP NO FOAM LATTE-- and she removes the pea coat and the Michigan State hoodie as fast as she can before he realizes what she has just done.  Luckily, unbeknownst to Woody Allen, she haphazardly triumphs in her task.  She breathes a sigh of relief at this.  Ok.  Rat-a-tat-tat.  Now it dawns on her that she is sitting stupidly with the Michigan State hoodie and her pathetic pea coat all twisted in her lap, begging to be gracefully draped on the back of her generic chair.  With careful yet swift planning, she places Michigan State behind her on the seat and gracefully drapes the coat on the back of her generic chair.  She let out a deep breath.  Ok.  There we go, that’s better.   Rat-a-tat OH MY GOD
    Her insides dropped to the floor as she sees him in her peripheral vision swing open the glass doors and advance to her table.  This was it.  In one fell swoop, her body does the talking.  Her stomach vanishes, heat floods her cheeks and neck, and a sickly cold sweat bursts from each of their respective gland points on her body.  She forgets in that moment how to act like a normal human being.  Taking a slow, secret whoosh of inward breath, she coolly pretends not to notice him until after already having taken a few steps towards her.  Finally, but nevertheless nonchalantly, she looks at him   Oh  The guy passes her table and takes the seat across the room, embracing Woody Allen.  False alarm, it wasn’t him.  Whew.  Rat-a-tat-tat.  Ok.  Damn that was a close one.  Right.  Better check the phone again, y’know, just in case she didn’t feel and hear the blatant ‘vibe & ring’ setting adjusted to the highest vibrate intensity and the most obnoxious ring pattern possible.
    She fumbles through the debris in her cluttered purse for her phone.  Where the hell was her phone?  No, really, she just had it!  She immediately panics, jumping to the conclusion that it is, indeed, lost forever.  Fighting back tears, she empties the entire contents of her oversized purse onto the table.  Receipts, extra change, tampons, gum wrappers, mapquest directions and an assortment of pens and pencils spill onto the table.  Oh my god she swore to GOD she JUST had it it was RIGHT there WHERE WAS IT her phone clutters to the table.  Relief washes over her, and she kicks herself for thinking the worst.  She tries to refuse the embarrassed smattering of tears that have crept into her eyes as a result.  A Tampax super absorbency tampon rolls off the table and onto the floor.  She swiftly bends to pick it up, but he beats her to the punch.  This time, it really is him.  She barely has time to react, but it’s only a fraction of a second before her body automatically responds again to his now very real presence.  With her hand on one end of the Tampax super absorbency tampon, and his hand on the other, she blinks away her former expired, embarrassed tears for her almost lost phone.  He holds her gaze and the tampon, and with the grin that always made her feel far too shaky for normalcy, he begins, “Hey you-long time no see.”