Seven: Teacup.

“A simple cup of tea is far from a simple matter.”

-Mary Lou Heiss

A project for gov, a speech paper for English, and three tests (in math, science, and Spanish) to study for: that was the weekend ahead of me, and it wasn't looking pretty. Everyone said that senior year was going to be so easy. Liars, all of them.

I dragged my feet walking into the teashop, and my tennis shoes left soggy, slurred footprints in the doorway. It wasn't too crowded, which was weird, but good, because it meant there was no line for drinks.

The barista on duty was Jenny. She's small, and has a nose ring and big brown eyes and a shock of purple hair on top of her head. Jenny chews gum loudly and sticks it on the bottom of tables as she cleans them, but Krystal keeps her around because of a debt she owes to Jenny's mother, or something like that. I don't know the whole story, or if it's even true; Krystal is prone to making up those kinds of things.

“Sam, my man!” Jenny called as I shuffled up to the counter. She was always so out there, a constant beacon for attention.

I winced at her loud voice. “Hey, Jenny.”

“You want the usual?”

The usual, at least for the wintertime, was peppermint tea. It was my favorite, and sounded like the perfect thing to help relieve some stress. But then I thought of you, and the very first drink I ever heard you order: vanilla bubble tea. I didn't know anything about it, really, but I found myself telling Jenny to please get me one order of that in a small mug.

She looked at me kind of funny.

I tapped my foot as I waited for my drink. There was water sloshing around in my shoes. Everything was dim and homey, and instrumental Christmas tracks were humming out of the speakers. I figured that starting on my workload would probably be a good idea, but it was sounding more appealing to just sit and think for a while, and I figured that was probably what I'd end up doing, anyway.

“One vanilla bubble tea for Sam-u-el.” That was a moment later, when Jenny came out of the tiny kitchen with green-and-blue striped teacup on her palm. She was smiling; she smiled a lot. Except when she was sad, and it seemed like she was sad a lot, too.

I take back what I said about it being uncrowded. That's a lie. It was crowded, actually, it was just quiet. I saw a boy writing music, a girl sketching, a cluster of kids huddled on the couch with textbooks strewn across their legs.

But I didn't see you.

That is, not at first. Because when I was about to check the other room for a seat, I heard a psst wander into the air. It was so quiet, maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was just fate that I looked up and saw you sitting alone at a table for two, your legs crossed and a book spread under your fingertips.

I didn't think this time, didn't hesitate, and when I look back on the moment I'm proud because I didn't let my shyness get in my way. With a purpose and my backpack and a teacup in my hand, I strode over to your table and slid into the empty seat.

You didn't look up. I guess I didn't expect you to, because I wasn't surprised. I just set down my cup, pulled out the Spanish book that we were being tested on, and pretended to read. It was boring; not nearly as amazing as the book that Carolina had tried to take my head off with, which I had stayed up late into the night in order to finish. Really, I was just passing time, waiting for one of us to speak. It ended up being you.

“You know,” you said. Then you paused, as if you were ending a sentence instead of beginning one. Your eyes were still scratching over a page of your book (I couldn't see the title). “You know,” you continued, “we don't know each other's names. And I feel like we should, since we keep seeing each other everywhere.”

You looked up at that moment, and so did I, except that I was startled and you were calm. As far as I knew, you'd only seen me once before. Unless...I felt an embarrassed flush creep onto my cheeks. A hint of a smile flickered in your eyes.

“W-when did you see me?” I questioned, too forceful. I'm not so good at nonchalance.

You smirked, just a little twitch of your lips. “Weren't you the boy at the bookstore?” You reached back and twirled the edges of your ponytail between your fingers. “The one who was messing with the magnetic poetry set?”

Red, red, redder. “Oh, um, yeah.” Swallow. “That was me.” I didn't know whether to be please or ashamed that you had noticed me.

“So what's your name?”

Name. What was my name again? It was stupid not to remember, but your eyes were green and that's such a nice color and maybe I didn't know you but you were so pretty and—

“Samuel Windermere,” I told you. “My name is Samuel Windermere.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Windermere? As in, the real estate company?”

Right. Windermere Realtors; my aunt and uncle used that company to sell their house when my sister and I moved in with them.

“Yeah, I guess so. Like that.” I tried on a smile, and miraculously, you returned it.

“So, Samuel Windermere, huh?”

I nodded. “Or Sam. Just Sam.”

“Just Sam,” you repeated. You tasted the syllables; rolled the words over your tongue and filed them away into your memory. “I like it.”

There was a teacup in front of you, a white one with blue bicycles painted on the sides. You used your pinky to twirl it around by its handle as you brushed back your hair and looked at me again.

“It's nice to meet you, Just Sam,” you smirked. “I'm Ellery Eshelman.”

“Oh, I know,” I blurted, not thinking. Oops.

“You know?” you asked, looking confused.

“Er—yeah,” I mumbled. “I—ah—saw your name on your cup at the coffeehouse in the bookstore. Ellery.”

I added your name as an afterthought, and it sounded choppy and awkward but I liked the way it fell from my lips. And anyway, it made you smile. Or maybe you were smiling because I was making a weird face and you were trying not to laugh at it.

I decided to pretend it was the former.

You leaned your elbows on the table, book forgotten, and rested your chin on the backs of your hands. “That's pretty stalkerish of you, Sam,” you said.

I frowned, feigning offense. "Stalkerish? Me?"

You shrugged. "I guess we could call it something else. Something prettier. Like...perspicacious?"

My heart swelled. Perspicacious: that wasn't even the right word for the situation, and you probably knew that, but it was one of my favorites. I told you so, and you grinned super wide, and suddenly we were listing all of our favorite words and I forgot that once I'd been afraid to talk to you. If I still needed any kind of reason to like you, I'd found it. Any writer girl who reads books and drinks tea and likes words is worth a strange infatuation.

The conversation gradually petered into silence, but not until after one final snippet about the books in front of us:

“What are you reading?” Me.

“The Book Thief.” You. “It's good. What are you reading?”

Your mind, I thought, wishing I really could. I glanced at the cover of my book, squinted at the title even as I butchered its pronunciation terribly.

“Rayuela?” I tried, then wrinkled my nose. “It's not so good.”

Shaking your head, you laughed. I laughed too, softly, even though I wasn't sure what was funny and it was more that you had one of those laughs that people call infectious. We both laughed, for a little while, before gradually becoming quiet. It was a content quiet; a happy quiet. The kind of quiet you find with best friends, not people who have known each other for barely any time at all.

We drank tea and read our books after that, and we didn't say a word. I was okay with that, though, because I would steal glances at you every few seconds. You read a lot like you wrote, with your brow knit in concentration and your lips slightly pursed. Every few moments, you'd lift your teacup to your lips, but your eyes would never leave the page.

It was nothing but a simple cup of tea shared by strangers, but to me it meant much more than that. I wasn't sure what, exactly, at the time. It felt a little bit like amazement. Maybe it was. You looked so windswept sitting there, with your fingers flipping pages and a teacup in your hand and I wanted to tell you so. But that was a weird word to use as a compliment and I didn't know how you'd take it. So I said nothing; I just watched, as usual.

You were so pretty, but I'm sorry to say that the vanilla bubble tea was awful.

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A/N: LOLJK vanilla bubble tea is actually amazing.