While Austin was relieved to discover that the new coffee shop was completely unrelated to Ashley's recent place of employment, he had arrived considerably earlier than he had planned in his rush to get away from his mother. Consequently, he stood out front. He didn't want to go in without her, but after just a few minutes in the mid-morning sun, he was already sweating through his golf shirt.

The new coffee shop, a first-time entrepreneurial effort by a not-quite couple, was in the same place as the old coffee shop, but with a new vinyl sign replacing the old vinyl sign announcing new ownership back when the old coffee shop was still new. For some reason, mid-thirties ambiguously associated couples fresh from the city tended to gravitate towards taking their turn at running the coffee shop, each adding a bit of their own attempted aesthetic but only removing a little of the previous. Hence, the place felt like a particularly comfortable flea market. Still stalling he stood reading the menu completely, as if he might order something other than just regular coffee. Because nobody else was waiting, the barista watched him read everything through completely, check his phone screen, glance out the front door again, and finally step up to the counter to order. “I'll just have a coffee, please.”

The barista, a little green-haired girl he only knew from around the school halls, looked him over briefly and smiled mechanically. “Is that it?”

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He glanced down at the glass pastry display, suddenly uncertain. He pointed at something triangular and sprinkled with sugar. “And one of those.”

She smiled and set a saucer on the counter. An empty mug manifested beside it. A moment later the pastry appeared. The mug was filled, and the little green-haired girl smirked, amused to see a graduating senior getting flustered over a date. She rolled her eyes at him when he fumbled for his wallet, and he blushed more.

The coffee shop was mostly empty. A couple of middle-aged mom-type women sat at a little table in the corner and a lone middle-aged guy hunkered over his laptop, typing away. The tables looked too clean and neutral, too business-like.

The couch looked comfortable but soft and overstuffed it was built too low to the ground and he was hardly seated before he realized that it would be awkward standing up again. He managed to set his coffee and pastry plate on the table without spilling much. Slightly wary of the green-haired girl's smug gaze, he decided to settle in and just try to look cool. Leaning forward he picked up the strange wedge-shaped pastry with the sugar sprinkles on top. It seemed hard like a cookie, but fat like a biscuit or something. When he took his first bite it crumbled to a landslide of edible gravel spilling down the front of his shirt. Stunned, he glanced up to catch the green-haired girl stifling a laugh. He picked the wreckage of his pastry out of his best shirt as Becca came drifting into the coffee shop as easy as a Santa Ana breeze.