Page 33 of The Faceoff

There isn't.

When I look back at him, he's smiling — the kind of smile that starts at one corner of the mouth and gives the impression of being amused at something he's not going to explain.

“There's no one behind you,” he says.

“I was checking.”

“I noticed.”

“It seemed statistically more likely than the alternative.”

The smile deepens. He pushes off the wall and holds out one of the cups. “I got you a coffee.”

I do not take the coffee.

I look at the coffee. Then I look at him. Two years of working in his grandmother's bookshop have given me a Beau Sorensen file thicker than the one the athletic department keeps, and not one item in that file explains why he is standing outside my building holding a beverage with my name attached to the gesture. Margaret talks about him like he's a saint with a slap shot. The campus talks about him like he's a force of nature with excellent bone structure. Neither version of him has any reason to know my class schedule.

“Why?” I ask.

“Why what?”

“Why do you have a coffee for me?”

“Because you seem like a person who'd be more reasonable with caffeine.”

“I'm extremely reasonable without caffeine.”

“You just checked behind you for a second, Sloane.”

Fair. Irritating, but fair.

“I just want to talk,” he says, and there's something careful in the way he says it, a deliberateness that doesn't match the easy posture. “That's all. I'm headed to the bookshop anyway — going to see my grandmother. Figured I'd walk you.”

“I have a shift.”

“I know. Margaret told me. Four o'clock.” He's still holding out the cup. “You've got time. The Roastery was on the way.”

I should say no. There is a version of this afternoon, a sensible version, where I tell Beau Sorensen that I don't have time, that I don't drink coffee from strangers, that whatever he wants to talk about can be conducted via Margaret like every other piece of Sorensen business has been for two years.

But I'm tired, and Vivienne sat two rows in front of me being brilliant about Chekhov for ninety minutes, and Evan texted me twice before noon, and the coffee is right there.

I take the cup.

It's warm. I lift it on reflex — and the smell hits me before I've thought about it. Cinnamon, rich and dark, and underneath it something creamy and spiced.

Chai.

A chai latte with cinnamon.

Which is — that's my order. That's the exact thing I order at The Roastery, the thing I've ordered probably two hundred times, the drink I get when I want the version of comfort that doesn't require explaining itself to anyone.

I look up at him.

“Margaret,” he says, before I can ask. Reading the question off my face. “She knows what you drink.”

Of course she does. Of course Margaret knows my coffee order, and of course Margaret has at some point relayed my coffee order to her grandson, which means this conversation has been in production longer than I've been aware of it, which is a thought I file under to be examined later and set down.

“Thank you,” I say, because my mother left when I was nine but she did at least teach me that much.