A New Cup of Coffee
“Can you imagine him standing by the Trevi Fountain in his camo?
Ohmygawd or his dress blues? GAHHH!” Mia grabbed a pillow and smothered her
face in its purple fuzz, dangling her head off the edge of her bed in complete
surrender to her fantasy. Her friend slouched against the headboard, checking
Facebook on her laptop. She muttered absently in reply to Mia, feigning
interest. She’d heard it all before. Scroll, scroll, scro—
“Beeb.” A
muffled voice came from the pillow. Gabrielle ignored it. Scroll. Scroll.
Mia took
the pillow off her face. “GABEEBLE!”
“What,
Mia.” she said after a moment, looking at the dangling fool in cow pajamas.
Goodnight Moooo’n.
“I think I
might die. I can’t even function right now. You know what I’m thinking about? Him accidentally getting spaghetti sauce on
his uniform. I would have to take it off his body to clean it up real
nice.” Gabrielle, “Beeb”, shut her
laptop and laughed.
“You’re right. Even I think
that’s hot. When in Rome, lick spaghetti sauce off an Airman.”
Mia heaved herself back onto her
bed, knocking her phone off onto the floor. It barely missed the bowl of half
eaten Ramen Noodles. “That is what
I’m talking about. ”
Gabrielle’s phone dinged, and
while she texted an answer back—most likely to her boyfriend—Mia gazed at the
map of Italy hanging above her bed. Noticing the direction of her friend’s
stare, Gabrielle snapped in front of her face.
“Hey! What are you obsessed with
more? The idea of Italy or the idea of marrying a military man?” she joked.
Suddenly serious, Mia turned to
her friend, “Beebles. I’m terrified of being stuck here forever. I don’t want
to be small town Colorado girl. I want to travel and see the world. But who doesn’t have those dreams? I already
feel stuck in this town and this state.”
Not knowing what to say to
comfort her friend, Gabrielle looked to the doorway where Mia’s Dachshund, LuLu
scampered stealthily away with a pair of dirty underwear to shred. Mia didn’t
notice. She flopped backwards on her bed and stared at the ceiling.
“Don’t worry about me, Beeb. I’ll
get to Italy, I’ll get out someday.”
***
“Amelia
Aarons?”
“Yes how
can I help you?” Mia swiveled in her work-study office chair without looking up
right away. When she did, she saw a young man dressed in camo, the name “Rine”
on his uniform.
“I think
you got my coffee.”
“Excuse
me?”
“I think
you got my coffee,” he held up a Starbucks cup with “Mia” scrolled on its side
with black sharpie. “You were in front of me in line.”
Mia froze
for a moment as she connected the dots, looking from the cup in his hand to the
untouched cup on her desk labeled “Liam”, and remembered her recent dash to
Starbucks on her walk to work. Realizing she was gaping at him longer than
socially acceptable, she searched for something to say and blurted out, “How
did you know my full name?”
Picking up
the “On-Duty” nameplate on her desk, Liam
read aloud with a slight smile, “Amelia Aarons, Testing Center Support Staff”.
Blushing,
she began to laugh awkwardly while apologizing and tidying her work desk, and
finally picked up the cup of coffee and held it out for him. Liam waited
patiently, looking at the cow sticker on her nametag amusedly, as she regained
her composure.
“My bad. I
was rushing to get here on time.” Mia smiled, the color still in her cheeks.
He smiled,
“No problem. I enjoyed the view following behind you.”
Mia widened her eyes in surprise
at the exceedingly inappropriate comment and started to swivel towards the
filing cabinet, away from him, in disgust.
“Oh God,” he put his hand over
his eyes. “That sounded horrible. I meant the view coming down the hill to this
building. The green trees. Mount Ranier in the distance. I just got stationed
here, and it’s really dry and brown where I’m from. So this is nice with all
the rain and green. And I didn’t mean that
view from behind was nice, but
I’m sure it would be—oh God no. um. Yeah.”
Mia swiveled back to face him,
glad that the attractive guy was also flustered as she had been. “No worries. I
get it,” she smiled. “Here’s your coffee…Were you needing to schedule a test?”
Mia asked stupidly. Of course not dummy,
she thought, he was bringing you your
coffee.
“Well, when does testing stop
each day?” Liam asked, surprising Mia.
“Final tests are done by 4:45
each day, but if you wanted to take one today it’s passed three o’clock,” Mia
rambled off her normal answer to such questions as she clicked around her
computer screen. “So I can’t get you in until tomor—”
“Would you mind if I bought you
a new coffee after work?”
“What?” she was gaping again.
“My classes here on campus are
done at five. I’d like to buy you a new cup of coffee, because honestly, I took
a drink before I realized it wasn’t mine.”
Mia remembered the research
paper she had due soon, the 100 pages of reading due the next day, the pile of
dirty laundry, and her desire to go to the gym to lose those 10 stupid
pounds. Then she gaped a little more and
glanced at the cup of coffee with Liam’s name on it.
She smiled, “Sure, I’d like
that.”
***
Mia and Liam’s
connection was evident from the first time they met for coffee, and it was not
long at all until Mia’s parents were able to tell family friends back home that
she was in a serious relationship with an Airman in Washington State. Liam’s
family in North Carolina was just as pleased with the “lovely girl from
Colorado” their son had snagged. Two and a half years passed—one including a
six-month deployment—and Mia and Liam were still the “perfect couple”, as many
of their friends called them. On Mia’s first day as an official English teacher
in Tacoma, Liam proposed. Mia said yes—it was simple and expected and everyone
was thrilled. Six months after their engagement, Liam sat on the left side of
the couch in Mia’s apartment with her legs across his lap. They both
scrolled—Liam on his phone, Mia on her laptop.
“Remember
when I told you about my dream to marry an Airman and live in Italy and lick
spaghetti sauce off of his body?”
“Yes,” Liam
sighed. “We’ve talked about this before Mia. I tried to get stationed there but
it’s ultimately not my decision. I’m sor—”
“No no no
no,” Mia sat up. “That’s not what I’m talking about this time. I know that’s
not your choice. But look.” She turned her laptop screen towards him and gave
him a moment to absorb its content. Before he said anything, Mia began to
explain.
“Isn’t it
great?! It’s a teach abroad program—in Italy! All I have to do is get a special
certification and apply for a job and we could live in Italy for two years
while I teach English to people. I’ve been looking into it a lot—”
“Mia,” Liam
stopped her. “I can’t just leave my base. You should know that.”
“Of course I know that Liam. My
certification for the program would take a year, and then we would have the
application process and some prep time, and you said you may not reenlist after
your first term. So in like three years, it all works out! We still get to see
Italy!” Liam listened on the couch, taking in Mia’s plan in silence while
staring blankly at a faint ketchup stain on the carpet. When he spoke, his
voice was flat and even.
“I thought we
decided on saving up and going on a big trip there in the future. I thought
when my request for the Aviano Base didn’t go through we compromised and you
were happy with that decision.”
Instantly
defensive, Mia set the laptop on the coffee table in frustration. “Of course I was happy with that decision.
But that was before I knew about this opportunity. Why would we not do this? I get paid to live in my
dreamland with my husband!”
“And what
about me Mia?” Liam started moving his hands around, gesturing as he talked,
the way he always did when he was upset. “I never said I definitely wasn’t reenlisting, it was just a thought. I don’t know
what I’m going to do! Since when do you get to decide that for me?”
“I am not deciding for you,” Mia responded, taken aback. “But I would
hope you still would take my opinion into consideration with such a decision,
seeing as we’re getting MARRIED in four months!” She was instantly enraged at
his response. This conversation had gone completely different in her mind.
“Did you take my opinion into consideration before
this Mia? You just sprung this on me!”
“Oh I did not spring this on you
Liam. This is me considering you right now, bringing it up for conversation—”
“—And you ask why we wouldn’t do
such a thing,” Liam talked over her, not listening. “Well maybe because in
three years we could have a baby, and then take the whole family to an Italian vacation later on—”
“You’re upset at me for
‘springing information’, and ‘making decisions for you’” Mia made finger air
quotes, “but you just brought up a
hypothetical baby? We have never talked about a serious time frame for kids!”
Mia literally threw her hands up in the air in frustration and sat down at the
kitchen table off of the living room. She didn’t even remember standing up from
the couch, but they had both ended up in the adjoining room, Mia sitting at the
table and Liam leaning against the wall rubbing his forehead.
“That’s not what I meant Mia,”
he said quietly in resignation.
She sat silently, chewing on the
inside of her cheek and staring at the table with wide eyes. Liam had always
been so supportive of her every desire, and she the same with him, so why did
he suddenly not support the one she dreamed about her whole life?
Liam stared at Mia’s fuzzy cow
socks he had given her for Valentine’s Day two weeks earlier, wondering why she
had suddenly become so adamant to uproot them completely. A vacation was
plausible, but moving across the
ocean was not something he wanted. In his type of job, it was a wonder he
hadn’t been moved yet, and he was grateful for that.
“Hey,” Liam walked over to Mia
and sat down across from her. “I’m sorry for getting upset so quickly. I
just…really don’t like the idea of uprooting ourselves. And I do honestly like the
idea of kids. Don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I just hadn’t
imagined them in three years,” Mia bit her left thumb nail the way she always
did when in deep thought.
Wanting to avoid another fight,
Liam grabbed that hand, forcing Mia’s gaze up towards his. “Hey, we don’t have
to decide this stuff right now. Let’s focus on the wedding and make these
decisions later when we aren’t so heated about them, okay?”
Mia cracked a small smile,
“Yeah, okay.”
“Love you.”
“I love you too.”
They both meant it.
***
“Beeb,” Mia
sat at gate S4 in the Seattle airport on her phone. “Are you going to miss me?”
“Miiiiiiiiiiia
of course! You’ve hardly even given me time to comprehend this whole scenario! You
planned this whole trip in one month, you crazy woman. I mean, we’ve already
been apart for like four years thanks to your gallivanting off to Washington
for school, but this is totally different. A whole OCEAN will sit between us,
and you know I’m a terrible swimmer.” Mia laughed at Gabrielle’s rant and the
memory of her attempting the backstroke in swimming lessons many years earlier.
“I feel so
grown up. I have a passport and money in the bank, and I’m going off to Europe
for a year—all by myself!” The words “all by myself” rung in Mia’s ears as she
spoke them, and for a moment, a different memory involving swimming with Liam
from last June flashed forward from Mia’s subconscious, bringing with it an
immediate feeling of melancholy. She pushed the memory away and fingered her
boarding pass that would take her to Rome: June 6, Boarding Group 2, 10:45 AM.
The same
words stirred Gabrielle’s intuition. “Are you going to be okay? All by
yourself?”
Mia
exhaled. “Yeah…” she paused and gathered herself. “I just need to get away. I
could have gone home, I could have gone to Wyoming with you. I could have just
sucked it up in Washington. But this just seemed to be what I needed. I hope
I’m right.”
“I think
enough pizza and spaghetti can fix anything.” Gabrielle said, trying to lighten
the mood.
“That’s
what I’m hoping for,” Mia smiled and paused to listen to the announcement on
the speakers. “But I’ve got to go, they’re boarding group one already.”
“Be so
friggin’ safe in your foreign dreamland!”
“I will! Promise. Thank God for
Facetime, I’ll talk to you as soon as I can.” Mia slung her backpack over her
shoulder and walked towards the crowd of people lining up for the flight.
“Love you Meems.”
“Love you
Beebs.”
They both
meant it.
***
Seated on
her plane, Mia opened Facebook once more as the flight attendant requested for everyone
to turn cell phones to airplane mode. She had an obscene number of
notifications. Her “farewell America” post had been liked over 200 times and countless
people had commented their well wishes. She scrolled through the comments,
skimming the names of her well-wishers. Some people she hadn’t talked to in
years felt the need to offer their prayers for safe travels to her. Reaching
the bottom of the comments, Liam’s name and profile picture accompanied a
comment. She stared at the picture of him with his new German Shepherd puppy,
Jimmy, before reading.
Have fun in Europe, Mia.
Especially Italy and spaghetti! I’ll see you when you get back. Buy you a new
cup of coffee. :) Be safe. xo
Mia
smiled—fully, happily smiled—at Liam’s words and felt hopeful about her trip,
vowing to herself to eat a plate of spaghetti for him. She reread the comment
and Liked it before switching her phone to airplane mode.
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