Today's story was inspired by two white flowers in a sea of green and red leaves. Those two flowers, stretching upward and leaning toward each other, each alone yet together in their difference led to this scene.

The smell of her preceded her handshake. Wet leaves and last week’s sheets leaked out under a top note of gas station bathroom soap. The hand she held out was clean, though the shoes she stood in were wet and muddy, and her clothes were grimed and dingy with many days wear.

I shook her hand, and her smile gave apples to her cheeks.

She looked straight on into his face, feeling his dry fingers envelope her slightly damp hand she regretted not drying them more thoroughly. The points of his shirt collar were wearing thin, but his shirt looked freshly laundered and pressed. So many people now a days didn’t bother to press their clothes, relying on their near unwrinkle-ability to keep them looking tidy enough. His was the absence of smell. Aggressively neutral, as if not only were every soap he used unscented, but also his cologne were somehow smell cancelling. Until his shoes squeaked she wondered if he had any personality at all.

“Here we go, you sit here and I’ll drag us over a couple of coffees.”

She didn’t sit, instead rearranged the chairs so there was a puffy armchair next to a straight-backed peg leg chair. She pulled over a low table to the third point of the conversation triangle and wandered off to find something to wipe it clean with.

He stood next to the table, holding two steaming cups by their saucers, one enormous latte and one tiny espresso, both out at the slightly awkward angle used to hand off the cup to someone else.

She laughed, “I see in some ways we’re alike.”

“I’ve never decided if it is a test or a generosity to bring wildly different things for people to choose from.”

“Both,” she said, “which chair do you want?”

He nodded, moving out the coffees, “Which coffee for you?”

Impasse. Neither wanted to choose anything first. Enough decisions had been made getting themselves there.

Conversation and clatter faded as her anxiety focused on which chair, which cup? Would it be better to choose first or take the leftover offering? His shirt stretched at the buttons as he took in the steam, the scent of coffee and wet coats hanging off chairbacks. His elbows ached, just a bit, just enough to remind him his hands would tremble were he to hold the saucers too long. The whole room unfocused and his eyes fixed on the rims of his glasses. Her eyes widened and she plopped into the peg leg chair.

“I can’t tuck my wet feet up anyway. I’ll take the biggest coffee. How do you make your eyes go two directions like that?”

The room popped back into focus, “What?”

“Your eyes, for a moment there, they each skootched out away from your nose.”

“Is that what it looks like? I’ve never seen it from outside. Inside I’m looking at my glasses frames while I think.”

He put both cups down on the table, “I’ll be right back.”

A latte and an espresso were waiting at the counter.

“We can add the espressos to the lattes to warm them up as we go.”