I loved the library coffee joint. I'm saying "library coffee joint" because there's no name for the place. It was completely unassuming in every way and resembled something closer to an airport grab-and-go than anything else. A no-frills menu and three small aluminum tables. At any number of hip urban joints, I could easily have gotten flustered by choice. With a guy like Alex, I might even go so far as being distracted by making a "trendy" selection to make a good impression. In the library coffee shop with no name, sign, or owner, it was a plain coffee, add-your-own-shit affair - or a latte if you were feeling really inventive that day.
Not only that, but just across the way were the faculty stacks. In the same way that The Slice appealed to me, the library basement did as well. By 7PM, the upper floors were still hopping with activity, full study rooms, and scrambling for the best seats. Down here, some of the fluorescent lights hadn't even been turned on yet for the day - with the day almost over. Ghost town status. A lone cowboy might giddy-up through, a TA sent from a far-flung office to retrieve a manuscript.
I was just really getting into my musing about the library as an old Western, imagining the wide hallway into a dusty main street when my eyes focused in on Alex, striding down with his bag over his shoulder. If there was something so purely opposite a Western fantasy, it was effortlessly fashionable Alex.
That night at Pine Drive, he had been so unassuming. Either the distracted party atmosphere had taken away his magnitude, or the lonesomeness of the library emphasized it. Now, he looked to have been plucked from a GQ ad. In spite of that, though, he wasn't pretentiously 'done-up.'
It was that effortless. A casual plain button-up tucked into fitted chinos, it wasn't that he looked Hollywood, but he certainly didn't look Tuesday-at-the-library either. It was simultaneously comforting and alienating: he was so approachable and distantly beyond me at the same time.
I brightened at the sight of him, sat up straight from my slump at one of the tables, and gave a half-wave. He brightly smiled back. As he walked and took the seat across from me wordlessly, I admired the perfect brown quiff of his hair, clean-shaven face, and shining eyes. Can you believe that? In a dark library basement floor, his eyes were shining. Yeah, that's the level of corniness my life was quickly ascending to.
He graciously fell into the other seat and without missing a single beat said, "You look good. Glad to see it. Those beer googles can fool you, you know?"
"Oh, well thanks," I replied, realizing that I was finding it - somehow - more difficult than usual to speak. Regaining composure, I quickly added, "You too."
He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and motioned for me to walk up to the counter with him. "I didn't even know there was anything down here. What's..." his eyes flicked up to the menu board, "uh, good here?"
"Well, I like the chai. If you're a chai kind of guy. Or just the regular drip stuff is pretty good," I said authoritatively. There were few things I felt confident in, but I had an excellent grasp of the extremely limited menu. The chai suggestion was smart - the fact they even had a chai was astonishing to me.
There was a sole barista, a sullen plain-looking girl, behind the counter and she lazily nodded, tapping his order into the screen. When she finished, she put her hand out to take his card.
"Oh, no, I've got him too." He stepped back from the counter, putting his hands in his pocket. I am sure I blushed but may have chosen to block it out.
I stepped up, ordered, and Alex snaked his arm around me to hand her his card. It was so smooth that there wasn't even one second of an awkward dance, or insistence of who might pay, or any of that.
Later, I would think about this interaction. In that situation, my inclination was always to overthink. Should I have been quicker and paid for us instead, as a gentleman might? I could have done it. But in that coffee 'date' - I hadn't thought of that at all. Alex had this way of being so possessive of the atmosphere that whatever he did seemed to just work. In more ways than one, it was a good foil to my less-positive outlook.
I don't want to overthink that kind of stuff. Since coming to college, I've been doing everything to swallow those feelings - that other people were capable in a way that I wasn't at all. Everyone must just be more sociable or more in-tune with their peers, and I was on the outside. Like watching a movie, or observing people in their natural habitat. I'd felt that way most of my life, like an outsider, or sometimes like I might just be a little dumber than everyone else.
Do you know that feeling you often get as an adult, that everyone else knew how to act and be, except for you? I felt like that, but almost all the time.
With Alex, the last threads of that awful knot came undone. He knew what to do, but not only did he know - he made no great effort of it. There was never a sideways glance that said: Really, Connor? You don't know that you're supposed to offer to pay? I hated that glance. Worse, I knew that I was very often just imagining the glance.
So, with a dramatic internal monologue wrapped up in about 20 seconds of waiting for my coffee, Alex and I were off to the races. He grabbed both of our cups and took them to the table.
"So, the party last weekend. Did you have a good time?" Alex got right down to business, apparently.
"Well, yeah. It was a nice night. That's why I thought I'd try to find you." I said, rubbing my thumb in gentle circles against the heat of the paper cup. Fidgeting.
"Me too! I asked around, but nobody knew your name. You must not party much." I glanced up at him, trying to keep a straight face.
"I like that. I like that you don't party much," he added. It felt genuine.
"So, history, right? We never really got into that. Got carried away, right?" He grinned at me, and then pressed on with a dozen questions. I was flattered that he had remembered an off-handed comment about liking history, but Alex continued to impress.
I didn't really feel like I had anything all that interesting to share, but over a single cup of coffee, Alex wanted to get it all out there. We talked about our classes, mused on family and going back home, and even two categories I could really engage on: film and television. Alex espoused a long list of classics, many of which I thought must have inspired his haircut. Somewhere in that conversation, I realized that Alex was not like anyone I had ever met before.
