I noticed three things when I pushed open the door at The Morning Buzz. Some guy, cap on backwards, was sitting at a table near the left-hand side window, leaning over his laptop and licking his lips. An older woman, hair highlighted in bright red and dark brown, was sitting at a table in the back, trying to stir her coffee while a cellphone was tucked between her left shoulder and chin.
And Sam was waiting for me, smiling, eyes alert, wearing the red knit dress that she knew was my favorite.
I looked at her, felt the enjoyment I always got when I saw her sitting at the table waiting for me, and smiled back. I walked to the table, put my briefcase down on the chair across from Sam, leaned over, kissed her lips softly. I felt her tongue touch mine, and then disappear.
"Good morning, princess," I said.
Sam's hand touched my face, tugged my beard. "Hi, Daddy," she said. "I've missed you."
I took her hand, squeezed it, put it on her lap, and then ran my hand slowly along her thigh. She shivered, oh so slightly, so barely noticeable that only I would have noticed. "Daddy has missed you, too, baby," I said.
I straightened up, walked around the table and past the over-sized ficus that sat in the middle of the room, and made my way to the counter. When the Buzz was busy, the line to the front door had to split on either side of the tree, and the cashier couldn't see to the front of the shop. That was one reason why Sam and I enjoyed meeting there.
The woman behind the counter saw me, reached for a coffee mug, started to fill it. I had met Sam when she had taken my wine appreciation class, which I taught every other semester at the local culinary school. Sam had been a 19-year-old aspiring chef, sitting in the back row on the first day. She was a small woman, and her chef's whites made her look like a little girl playing dress up. Her hair was cut short in whatever the style had been at the time and she had that damned smile on her face.
Nothing happened between us that semester. I'm too much of a professional, for one thing, and the work was too difficult. My classes usually had 25 or 30 students, most of whom where young men, most of whom knew nothing about wine, and most of whom only wanted to be a chef because they wanted to be famous. My job was to drag the students, against their will, through the wine basics – the major varietals, food pairings, the main wine regions. Did I notice Sam? You bet. She was smart and funny and outgoing, and I loved how she called me Mr. Richards when she asked a question or made a point. Was she flirting with me when she did it? Probably. But there was nothing I could do about it.
That was the spring semester. I didn't teach in the summer, and I didn't see Sam when I returned in the fall. I asked one of the students about her, and she told me Sam had taken the semester off to take care of some family business. But I got a call around Halloween, and it was Sam. She was working for a small, but well-regarded, restaurant in town. Would I be interested in helping her boss upgrade the wine program?
Yes, I said, and I did. And I saw a lot of Sam in the process, and all the things that I had thought about when she was in my class happened – and even some I hadn't thought about. Sam was a revelation – eager, hungry, adventurous, kinky, submissive, intelligent. And she adored coffee.
The woman behind the counter pushed my mug toward me. I pushed money in her direction, picked the mug up, walked back to the table, sat down. Sam was stirring her coffee with her right hand. Her left hand, I knew, was in her lap.
I sipped the coffee, and scooted my chair so that, even though we were still sitting on our respective sides of the table, I was almost knee to knee with Sam.
