Starbucks
The alarm rang bright through Trina’s apartment and she struggled to open her tired eyes. Living off of three hours of sleep was not doing well for her and she almost did not drag herself out of bed, but remembering that her job was waiting was all the motivation she needed to get up. She grumbled to herself as she opened her fridge, sighing as it only contained a couple of bottles of formula milk and decided to skip breakfast, instead telling herself that she would pick up a muffin or something from Starbucks.
Slowly she walked over to her bed, smiling as she watched her baby sleep, he was only two, and slept in the same bed as her because she did not have enough money to buy him a cot, and had spent many nights scared that she would crush the tiny baby in her sleep.
What she did not count on was the fact that she would not be getting any sleep anyway, the crying baby keeping her up half the night. She attended her classes with the baby attached to her chest, struggling to get her degree, look after her child and work enough to be able to stay in college after her Jewish father disowned her for having a bastard child with an unknown father.
The father was known, she asked him if he wanted the baby and he said no, but did not want her to feel pressured into abortion. One day she would tell her little Jason who his Father was, but until that day, Marvin was a babysitter for when ever Trina needed him. She would have happily married Marvin except for the small fact that he was gay. He was still in that phase of saying he was bisexual when he slept with Trina, but came out not too long afterwards.
“Come on sweetie.” Trina said, picking Jason up from the bed, he was still half asleep and began to cry lightly, tiny sobs to signal how tired he was and Trina quickly gave him one of the bottles of milk, not even bothering to warm it up. She held him on her hip and left her tiny college apartment, she was lucky- after having the baby her college room mate moved out into her boyfriends apartment off campus, so she had the small room to herself and Jason.
She walked quickly to her old beat up truck, sitting Jason in the back baby seat and strapped him in, making sound effects as he burbled and giggled. “Mummy biscuit.” He said as she sat in the front. She sighed, rooting through the glove compartment.
“say Please Jason.”
“Please.”
She passed him a digestive and pulled out of the parking lot, pressing play on the dashboard, and the cassette of ‘Itsy bitsy spider’ began to play, Jason doing the movements in the back. The Starbucks was only five minutes away, and Jason was already almost asleep again by the time they got there. Trina parked the car out the front, unlocking the large metal grate and pulling it up, she opened the door, the loud alarm waking Jason with a start and the cacophony began. Baby crying and Alarm blaring. She put him down behind the counter, chucking his favourite teddy bear at him and ran to the backroom, putting the code into the alarm system, trying to calm down as it came to a stop.
Trina hated working the five am shift, no one came in, which made it a good time for her to study, but it also meant that her sleeping schedule was messed up. She tied up her green apron and turned on all of the machines for the morning and got out her books and a couple colouring books for Jason. He gurgled quietly in the corner, making curious noises as he worked, and Trina making herself a coffee and a muffin. She then went back to making notes on her previous lecture, making large spider diagrams and bright pictures.
She was half way through her coffee when Jason began to cry again, and she picked up the boy, holding him on her hip and rocking him up and down as she shushed him.
“Umm, hi?”She looked up to see a man looking somehow incredibly awake for five thirty in the morning “are you open ?”
She instantly put Jason down, knowing she was not meant to have him at work and he continued to cry on the floor.
“Yessir, what would you like?” Her mind instantly drifted to the bags under her eyes and the unkempt nature of her almost curly hair that she did not have time to brush this morning, wondering if the decently attractive man would notice her flaws.
“I’d like a hot chocolate.”
“Anything else mister?”
“No thank you, have I seen you before?”
He started to make small talk as she started making his hot chocolate, she flurried around the kitchen, trying to calm Jason as she frothed the milk.
“I do morning shifts here, although no one ever comes in. How do you look so… awake?”
The man laughed “If you don’t sleep then it doesn’t catch up with you, Trina.”
“How the… oh name badge right, but I do recognise you… what name do you want on your cup?”
“Mendel.” The man pointed at the work on the bench, “what are you studying?”
“I’m taking maths at the college… wait do you do student council?”
“Yes I do! You must be the girl who had a baby!”
Trina blushed slightly,” does everyone call me that? I’ve only got a year left.”
“You’ve done the whole two years with a baby?”
“Yeah, got pregnant first term and almost went into labour in my finals.” She poured the powder into the milk, stirring it aggressively as Jason continued to cry. “Here baby-“ she passed him another biscuit from her purse and he quietened as he began to nibble at it. She wrote Mendel’s name on a cup and poured the rest of the hot chocolate in, passing it to him.
“Bye Trina.”
“Bye mendel.”
He came to the Starbucks every morning after that and always ordered a hot chocolate, getting to know Trina. She always wondered how he looked so awake considering the fact that he did not even drink coffee, and they soon bonded until one day he asked her on a date, anywhere other than a coffee shop.
years later they married, Having a second child together, Trina working as a maths Professor at a nearby university, and Mendel working as a psychiatrist at the local children’s hospital.