The Coffee Shop (30 page)
“Bye, Mr. Schwartz.” Mrs. Peterson waved out her car window and pulled into the traffic.
“Yes!” Jerome swiped his fist through the air.
“You playing that thing again?”
“No,” he replied, his eyes not moving from the game screen.
“Jerome!”
“All right, all right.” Turning it off, he slipped it into his backpack and zipped it shut.
“And do you have your seat belt done up?” She turned looking over her seat into the back. “Jerome, how many times have I told you, do up your seat belt before I start driving.”
“Mom!”
Turning back, Mrs. Peterson saw a man running out in front of her.
“What the hell happened?” The man pushed between the people in the crowd as he tried to see onto the street.
“Some moron on a cell phone ran out into traffic.”
A blanket was draped over the man, his hand sticking out from under it, a white cell phone still held firm within its grasp.
Derrick noted Lawrence’s raised eyebrows as he observed him in the rear view mirror. “Yes, Lawrence, it’s me. No someone is not trying to steal my identity. No I haven’t been taken over by some alien force. And no, I haven’t bumped my head and now I think I’m twenty years younger.” Closing his eyes, he held up his hands. “Sorry, Lawrence, I’m not feeling myself today.”
“That’s all right, sir. No need to explain. Where to, sir?” Lawrence replied politely.
“Oh, that, yes.” He laughed, and shook his head. “Take me to…God, I can’t believe I’m going to say this.”
“Sir?”
“Just talking to myself, Lawrence, another one of those things you’ll need to ignore today, I’m afraid.” Looking from the window, he rubbed his lips together. “I need you to take me to…”
Just say it already!
“Just take me to The Coffee Shop.”
Lawrence stared. “I’m sorry, sir. Did you say, The Coffee Shop?”
He couldn’t see Lawrence’s face, but he had a pretty good idea what expression it held just then, and he laughed to himself. “Yes, I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘are you sure you didn’t bump your head, sir?’” He swallowed. “Yes, Lawrence, I’m sure. Take me to The Coffee Shop, please. If you would?”
“Yes, sir.” He nodded and pulled into traffic.
Derrick leaned back, and resting his head back up against the seat, he closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“What? What is it?” He looked out the window.
“Something’s happened, sir. The traffic’s not moving.”
“A truck dropped its load?”
“No, sir. Not sure what it is.” Looking toward the street ahead, Lawrence shrugged. “It appears we may be delayed for some time.”
“Oh, you can take that alley there, go over a street, and then cut across to…” Seeing Lawrence had turned around and was staring at him, he stopped.
“You’ve been there before, sir?”
“No, I just know how to get there from here.”
“You haven’t been there, but you know how to get there.”
“Yeah, I…I think I do.”
“Very well, sir.” Putting on the left turn signal, Lawrence pulled between traffic. Making his way down the alley he cut across. “You’re right, sir. This will take us directly there from here.”
The knot in his stomach grew tighter by the second, and he tried to push the tension he was feeling from his mind.
“Here you are, sir.”
“Already?”
Lawrence just looked into the mirror, and Derrick nodded his head.
Get a grip, will ya. Jeez, you’d think this was real.
Lawrence had started to climb out to open his door. “I’ll let myself out, Lawrence.”
“Sir?”
Derrick shrugged, and sighed. “I’m not myself today, Lawrence. But then I’m sure you already know that by now.” He climbed from the limousine, his eyes turning reluctantly to the coffee shop door.
He’d been wondering about it since the moment he awoke. Did it
really
exist? Did any of it? This place? Her? Only now he was standing before it, this fragment of a dream. This place that existed in a world inside his head, where he had met, dated, married, and then lost the woman of his dreams. Literally, the woman of his dreams.
He had never experienced anything like it, a single dream that had crossed seven-and-a-half months of time. All of it about a woman he had never met. Hell, she probably didn’t even exist, outside of those memories, even now lingering in his thoughts. Hesitating before its door, he steeled himself. “Come on, Derrick. Just do this already.” He grabbed the doorknob, pulling it quickly open as he stepped inside.
The shop was full. There to his left, only one empty table. Both its chairs abandoned in the midst of the crowd. No man spilling coffee down his front. No blonde sitting at the table with the only empty chair. Sighing, Derrick shook his head. “Thought so. Just a dream.” Grabbing the doorknob, he stepped from the shop.
Stretching with all her might beneath the coffee shop table, Annie caught the corner of the bookmark with the tip of her finger. Slowly drawing it toward her she then grabbed hold of it, sitting back up. Tucking it back within the pages of her book, she took a sip of her coffee. Setting the cup aside, she returned to her reading.
Derrick pulled the coffee shop door shut behind him. Walking to his limousine, he paused at its door, staring at it as he tried to push the memories from his mind. The memories of him and Annie.
“It was just so real.” He shook his head, and opening the door he climbed in, pulling it closed behind him. “Anywhere, Lawrence, please.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Sloane.” He pulled into traffic, a blue sedan swerving to miss a cyclist heading straight for him, and he veered sharply left, the sedan then jumping the curb as it smashed into the coffee shop window.
Derrick jumped from his car, running back to the coffee shop. The man from the sedan staggering past him, as the reek of booze wafted around him. Pushing chairs and tables aside, Derrick reached into the mangled mess, grabbing the hand of someone there under the debris. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said.
Pulling her free, he stared down into her eyes. “Annie…”
About the Author
Lauren Hunter is a writer of Regency and paranormal romance novels, with plans to write in a variety of other genres, including time travel, angel, ghost, and contemporary romance, as well as more Regency and paranormal. Besides novels, she also writes poetry and short stories, with her poems appearing in anthologies from England, Holland, and the US. Appearing in a number of The International Library of Poetry’s anthologies, she has received the Editor’s Choice Award and was published in The International Who’s Who of Poetry 2004.
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