Lydia stared for a few moments, just taking in Todd – his expression, the slight anger in the set of his shoulders, the way his hair fell around his face, that goddamned dog collar, his expression – oh god, what was he thinking? His face was flat and set, something smoldering behind his eyes while his hands worked politely and his voice rasped.
"Today, you have something new."
Diana poked her head around the doorframe into the kitchen, her curiosity winning over her respect and desire to avoid being caught in the middle. Lydia looked up, her eyes not angry, but rather pleading – what do I do? Diana left.
Todd was adjusting something on the espresso machine.
"So. Um. What am I having?" God, she thought, I sound like an idiot.
"Do you even like coffee?"
"No – no, not really." This is ridiculous. Normal people don’t go into a coffeeshop and order coffee every day and then admit that they don’t like coffee. I should have told him I do like coffee. Shit, but I’m bad at this.
"what do you like, then?"
Lydia interrupted her miental self-flaggelation long enough to hear the question, but not enough to comprehend.
"What?"
"What do you like? Things that are rich, delicate, sweet, salty, sour, spicy, subtle, heady, fruity, chocolatey, crisp, cool, hot, bitter – what?"
"Oh. I – I honestly don’t know. Um." Lydia was thinking dumbfoundedly that she thought only people in books used those kinds of words to describe food. I mean, it was just food.
"You’re trying to tell me that you have no idea what kind of things you like?"
"Um. Yes?" Lydia thought itw as the wrong answer, but that was what she was saying, wasn’t it?
"I don’t believe you."
"what?"
"I don’t believ e you. You have dislikes. You know what you don’t like. You don’t like grease, and you don’t like coffee. What do you like?"
"Oh. Well, I – I guess I do like chocolate."
"Why?"
"Because – well, I – um. It’s sweet."
Todd grunted.
"And I like chinese food."
"Why?"
"Because – because it has this flavor that just stays in your mouth after you eat just a little bit, and it’s – I don’t know. I don’t know the words."
Todd grunted. The grunts did not sound encouraging, and Lydia was trying hard not to panic. When she panicked these days, she took deep breaths – but onceshe had been known to babble during times of stress and speaking incoherantly did not seem like it would be the proper way to win Todd over.
"I – I like. Wow this is stupid. But I like milk."
"Okay," Todd said. "Do you like spicy things?"
"Spicy things? Like jalepeno peppers?"
"Something like that, yes."
"n – no, I don’t, not really, but I mean I don’t eat them much and so I don’t know I could – " Lydia stopped herself with a jerk, like a woman tripping and grabbing at nothing to keep from falling over.
"How about spiced things?"
"Spiced things? What’s the difference?"
"Gingerbread."
"I – I’ve never had gingerbread. I’m sorry, but" Todd looked at her with exasperation in his eyes. Wasn’t apologizing always good.
"What about spiced things? Like gingerbread?"
Lydia licked her lips, nervous. "I – I like ginger snaps," she finally offered, quietly and gingerly.
"Right, then," Todd said, and kept adjusting the machine. Thirty seconds later, a blue mug sat on the counter in front of Lydia letting off a smell entirely different than that of her mocha lattes.
"What –"
"I have no idea if you like it or not. Apparently, you have no idea if you’ll like it or not. However, every day that you come in here from now forward you’re going to try something different until you find something that you like, because what you’re doing now is just stupid.
"Oh. Th- thank you." He just called me stupid, she thought. He just made me a new drink. He just said ‘every day from now forward –‘
"What – um, what is it?" she asked to distract herself.
"Chai latte," he answered curtly, untying the small apron around his hips. "It’s tea," he explained as her perplexed glance didn’t lighten.
"Oh. How – how much?"
Todd turned and gave Lydia a look of such disgust that she didn’t dare ask again.
I think he just bought you a drink, the little voice in her head managed to get in, before lydia grit her teeth and made it shut up.
Just then, reaching out to take her mug, she realized that todd had come out from behind the counter. Turning in surprise, she saw him a few feet away, between her and the door.
"Are you coming?" he asked curtly, coldly, almost harshly. There was something like vulnerability in his eyes.
Wordless, Lydia nodded, wrapping long fingers around her dark blue mug and following todd out the door.

Outside, he settled into a chair turned away from the café and out towards the sttreet, his face in profile to lydia. She carefully set the mug down before sitting down, because that was what she did now, and sat down and turned her chair parallel to his, because that was what they did now. In silence, they looked out at their corner of the world.
It was afternoon now, the fog long gone, but the sky was still a long, unvarying field of white and the light was, indeed, flat.
Although it wasn’t really that the light was flat, Lydia thought almost giddily, as that everything the light touched suddenly lost all pretense of dimension and emotion. The entire view became like a bad drawing from a third-rate artist on the back alleyways of a city, from the kind of artist selling mundane landscapes and unspectacular portraits, pulling on a cigarette with their eyes closed. The smoke wrapped around the pictures, so that when you brought the cheap paper home you would still be able to scent desperation on it. The world was captured in pencil on blank parchment, and imaybe the sunlight was the artist and maybe the sun was the cigarette. Lydia realized she was distracting herself, stalling for time, and that there was one reason she came here.
Taking a deep breath, she decided she needed to steal her nerves – and that it was rude enough to sit here in silence, not doing what she came to do and just apologizing, but that also she had not drunk any of the drink Todd had mixed just for her. Hesitantly, she raised the mug to her nose, smelling spices and getting a bit of steamed milk on the end of her nose. Touching her lips to the porcelain, she decided that it wasn’t really as hot as it could be and took a sip.
It had smelled rich and heady, powerfully spicy. It tasted so, a little bit – but much more than that, it was sweet. It was almost sickly sweet really, twining around inside her tongue like strings of honey, mixing with the taste of spices exotic and mundane – cinnamon, and nutmeg, and some far less recognizable. It was… peculiar.
"It’good!" Lydia exclaimed in surprise.
Todd glanced over, something satisfied in his eyes. "You like it thin?"
Lydia paused. "I think so," hse said hesitatnly.
The pride vanished. Todd turned back to his study of the empty storefront and the gray sky.
"I mean," lydia said, desperate to fix whatever it was she had done wrong. "It’s different, I mean… but it tastes really good. Spicy, and sweet, and milky, and rich, all at the same time. I – I thik I do like it."
"todd made a movement of his head that could almost be a nod, if you looked hard enough , and of his lips that could almost be a pursing, if you were picky enough, and made a small sound that was like the baby cousin of a grunt.
They sat in silence for a few more moments, Lydia too occupiede with slowly and carefully imagining this new drink to notice quite what Todd was doing, todd listening to grently slurping and likcking noises and looking off into the distance, impassive.
Finally Lydiajk set down her drink, a third drunk, and turned in her chair so that she was facing Todd’s side.
"Look," she said, "I – I. Um. It’s like – I mean," Todd had turned to look at her now, his face blank, and she stumbled futilely over her words.
"Shit," she finished.
Todd just looked at her.
"I’m sorry, it’s just – I’m really bad at this."
Todd looked at her flatly. "What’s this?"
"I – I don’t know. Conversations. Communication. Talking. Apologizing, asking, begging, guessing, figuring things out. Social interactions. Re-" She stopped.
"What were you going to say?"
"Nothing." Lydia looked down and blushed.
Todd kept looking at her. It was growing quite disconcerting, really.
Taking a deep breath, Lydia decided that forging ahead would almost certainly be better than sitting and waiting in this.. .this… this purgatory. "I – really why I came by today, that is, other than always coming here, because I came on purpose today, if that makes sense, but look, I’m babbling again – I came to say sorry." Her mouth still open to start her next sentence, Lydia paused, and then fell still.
Still looking at her, Todd waited. His eyes were soft, somehow, but the rest of his face stiff and cold. "For what?" he said finally, on a quiet, cool note.
"For –" Lydia took a deep breath. "Shit. Honestly, I am bad at this, I swear that – just give me a second." She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. "Right. I’m sorry for being a cold frigid bitch and pushing you away and I want to build up your self-eseteem again but I sure as hel don’t know how and I’m sorry for that and that wasn’t what I want to say at all, that was what Sally told me to say and it came out instead and. Shit."
The eyes across from her were now filled with shock and a little bit of fear,as well as what looked to Lydia a lot like disgust.
She quickly fought back tears and, looking at the table, started to speak again. This time, her words were quiet, calm, and measured, despite the slight waver in her voice – stark contrast to the sentences she’d spoken before, where the words tumbled ovfer each other and piled up in giant sticky clumps behind her teeth.
"I’m sorry. It’s been a long time since I’ve dealt with people, truly dealt with them if I ever have, mind. And I’m not very good at it. I didn’t mean to sound like I was pushing you away, not at all, because I don’t want to – I don’t want to at all. I just – I am curious, and I truly don’t understand why anyone would want to be around me. that’s not an excuse," she said a little m ore quickly, eyes flitting up to glance at Todds before falling back to the table, "or a plea for pity, but just an explanation as to why I would ask something so – so – rude. And possibly unanswerable. I’m sorry that I appleared doubtful of any of your answers, and they – I – well. I really do what to – to be with you, to be around you more, and – and get to know you. And I hope, I truly do hope that I didn’t do anything to convince you otherwise. I behaved badly, and – well. I’m sorry."
"You’ve said that several times," Todd said dryly towards the ceiling.
"I’m sorry."
"Stop saying that!" His voice held no more anger.
"I’m – well. Right."
He almost chuckled. Almost.
"Look – it’s my fault to. I overreacted."
"No!" Lydia sat straight up, looking into Todd’s eyes, which had snapped downwards at the sound of her chair shifting beneath her. "No, it’s not, and no, you didn’t – not at all. I shouldn’t have said any of the things I said, and you were marvelous – you said so yourself, you were surprised you weren’t doing anything worse than cursing."
Todd grunted. "I said that when I was upset. It doesn’t count."
"I don’t see why things said when – when you’re upset, I don’t see why they shouldn’t count."
"Entirely too emotional."
"Wouldn’t that be good, though?"
"I don’t see how." There was a slight bitterness in Todd’s voice now.
"But look, usually people have such difficulty getting their emotions across – look at me right now, I’m a mess. But when you’re upset, and angry or sad or frustrated or whatever makes you lose your self-control, suddenly it becomes very easy to let somebody else know your emotions – everything about your emotions."
"But should they? How can knowing your emotions help them?"
The sandy-haired girl across from a slightly-less-angry Todd fell quiet, then looked up, something burning behind her eyes.
"I think it’s important."
"To let others see your emotions – all of your emotions, no matter how ugly or unimportant?" He mocked slightly, gently.
"Yes," she said firmly, chin raising.
Todd rolled his eyes and almost answered flippantly, before looking at the determined set of her head. He paused, not moving for several seconds.
"Lydia," he said slowly, and her chin dropped and stared at him as he said her name again. "Lydia, how long has it been since you’ve let other people see your emotions?"
Her chin dropped and she looked away. Slowly, like approaching a frightened cat or a dream, Todd’s hand crept across the cold glass surface of the table. It was discolored, white stains on the textured glass surface, and his fingertips rose and fell with the shape of the glass as they travelled closer to Lydia’s slightly cooling cup.
Gently, he laid his hand on top of hers. Her body stiffened, but her fingers shifted to the side and bent so that he could cover her whole, slim hand in his and tuck the tips of his fingers under her palm.
She still didn’t look at him. Todd didn’t move.
"Do you realize," Lydia said after a while, speakking out towards the road, "Just how cliché this is?"
"Who gives a damn?" Todd asked.
Lydia snorted. "Who indeed," she asked, eyes slowly followig an invisible conversationalist from the storefront, across the street, and to a point somewhere behind todd’s left shoulder. Finally, her invisible partner seemed to vanish entirely as she focused on Todd once more.
"Who indeed."


Lydia finally pulled her hand out, gently, so that she could grip her mug with both her hands. The latte was cooling now, but if she drank it in almost-gulps she could still feel tendrils of warmth.
"you know," she siad, filling the silence, "this actually was pretty good."
"You liked it, then?" Todd asked, his eyes smiling if his mouth did not. "Good."
"yeah, Yeah, I did like it. It was really nice of you to get it for me."
"mmm." Todd watched her for a long time, as she worked on what remained of her drink. Lydia’s eyes skipped about, looking at the sidewalk, the road, the dull sky, the tabletop, at Todd, and then quickly back out to somewhere, anywhere else.
Todd’s eyes simply travelled from Lydia’s face to her hands, and then back up again. Once, surreptitiously, he looked at his watch. Another time he looked at the door of the café as the door jingled, and two couples walked out – and he glanced in the same direction once for no apparent reason at all. His eyes quickly returned to Lydia.
"So," Todd said finally. "What’s your story?"
Lydia started slightly in surprise. "My – my story?"
"Sure."
"um – what do you mean by that?"
"I mean exactly what I said. What’s your story?"
"my life story?"
"Pretty much."
"that would –" Lydia laughed. "That would take rather a while, don’t you think?"
"Bah,m," Todd said. "Time iks a construct invented by the government in an attempt to keep us all under control." Lydia just looked at him, providing no gratifying shocked or annoyed look on her face.
"We have jobs, you know," she said sternly.
"Bah," Todd said as he slouched down even further.
"Look," Lydia said reasonably, "there is simply no way I could tell my entire life story and get back to work in a reasonable amount of time. Nobody couldl. Lives are long. A lot of stuff happens. Telling a life story would have to take days – weeks even."
"Years," Lydia added, "if you told it in realtime.
Todd looked wry. "You’re right then, you’re right. However,," he said, leaning forawrd a bit with a slight trace of a smirk about him, "you left out on emajor option. Actually, you left all your major options, not really pickiing up on anything like that. Sheesh. I mean, Obviously I didn’t mean for a blow-by-blow recount of your entire life in realtime – speaking of which, do you honestly believe you could do that?"
"Me?" Lydia asked. "Yeah. I mean, I proably could. I’ve got a really good memory. "
"Wow," Todd said. "I definitely couldn’t – not in a million years. But that’s hardly the point.
He took a deep breath. "So you can’t tell the whole story, and no, you