AS YOU KNOW:
there's a new boy in town. But we're going back to an old favorite for this challenge post. A little someone I liked to call the Magic Charms (because he's magically delicious?) or more frequently, Paddy O'Furniture (because Robert created the name). Anyway, the scene:
I, cold and alone, have just moved to Scotland like five days ago. I'm jetlagged and all I want is some hot chocolate. So I step into a little cafe called "Juice Monkeys" and I order myself my favorite cold weather beverage. The person sitting at the counter on his laptop, I noticed as I approached the empty register, was rather lovely. He stood, slid behind the countertop, and took my order and two-pound coin. Then he brought me my hot chocolate.
In the meantime, we had a lovely conversation about how he was Irish and thus reminded me of home in, er, Boston, because Boston is wicked Irish? Anyway. He has these gorgeous cornflower blue eyes that just bore into me. And I have a lovely, blustery morning chocolate. I sit there filling out a postcard to my grandfather while I indulge. When I leave, I drop the postcard in the postbox just outside Juice Monkeys, right near St Patrick's Square (OHSOFITTING).
Ten minutes later, my mother calls me to inform me that my grandfather died a few minutes before. I cry and return to the coffee shop for a few more delicious hot chocolates.
It becomes a ritual for me and eventually, I learn Magic Charm's real name (Paul) and that he is older than he looks (31, at the time). He gets so friendly with me that he lets me choose the music he plays and, at one point, sent me with a tenner for strawberries. To this day, I believe that he was as taken by me as I was by him. We remain in occasional communication and some awkward but endearing IsItFlirting? is prone to ensue. It makes me smile, right?
The lasting legacy of this most lovely of encounters (spanning six months, is it still a mere encounter?) is something simpler and altogether lovely, itself.
Hot chocolate. I can't drink it without hearing Paul clear his throat or picturing the way he'd smile through his hair. I feel the warm, comfortable peace of sitting in Juice Monkeys on a gray winter/early spring afternoon by myself, reading a David Sedaris book and carrying on a fascinating conversation about nothing with him. I drink hot chocolate every day and remember a person with whom I had a lovely, perfect friendship. I remember a feeling of sublime peace and sedation. Every single day, I indulge my desire for something sweet and lovely and simple and with it comes an avalanche of lovely, simple, sweet memories of a time when I ought to have been sad, but instead felt warmth and affection.
