“Elliott,” Junie said. “If you never talk to her, she’ll never… you know…”
Elliott glanced at her. “What? Go out with me?”
Junie laughed. He was such a goof. “No silly, she’ll never stop thinking you’re mute.”
“She thinks I’m mute?”
Junie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. What else was the poor girl supposed to think? “If you’d had several conversations with someone that involved nothing but hand gestures, what would you think?”
Elliott scowled. Just then, Shavian noticed she was being watched, and she smiled and waved at them both. Elliott waved back, but Junie didn’t. “Don’t want her to think I’m mute too,” she mumbled, by way of explanation.
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Elliott said, his eyes trained on the girl.
Junie watched proudly as, after a few more seconds of deliberation, Elliott took her advice and went to talk to the girl. She did kind of hope that he avoided the topic of zombies or Roger’s guns. Impending doom didn’t seem like the best way to start a relationship.
Appropriate though, if you take a more fatalistic view of their potential.
Bob, that’s a horrible thing to say about Elliott, Junie admonished her inner voice. It had started out sounding like her voice, but that was ridiculous: she was already using her voice. It couldn’t be in two places at once. After many mid-mornings of drinking coffee and watching the Price Is Right at the Badger’s Hovel it had begun to metamorphose into Bob Barker, which was kind of a relief. Talking to herself was just weird.
Junie lifted the tactical mug to her lips to take a much needed, fortifying sip of coffee.
Empty.
Junie’s heart beat skipped. She had no coffee.
She had no coffee.
Her eyes wide, she cast about looking for anything that might serve to refill her cup. A Moonbucks, a forgotten coffee cup set down by a shopper with their hands full, a magical coffee dispensing minotaur, anything.
Nothing.
If she were in Seattle proper she wouldn’t have been able to walk out of a coffee shop too fast without bumping her nose on the door of another one, but this was the North Valley Mall. There was a greater focus on shopping here than on sipping coffee, which Junie didn’t fully comprehend.
She had walked ten feet down the hall, back towards the Hovel, before she remembered Elliott. No more could she leave him than he could leave the Tall Non-Fat Mocha. Junie was rarely conflicted, but she had no idea what to do. Her friendship contended with her addiction.
Who says it has to be one or the other?
What do you mean?
Go back to the Hovel, get more coffee, and come back.
But Elliott seemed to be in such a hurry….
Yes, he did when he was thinking with his brain. What he’s thinking with now seems to have all the time in the world.
Junie glanced back at the Dry Otter, where Elliott and Shavian were talking. She was laughing, which meant that either Elliott had turned on the charm, or Elliott was an idiot, had told her about the zombies, and she just had a really good sense of humor. Or thought he did.
You’re right, Bob.
With that, Junie turned decisively on her heel and strode back to the Badger’s Hovel.