It was 11:28am, and Toby had been waiting in the Starbucks for 50 minutes now. He was reading a dog-eared paperback with a sunwashed cover in the secluded corner of the cafe, stealing glimpses at his phone in between page turns.
Every Starbucks has one, a little corner hidden away from the nosey stares of their baristas. It usually has a pair of couches with worn out padding and a low circular wooden table adorned with illegible graffiti. Couples flock to these corners to fawn over themselves, the privacy giving them the courage to call each other by pet names they would otherwise be too embarassed to repeat in public.
He took a sip of his now Signature Luke-Warm Chocolate, and checked the time on his phone - 11:30am, 52 minutes.
The couple sitting across from him were looking longingly towards the two couches he had saved. No doubt imagining all the sickeningly sweet new names they would be using on each other if only they had the chance. The girl looked up and gave Toby the same look puppies give when their favorite chew toys are taken away from them. He tried to give her an apologetic look back, but she must have misconstrued it as him trying to hit on her because she gave him a look of disgust and turned her chair away from him in a huff. Toby wasn't very good at giving looks.
He let his gaze flow across the cafe and its patrons. It was the usual hodge podge collection of customers that could be expected at any Auckland cafe on a Wednesday morning. Elderly couples gumming away at their quiches. Backpackers or unwashed uni students (they all looked the same) updating their Facebook statuses.
Business men, in fancy business suits, doing business and looking other wise busy. Moms breastfeeding their babies while reading the paper, cool guys with glasses on insi- Tony doubled back to the breast feeding mother. He didn't mean to, but something built into his Y-chromosomes told him to put all his attention towards those breasts, and his body eagerly obliged. He tried to look away, but the breastfield was just too strong. Tits...his one weakness.
The mother caught him staring. Toby braced himself for the most embarrassing boob-related telling off in his life since the time Mrs. Carny had caught him staring at her cleavage in Year 7. But far from admonishing him, the mother instead gave him a wink. A startled and blushing Toby found himself suddenly very interested by the contents of the floor. The mother let out a laugh before going back to her metro section.
Three minutes later, just as Toby had just finished memorizing the topography of the cafe tiles, the mother packed her things along with her baby and left. He relaxed enough to look at his phone once more to check the time. 11:35am, 57 minutes.
Thats it! , he thought. He had been waiting almost an hour now and was pretty sure his blind date wasn't showing up. He stood up, and tucked his paperback into the back left pocket of his jeans, took one last sip of his hot chocolate and left the cafe. The couple hadn't even waited for Toby to sling his satchel over his shoulders before swooping into the now empty seats.
As he made his way outside, onto the rainswept sidewalk of a mid-May Auckland City, he swore he heard whispers of 'shnookums' and 'honey bunny bear' coming from the corner he had just vacated.
"Honey bunny bear"...Maybe his date not showing up wasn't such a bad thing after all.
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Toby didn't go on blind dates often. Infact he was quite vehemently opposed to dating , itself. The idea of two people trying to appear interesting and appealing to each other, while simultaeneously attempting to come across as another, while simultaeneously attempting to hide all their flaws. Toby enjoyed the stage of the relationship where everything is comfortable because the guy knows he can have sex, and the girl knows what the guys penis looks like.
The early settlers of Auckland cleverly decided to build their new found metropolis on and around a series of volcanoes, giving the city a rather steep profile. The universtiy, cinema, and Starbucks were at the top while the viaduct, bars, and train station were at the bottom. Toby put his iPod in his ears, found the first A Perfect Circle song he could - Judith - and went into automatic. He let his feet guide him down the gradient, along the familiar backstreet path he took every evening after lectures.
Botiques and independent brand clothing stores dotted each side of the narrow street. These were the kind of stores that could charge exorbitant amounts of money for a single piece of clothing, confident in the fact gullible and just plain stupid people will always buy 'cool' things . Toby briefly stopped in front of one such store's front window, where they were displaying a plain grey shirt with the words 'Ironic Much?' stencilled on the front. The price tag: $89. He caught a glimipse of his own clothes in the reflection in the glass. He was waearing a gray t-shirt ($15), nice hole less jeans ($49.99), and a pair of Chuck Taylor shoes ($25). His sense of self-superiority at that moment (priceless).
