Part 3

That particular work day felt like it lasted a week, as Robin ran around taking people's orders and cleaning up after messy customers. She couldn't stop thinking about Ian the whole day. Her manager had even asked if she was feeling alright at one point. She was really grateful that he had taken the time to pick her up. Should she call him when she got off though? Or was that just asking for trouble? She wasn't sure. She balanced trying to decide whether or not to call him when she got off with overthinking about the past as she cleaned out the soda machine.

After that first day they met a year ago, Ian and Robin were together quite a bit. Ian would show Robin around the town and take her to all the secret little places that no one knew about. Her favorite was a coffee shop on the corner of a street of little brick houses. The shop looked like, well, a house. It was made out of the mix colored bricks of white, brick red, and black. It had shiny black shutters and a pale yellow door. And not a single sign that said it was a business. Robin remembered the first day Ian had showed it to her, a few weeks after settling into her apartment. It was about a 15 minute walk from Robin's apartment and when Ian stopped in front of it , Robin just stared at him.

"This is not a coffee shop!" She said

"That's what you think." He grinned.

"Are you planning on kidnapping me?" She said.

"Of course." He said.

He walked up the steps and made a motion for Robin to follow him. Ian opened the door and walked inside with Robin following.

"Ian!" A woman's high pitched southern accent said as he walked into a foyer with all sorts of "Drink Coffee" vintage signs on the walls.  A woman of about 45 with dark curly hair pulled up in a bun came rushing over to give him a hug.

"Where have you been? You haven't visited our little coffee life in so long, darlin." She noticed Robin and said "Oh my, who is this beautiful creature?" Robin laughed and Ian winked at Robin.

"Mama M, this is Robin, she's a friend who just moved here from Miami. Robin, this is Mama M, she's my best friend from high school's mom and basically my second mother. She runs this  "Mama M's Coffee Lifehouse","

"Nice to meet you!" They both said in unison. Mama M rushed to give Robin a hug.

Mama M then proceeded to show Robin around and tell her about the business. The rooms had all been transformed to look like a European coffee shop. There were a few people sitting at tables, some on dates, some working on computers. Mama M talked about how her dream had always been to start a coffee shop, but she hadn't been able to afford rent for it. Someone as a joke told her to start it in her house...Mama M loved the idea and ran with it. She talked on and on about the benefits of coffee. "And..." She added after telling Robin a list of all the good things coffee does for health, "Coffee is just so romantic. Isn't beauty?" She gave Robin a meaningful look and then kept on with showing her around. Robin turned a little pink and looked over at Ian who seemed to be paying a little too close attention to  a painting of a latte. Mama M finished the story of how she started the coffee shop and said "And that my dear, is how to follow a dream. Or a calling, as I would call it. Are you a Christian deary?"

"Mama M." Ian said with a frown.

Robin, who hadn't talked about her faith at all around Ian the past two weeks she realized, said with a smile "Yes ma'am, I'm a Catholic."

"Oh... Catholic folk are nice folk. They believe in callings too don't they? Me, I'm an Evangelical. And I know God has us all pegged for something special. Right, Ian?"  She shot an intense look at Ian.

"Er. Right." He took a moment to look at Robin with a look she couldn't decipher and then he coughed in the silence and went back to looking at the latte painting.

"He forgets. His momma said I'm allowed to remind him when she's not there to remind him. He may think he's a grown up, but he's still got learning to do like the rest of us." She said in a whisper as she lead  Robin over to the counter that was built into the side of the wall.

Robin didn't really feel comfortable talking about someone she had just met with someone she had literally just met. So she changed the subject. She asked why there weren't any signs about the coffee shop out front.

"It's a small town. Who needs to spend the money on advertising when all the people I love will find out anyway? Can I get you something to drink?"

Robin laughed and asked for a caramel latte, Meeting Mama M that day really made her realize what a special place the town was and how God works in mysterious ways.

****
"Robin, STOP."

Robin snapped out of her memory and looked down to realize she had dumped way too much ice in the soda machine and it had poured all over.

"You've been out of it all day. I think it's time to clock out for the night." The manager said.

Robin cleaned up her mess and made her decision. She picked up her phone and dialed Ian's number.

"Hey, would you mind picking me up?

Part 2

Robin must have fallen asleep for the 10 minutes it took Ian to get there because she woke up with a start to Ian knocking energetically on her window. She opened the door and he leaned over her. The Much Ado audio was still  playing away.
"Still in your phase of loving Nothing?" He said.
She looked down and away.
"The play, bird. The play." He laughed. "Ready to go?" He opened the door wider so she could get out.
It took her a minute to realize that he hadn't been making a comment on past events.... Her blonde moments always did come out quite a bit when she first woke up.
But, as Benedick would say, Robin thought to herself, "there's a double meaning in that."
She walked over in silence with Ian to his red pick up truck.  

Ian was one of the first people Robin had met when she first moved to Virginia last year. His family was the one that owned the house her and Kate rented. He stopped by the house to drop the key off for Robin that first day. Kate had already moved in a few weeks before and had told Robin that she was perfectly content to be alone in her room most of the time. So when Robin invited Ian into their apartment that day, it was mostly just them talking the whole day with occasional interruptions of small talk from Kate when she came out to make food. Robin had felt very at home with Ian as soon as she met him. He reminded her of her older brother: taller than her, blonder than her, and much more at peace with life than her. They talked a lot about the city, and how much Ian was convinced Robin would love it. Robin shared that she wanted to be an actress at the famous old Shakespeare theater in town, which was the main reason for her moving there. Ian then shared that he had as much acting prowess as a monkey on steroids. Robin remembered particularly harping on his failed analogy there, especially because just before he had told her he was in a PhD program for lit. He made up for it in her mind by telling her he had fallen in love with Shakespeare in his studies and went to the theater as much as he possibly could fit into his budget and schedule. She had kind of gawked at him when he told her he was in that PhD program, he reminded her too much of Wesley in Princess Bride for that to have sung true to her at first. The more she talked to him that day though, the more it made sense.

Robin thought about that day and how she had thought she had found quite the kindred spirit as she climbed into Ian's red crusty pick-up. True to her word, she didn't say anything...She didn't know what to say.  When they got to the restaurant, she said "Thank you" and turned to get climb out of the truck.

"Do you need a ride home?"

"Oh.." She hadn't thought about it, truthfully. "No, that's ok... That's a lot of driving for you...I'll walk or ... find someone going to my end of town or...yeah. Thanks though. That's nice of you."  She felt the awkwardness in her words hover over both of them.

"Just call me, bird, and I'll come later? Yeah, don't walk in this heat. Wouldn't want the penguin to get all sweaty." He laughed.

"Ok...thanks." She half smiled as she shut the door hurriedly. He smiled as he drove away but it wasn't the shining smile she used to see on his face. The fact that the shining was gone hurt her more than the silence they had had in the car.

She walked into the restaurant with a deep breath and fake smile plastered on her face. Certainly another lacking shine smile. If there was one thing she learned from Ian, it was that our vocations in life were to find what made us truly shine. As she walked inside to the dim litted 1st class restaurant, she prayed a little prayer that she'd be able to leave this place that took away so much of her light.

Part 1

        Robin stared at her bowl of cereal. Fruity pebbles.  The colors started to merge together as  the flakes soaked in the milk. It was almost too gross of a color to eat. Almost. She scraped the last few pebbles onto her spoon, took a last bite and slurp, left the table, and went to set the bowl noisily down in the sink. The perks of having a roommate who had left to visit her family for 2 weeks were many, she thought as she threw the spoon over her shoulder to land, again, noisily in the sink that had a few bowls peeking over the edge. She didn't have to do the dishes every two seconds like Kate, her roommate,  always wanted her to do.  Robin was of the opinion that things took priority over a spotless environment....And Kate was not in agreement with Robin's opinion.

Robin walked back into her room and sat down on her little twin bed with a white fluffy comforter. She  picked up an edge of the comforter and squeezed it tight. After a minute, she let go of the comforter and stood up. She walked over to her closet, pushed a few hangers around, and walked back to the bed.  She flopped down and stared at her white ceiling. She didn't think she could make it to work today, it just didn't seem possible. She had been at the same restaurant for a year now. The old soul everyone always said she had was turning into a decrepit soul because of cranky 30 somethings complaining about their turkey burgers not being cooked the way they wanted or that the wine that Robin recommended didn't go with their food. She sighed. She would be late to work if she didn't get her butt into gear soon though. Decrepit soul transformation or not, she needed the money. Robin forced herself to stand up, did a few stretches, and walked back over to the closet. She put on her waitress uniform that made her look remarkably like a penguin, one of the great perks of working at a 5 star restaurant.

A few minutes later she ran out the door and into her little beat up brown honda accord.  She slammed the door, spilled a little coffee from her coffee mug on her knee, set the coffee and her brown leather purse down on the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition. It groaned. No, no, no, no, was all Robin was thinking. Please not now. Please not now. She pulled the key out and tried again. It groaned with some energy this time, but nothing started. She had already had a little incident a few weeks ago of accidentally giving a kid with a nut allergy something with almonds chopped up in it. She hadn't done her homework on the ingredients for the summer dishes. He was fine thankfully but  one more little problem, the managers had told her, and she was out.

She reached for her phone, knocked the coffee cup over in the process, and started frantically looking through her contacts while she attempted to ignore  the swirl of coffee and creamer dripping from the top of the passenger seat to the mat below. She had been in this little town in Virginia for about a year now but she really only had 2 good friends in the area, both of whom worked earlier hours than she did. Public transportation didn't run in hickville and she certainly couldn't afford a taxi with about $40 total in her bank account... Ian. She would have to call Ian. She grimaced as she dialed the number and made the sign of the cross as it started dialing. Please pick up.

"Hello?"
"Hi. It's Robin. I need help. I know you don't want to talk to me right now. But..could you do me  a favor? Would you take me to work? I won't even talk."
"Yeah, sure. Be there in 10."

She set her phone down on the dashboard and started to clean the coffee up with some old crumpled Dunkin Donuts napkins. She wasn't sure she could handle seeing Ian Blackley just yet, but if it was between that and getting fired, she'd take Ian. She finished cleaning the coffee up and stuck the wet napkins in one of the cupholders. She turned her audio book that was in the cd player on,  leaned back,  and closed her eyes. “I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me," the soft British narrator's voice read. Much Ado About Nothing was Robin's comfort book in pretty much every situation in life. She had played Beatrice in college and had fallen in love with her character.There was something so comforting in a story of someone that finally learns that love is the right choice.  As life seemed to be crumpling in on her slowly and steadily these past few weeks, she had bought the audio book version to listen to as she drove back and forth to work.