Chance Encounters Cpt. 2

The first thing TJ was aware of was that his neck really hurt. The next thing was that he was laying down on something very squishy. He groaned and stretched, blinking his eyes open.

Suddenly he sat up, wide awake. Right. He had stopped to get coffee and he must have fallen asleep. He looked down. Stuck to his shirt was a piece of paper reading “DO NOT DISTURB”. TJ shook his head and crumpled up the paper.

He looked around the room. The light from the windows had disappeared, as had all of the people in the coffee shop. Well, almost everyone. The kid with the blue hair was wiping down one of the tables across the room.

TJ stood up. His head swam and he stumbled a bit, falling unceremoniously back down on the couch. He groaned.

A groan struck through the silence of the almost-closed-for-the-night coffee shop, and Kicks looked up from his cleaning in time to see the nap guy stand up and abruptly fall back down again. “Morning sleepyhead,” he greeted him, all but laughing the words. “That was some nap. It’s not even finals time yet, what hellish classes are you taking?” Gesturing to the coffee on the table, which had been cold for hours, Kicks said, “I could warm that up for you if you want, but seeing as it’s almost ten you probably don’t want the four shots of pure ecstasy that are in it.” He grinned; he was joking about the ecstasy, of course, but four shots of pure espresso were practically a legal equivalent.

Blue-hair-guy was talking. Something about classes and reheating his coffee. TJ pulled out his phone to check the time. It was 9:57. Damn. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep but now he really didn’t want to do anything but. It probably wasn’t best to sleep in a coffee shop though. He’d have to find a hotel. Great.

He looked up again. Blue-hair-guy was staring at him and TJ realized he probably was expecting some kind of response. What he thought he was going to say was, ‘no I don’t need the coffee reheated but thank you.’ What actually came out was, “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Kicks just shrugged, completely unbothered by the suddenness of the question. The guy had just woken up, after all. “I tried, but you were in deep man. I haven’t seen that kind of REM since the eighties.” He continued wiping down the table, though his eyes flicked up to the man often. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a frat house. Nobody drew anything weird on you or anything.” A few people had giggled and made some snapchats of him, but Kicks figured he was probably better off not knowing that particular detail. Turning and chucking his rag into the sink with an expert throw, he couldn’t help but ask, “So what’s the deal then? Late night?”

TJ looked the kid up and down. “I was born in the eighties. I barely remember them. You definitely do not remember the eighties. And no, no one drew on me but I did have a sign stuck to me, which is weird.” He knew that he was probably being a little too short tempered with the guy but he wasn’t exactly in the best mood either. He just wanted to get back to his car and… his car! The meter had to have run out. He ran over to the window to check the road. It was still there. He turned around and leaned back against the cool window and closed his eyes. “Thank god,” he said quietly as his heart still pounded in his chest.

He took a deep, supposedly calming breath, and opened his eyes again. Blue-hair-guy hadn’t moved but he was looking at him rather strangely. “What?” TJ asked.

Kicks rolled his eyes at the response. So, no sense of humor then. “First, it was a joke,” he said, his tone only slightly teasing. “REM? The band?” He didn’t exactly expect a response to that, so he moved on to what was evidently the only thing on the guy’s mind. “And secondly, your car is just fine. The meters turn off at six and I paid for it up until then. You’re welcome.” With that he walked back behind the counter, taking off his apron and hanging it on a peg. Retrieving his keys and shoulder bag from just around the open door frame to the kitchen he said, “In case you didn’t notice, the shop’s closed. Now would be the time when you get on with the rest of your life.” He nodded encouragingly, and gestured towards the front door.

TJ opened his mouth to snap back, but nothing came out. Instead he walked out the open door without looking at the kid and headed straight to his car. It was chilly outside. His car wasn’t much warmer. He quickly turned the car on and turned up the heater. “Siri, is there a Hilton in Bloomington, Indiana?” he asked. There was. Thirty seconds later he was off.

With a sigh Kicks shook his head. People were weird, but hey, that was what made the world an interesting place, right? With the last customer now gone Kicks went through his habitual end-of-day walkthrough of the shop, making sure everything was as it should be. As he came back down the stairs, about to head out himself, something caught his eye. A shiny and definitely not couch-colored thing was lying on the couch, the couch that still had a cold cup of coffee sitting in front of it. Curious, Kicks picked it up. His eyes widened as he realized it was TJ’s wallet- it must have fallen out of the man’s pocket while he was sleeping.

After dumping the old coffee down the sink and recycling the cup, Kicks stood at the counter and looked through the wallet for anything that might help him contact the guy. Almost immediately he found a business card, which he assumed was for ‘TJ’, and pulling it out he read the details in the dim light coming from the street lamps outside. “Theodore James Allen the Third, Allen Industries,” Kicks read aloud to himself. “Jesus, somebody certainly feels important.” Maybe he was important, Kicks wondered, but the important thing at the moment was that there was a cell phone number directly underneath all that. Pulling out his own phone he dialed it in, staring at the stranger’s wallet as the dial tone rang.

TJ looked down at his phone. He didn’t recognize the number. Sighing, he pulled over to the side of the road. He didn’t like talking on the phone in the car. He answered the call, “Hello?”

“Theodore James Allen the Third,” Kicks greeted him in a faux-british butler accent, drawing out the vowels to ridiculous lengths. “I am calling to inform you that you left your wallet at a certain coffee shop you just vacated.” He tapped the business card against the counter as it occurred to him that this just might freak out a guy with such a minimal sense of humor. “This is the guy from The Green Bean, by the way, you know with the blue hair?” he added in his normal voice. “If you could come back and get it that’d be great.”

TJ groaned. Again. This really wasn’t his day. What he wanted to say was, ‘thanks, I’ll be right back to grab it.’ What he actually said was, “What kind of accent was that?”

“It was just as British as I am,” Kicks replied, “i.e. not at all. What kind of name is Theodore James Allen the Third anyways?” He was a bit irked by this guy’s attitude, and couldn’t help but ask his own snarky question in return. I mean, he totally could have just walked off with his wallet. It was his choice to be a good person and call him.

“How did you... the card. Right. Look. It’s TJ, alright? I’ll just… Thanks for calling me. I would have figured it out when I got to the hotel anyway but it’s nice to know before I got there. I’ll be there in five.” With that, TJ hung up the phone.

“Alright, I’ll be here,” Kicks said, before ending the call and sticking his phone back into his pocket. TJ had been a bit nicer to him this time at least, and Kicks of all people knew the pain of being given a completely unlivable legal name. Maybe the guy had just been having a really bad day, even including the mondo nap. Whatever, at least his day wasn’t made worse by a lost wallet now. Slipping the card back in Kicks closed the wallet, not one to pry into a stranger’s business (now his friends’ business, that was something else entirely). With a sigh he leaned back against the wall to wait. This was turning out to be a long day indeed; he was hoping to get some good schoolwork done tonight, but that might not be happening.

TJ pulled back up to what was quickly becoming the most familiar curb in this town. He turned off the car and took another supposedly calming breath. He really should be trying to be nicer to this kid. He had, after all, paid his parking meter and was kind enough to return his wallet. He stepped out of the car and walked towards the front door.

Kicks looked up as the door opened and TJ walked back in. With a smile he picked up the wallet from the counter and held it out to the taller man. “Thought you might need this,” he said, the humorous tone that always underlaid his voice slipping through. “Especially since you’re going to a hotel. Guess you’re not a student then, huh?” His assumption had been wrong, then. How refreshing.

TJ took his wallet from blue-hair-guy and smiled just barely. “Yeah, no. I’m not. Just passing through.” He looked back at the kid. “Listen, thanks for this. And for paying my meter earlier. It was really kind of you.”

A smile had been achieved! So the guy was human after all. Kicks waved it away. “Ah, it’s what we do. You know, worker integrity and all that. The union would have my ass if I didn’t.” He grinned; there was no union for coffee shop workers, but that was probably because anybody who worked in a coffee shop was already friendly and happy enough already. “Anyways, ah, good luck I guess with… getting to wherever you’re going.” Kicks wondered where he was coming from and what his destination was- after all, Indiana was the crossroads of the country, but it wasn’t very often that they got somebody in The Green Bean who was just ‘passing through’.

TJ smiled, his mind finally working well enough to get the joke. As to the well wishes... “Thanks, um…” he realized he didn’t know the kid’s name. And he couldn’t exactly call him ‘blue-hair-guy’ to his face. “What was your name again?”

“Kicks,” the blue haired guy replied, a familiar and somewhat long-suffering grin working its way onto his face. It was a strange name, he knew, but not as strange as his real one; and certainly not as god awful. “That’s what everybody calls me, at least.” In a spur of the moment action he stuck out his hand and said, “Nice to meet you, TJ.”

TJ reached out and shook blue-hair, no, Kicks’ hand. What he was going to say was, ‘nice to meet you, Kicks.’ What he actually said was, “What kind of nickname is Kicks?” Which, as soon as he said it, he realized was actually not the best thing to say to the guy you were trying to thank, so he quickly followed it up not-so smoothly with, “It’s nice to meet you too.”

Kicks just smiled- the question was hardly unexpected. People couldn’t help but ask. “I got it as a kid,” he explained. “I was a little adrenaline junkie, would do anything anybody dared me to just for ‘kicks and giggles’.” He made the air quotes with his fingers and everything, the story as second-nature to him as the name was. At least he hadn’t gotten the name as an adult; then he would have everybody calling him ‘shits’ for the rest of his life.

TJ smirked a bit at the story. It seemed well practiced. The kid must tell it a lot. “I suppose that ‘Kicks’ is better than ‘Giggles’ as a nickname. Still not ideal though, I’d think. What’s your actual name?” Seriously. Why would he choose to go by ‘Kicks’? He had to have had the opportunity to leave the name behind at some point.

The shorter one grimaced at the question. “That,” he said emphatically, “is a secret very few know, and that is the way it will stay.” He certainly wasn’t going to tell a guy he had just met that day. Grinning, he added, “I’m sure you understand, Theodore James.” The guy had a ‘Third’ tacked onto the end of his name for god’s sake, he of all people should know.

“That’s not exactly fair. You were digging through my wallet, Kicks,” TJ said emphasizing the shorter man’s nickname. “But I suppose I can respect that.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket to look at the time then looked back up at Kicks. “Thanks again for everything, but I really should be getting checked into a hotel. I usually try to hit the road by 6.”

“Not digging,” Kicks said with a dramatic pout. The curiosity returned as TJ mentioned his hotel. “Yeah, sure,” he said, as they both walked towards the door. “Where are you headed?” He also wanted to know how he could stand waking up that early, but that was a question for another time. Not that there would necessarily be another time, as TJ seemed to be in the midst of a road trip, but hey, you never know.

TJ opened and closed his mouth a few times, not finding words. He sighed and leaned against the door and looked out at the road. “I don’t know.” And he didn’t. He supposed he could go back to St. Paul but he didn’t really want to. He’d spent too much time on the road with no life-changing revelations to go back.

The answer was not what Kicks had expected, and as TJ looked out the window Kicks looked seriously at him. There was certainly more to this guy than he had thought. “You don’t know,” he repeated, and it wasn’t an accusation, or even a question. It was a fact that signified there was a story behind it, a story Kicks was willing to listen to if TJ was willing to tell it. After all, Kicks was a barista, listening to life stories was practically in his job description.

TJ shook his head slightly. “No,” he said softly, “I don’t.” TJ glanced back over at Kicks. He was looking at him with open eyes and his head was tilted slightly to the side. TJ could hear Maddy in his head saying “oh come on, TJ. He’s adorable. He won’t bite!” The thing was TJ just didn’t talk about this stuff. To anyone. Not even his sister, whom he loved dearly. No. He wasn’t going to open up to some kid he just met. Especially not when he hasn’t gotten much sleep. Maybe later. Maybe later? TJ thought to himself. That implies you will be staying. TJ looked behind Kicks at the coffee shop. Maybe he could stay in town for a bit.

Ah… so it was something personal then. Kicks was very intuitive when it came to these things, and he knew when to push and when not to. Right now was not the moment. “Well, at least you have a hotel!” he said brightly. “That’s something.” He paused slightly, unsure of exactly why he wanted to say more, but he did. “If you need to know anything about Bloomington while you’re here, well, my number’s in your phone now. And, ah, I guess you know where I am.” He smiled, almost embarrassed about saying something so obvious, and he self-consciously reached up to tug on his braid.

TJ was thankful that Kicks didn’t press the issue further. He watched as the shorter man pulled at his braid and wondered if he even knew he was doing it. “Yeah,” he said lamely. “For now I will be out of your hair.” TJ held out his hand to shake Kicks’ hand again. “Have a good night, Kicks,” he said smiling.

“Good night,” Kicks replied, happily returning the smile and the handshake. “Drive safe.” He followed TJ out the door, locking it securely behind them, and waved goodbye as he unlocked his bike from the rack outside. He didn’t own a car, and he didn’t really need one as he lived only a few blocks away. In a town like Bloomington, nothing was really too far. Besides, this way he didn’t have to worry about parking. With one last look towards TJ and his car, Kicks kicked off and pedaled away, headed home after a very unusual day indeed.

TJ waved at Kicks and got into his car. He didn’t leave right away, instead opting to watch Kicks pedal away on his bike for a few seconds. When he finally pulled away from the curb he thought to himself, maybe I will stay here a few more days.