For years I’ve stopped to get a coffee at The Coffee Shack, a little kiosk, drive-thru coffee hut in the parking lot of a strip mall.  Its convenient, inexpensive, and, to my surprise, better tasting than that of the big name-brand shops that litter every corner of U.S. city streets.  The servers in the window have always been kind but I gave them little thought as I mechanically ordered, paid, and drove away with my steaming-hot liquid of wake up juice.

But a few weeks ago things changed.  The woman’s voice at the drive-thru’s speaker box had a lilted, but thick, accent. “Meh aye help yoo?”  German? Dutch? Her thick-tongued touch on the words sang to my tired ears.  It was new, refreshing.  I ordered my small coffee.  “Cream or flavor with that?”  The annunciation made me think of the British sound.  Definitely not British, I thought.  “No, just the coffee,” I replied.

I drove forward and out of the window leaned this slender, younger-than-me, woman with an intoxicating smile.  Through her rose-painted lips she told me the cost of my coffee.  I didn’t hear the amount.  I handed over my money. It could’ve been a $100 bill for all I knew.  It didn’t matter.  Her finger brushed mine as she took the cash from me.  Her skin, my skin, together.  I wanted more.

I looked up into her eyes and to my amazement she was looking right back into mine, deeply with a meaning that my foggy, not-yet-caffeinated mind could register.  Was it love? No. Lust? No. The very thought that such a woman lusting for someone like me was crazy.  Me, a slightly  graying, forty-something man that had been out of the game for a very long time.  I wouldn’t know if someone was flirting with me if they had told me so.  But through my thick-head I realized, she was flirting with me!

Her cheeks blushed and the size of her pupil grew larger.  I interested her.  I didn’t know why, but I did. She lingered in the window as though she wanted something? Did she want me to ask her a question? There was obviously something I was missing!

“You’re coffee, sir,” she said, enchanting me, calling me.  Without a word, as I was speechless to say the least, I took the coffee from her hands, purposefully touching hers.  She didn’t draw back in disgust or fear. She let the encounter between us happen. As I took the coffee in my other hand she grabbed hold of my now free hand with her soft palm and turned my hand palm up.  Inside my palm she placed my change and she then told me to have a wonderful day.

“I will,” I choked like some schoolboy barely past puberty, my face certainly red, and my stomach tied in knots.  She smiled and an ever-so-slight wink pinched her eye as she closed the window to her kiosk.  I drove to work sipping on the lid where he hand had been.