Chapter 44: The High Road
“I’ll have a small iced caramel coffee, please,” I said to the barista. She grabbed a plastic cup and wrote my order on it. I looked back at Mindie, who was standing behind me. “What would you like?”
“Oh, you don’t have to pay for mine.” My friend reached into her red purse for her wallet.
“Please, let me. Honestly, I owe you much more for staying with my mom yesterday.” I blushed. “The least I can do is pay for your morning coffee.”
Mindie smiled and looped her arm through mine.
“You don’t owe me a thing. I’ll always be here for you.”
My heart panged as Mindie ordered a large hot coffee with cream and sugar, and I handed cash to the barista.
It was the morning after Elliot gave me that awful ultimatum, and I asked Mindie to meet me at our school’s coffee shop before our morning classes.
“Do you want to sit inside?” Mindie asked when we grabbed our drinks off the end of the wooden counter.
I stared around the busy restaurant. There was an open table in the corner, but the girls there seemed to be glancing at me and then putting their heads close together to whisper. Was I being paranoid or were they talking about me?
“Let’s go outside,” I suggested and led my friend out the door. “It’s a nice morning.”
We walked to a shaded spot under a large oak tree. Mindie and I sat on a wooden bench and sipped our drinks. The spot was nice because it gave us a pretty view of our sprawling green campus, but there were trees around us, so it gave us a little privacy.