28
“Do you smoke?”
Coffee isn’t working. I’m as exhausted and irritable as I was when I woke up this morning. Probably even more so. I’ve been sitting at this quaint Mt. Airy café, less than a mile from my apartment, reading and re-reading the same paragraph half a dozen times because I couldn’t concentrate at my place and thought this would be a better atmosphere in which to read my Big Book and chill out for a while.
I’m most definitely not chill. I dog-ear the page I’m on—not that it matters (I’ll have to start over anyway, when my brain isn’t so jumpy)—and thud the book closed.
The man grinning down at me sports a well-maintained goatee and—despite the fact that it’s morning—a five o’clock shadow. His vibe is sort of OCD meets grunge. His jeans are ripped too symmetrically for thei
