Last weekend, I ventured to the middle of somewhere in Nebraska to visit my best friend, who doubles as my coffee date. We had talked for weeks about the places we'd visit.
The chain stores and the originals.
The barista with purple hair who didn't miss a beat if you wanted a drink off the menu, but with seven alterations from the normal recipe.
The one where you couldn't order to-go because the vanilla bean lattes are better in real mugs.
The newest location for a town favorite.
The list was long, but we pride ourselves on drinking coffee like Gilmore Girls when we're together.
It's been ten days, and while I miss most everything about that visit, the coffeeshop conversations play back in my memory.
Every story has three things: a main character, a best friend, and coffee.
Oh, wait, that's just every Hallmark film.
Regardless, those are the trinity of their script-writing, and I can see why.
It's the only real plot that Hallmark uses.
Two friends sit down with giant, steaming mugs of coffee.
Forget the beauty-&-brains friendship common of storytelling, these are all about person with a problem and her counselor.
The main character is the one who begins the movie single and glasses-wearing, or with a guy who wears a suit. Nearly seventy-five percent of the way through the movie, she will ditch either the glasses or the CEO, depending on which one she starts with, and end up with the small business owner/single dad/guy she liked in high school, you get the picture
But how, HOW does she make the life-altering decision to break off an engagement with a future billionaire or switch to contacts permanently?
Her counselor friend helps her decide over coffee. Without these conversations, the stories would never climax. So, the coffee scenes in Hallmark movies will continue. They will change settings, problems, and maybe even have peppermint hot chocolate in-season, but they will be there.
We will be here to mock them while enjoying our beverages and discussing our own life issues.
~~~~~
But these photos aren't from my road trip through no-man's land; they're from my lone trip to our local coffeeshop.
It's a relatively new place on the corner of main street in a gorgeous, renovated brick building. To be honest, it looks straight out of a movie. I normally grab my coffee while I'm running errands or something and don't stick around.
This past Saturday, though, it rained. To be clear, it had rained for four days, and I can only take so much of my house before I lose it, so I grabbed a book and went to the coffeeshop.
It was actually fairly dead, the only sound apart from the owner's shoes being the door as the previous lone customer left, and the ISU vs. OU game playing on the the big screen. Thus, the quiet, hipster coffee shop mood you've envisioned dies, and is replaced with more realistic, small town Iowa vibes.
I traded my six-month regular order, an iced english toffee white mocha, for something more worthy of the dreary, fall weather: an iced salted caramel white mocha. I'm a creature of habit.
And so I spent part of my afternoon reading a book on my list entitled: Books I Should've Read Growing Up, But Never Did. Yes, I plan to read them all. Yes, I'd love to discuss them afterwards. Yes, if you spoil something for me, I will hate you forever.
Coffeeshops will continue to be beautiful places to me.
With friends or in solitude.
In big cities or small towns.
Rain or shine.
Hot or iced.
- Grace
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