Page 27 of River
CHAPTER 8
Morning Coffee
Noah
The knock on our door woke me up.
“Someone is at the door,” I grunted to Peter since he was closer to it than me.
All I got in response was a low groan before he turned on his side.
A second knock sounded and made me roll out of bed and rub my eyes as I walked to the door.
“Who is it?” I called and looked down at my diver’s watch to see it was a little past eight.
“River.”
That surprised me and made my hands fly to my hair. I still hadn’t gotten a haircut. After making sure I had no sleep in my eyes, I opened the door.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning.” She looked lovely in a yellow summer dress contrasting with her sun-bronzed skin, and with her shoulder-length hair styled.
“I brought you coffee.”
“Ehh… thanks.” I was confused as to why she was here since the last time we talked, she’d stormed out and made it very clear she wasn’t interested in me.
“Maybe we can drink it by the water?” she suggested before her gaze fell to my white briefs.
“Yeah, let me just get some clothes on.”
“I’ll wait for you down there.” She nodded toward the water, where a few locals were doing their morning rounds, cleaning up the trash that beachgoers had left behind the day before on top of the amount of plastic that the ocean delivered daily.
Before jogging down to River by the water, I put on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, quickly brushed my teeth, and finger-combed my dark hair that the sun had bleached a bit.
“Here.” She handed me a large coffee when I plunked down on the sand next to her.
“Thank you.”
“I also brought you a croissant.”
I smiled and took the small brown bag. “You’re spoiling me.”
“Consider it a peace offering. I feel bad about the things I said the last time I saw you.”
“Hmm.” I sipped the coffee and almost spit it out. “What is this?”
“A coffee latte. I didn’t know if you drank coffee black or with milk, so I went with my preferred version.”
“You could have warned me.” I smiled and took another sip.
“You prefer your coffee black?”
“Yes. It comes with my profession.”
“Are you a writer?”
“No, why would you think that?”
