In the middle of the desert miles away from anything sits a bus, tan with rusting tires. Inside is a decaying corpse. There are three bullet holes on the side of the bus, two flat tires, and one slightly opened exit door, with what is left of the corpse's decaying hand holding tightly onto the almost fully unlocked handle. The hit man had fled the scene a year before, leaving the bus to be decomposed by the earth. 

1 year later 

The blonde girl runs down the street blaring music, instrumental, an odd choice for going on a jog in New Orleans. She leaps up three steps, her blonde ponytail bouncing, and walks into the coffee shop, her hair glowing in the sun as if she was Rapunzel.

But she doesn’t order coffee, she orders a ginger and turmeric shot, with a big pearly white smile. She drops her card and Luke grabs it. She, unlike Luke, is new to town. 

Luke is a 6 2” buff dark haired man, who probably was the quarterback in high school. He works as a higher-up manager for the CIA, which is an…interesting choice. He orders his coffee black. 

He hands her the card and smiles at her. She always does something to get his attention, a dropped card, a shoelace untied, “can’t find” her sunglasses that are on her head. Then they make small talk before Luke gets his coffee in a white paper cup with “Luke” written in a hot pink color labeling the side. 

Usually he starts walking down the street. But today, she follows him down the long windy road, and halts as soon as she meets the river.

The barista runs up to the windows, out the glass door and turns to face the river, her pink and green fluffy pen in hand. The barista wonders, what is going to happen to her? Let’s just say, her following him means nothing good. 

The next day the news reports a body found in the river. 

Luke is running down the street to get a coffee after his morning jog. But as he runs he hears police sirens coming from the river. He goes to the river to find the bruised and beaten blonde body, surrounded by police.

He wonders, what happened to her? But the expression on his face shows no emotion, another reason why he is good at his job. 

That was the last time he went to the coffee shop, until he entered the coffee shop two days later.

 “Luke, right? Black coffee?” the barista questions. I hope he won’t notice that I don’t have my pen today, she ponders. 

After getting his coffee, Luke began driving home from the coffee shop in his red Mustang. The clouds in the sky churning a purply-blue as the rain pours its sorrow down on him. A power line blows a fuse as Luke drives by, but it is quickly silenced by the rain. He pulls into his driveway and gets out of the car with a leather briefcase and keys in hand. 

He opens the door, “Hi honey! I am home…” but quickly turns quiet as he sees his house flooded and his wife laying under the water, dead. 

The beige crumpling wallpaper with minuscule flowers caresses the blood as it is drip, drip, dripping down into the water. There is a pen floating beside her, pink and green, and he notices that she had 21 stab wounds to the leg, the pink ink still bleeding through her skin like a fresh tattoo. 

She looks like the man on the bus, the pen holes gushed ink like the bullets had gushed blood. The freshly brewed coffee cup laid beside her, hot, just like the coffee that was brewing in the bus that day. Brewing, bullets, bus, body. It is all so surreal. 

On the kitchen counter there is a note written in her blood, not the pen because it is…in use. The note declares, “Now we have something in common. Coffee shop, now! ” Luke follows the water down the hall to find the bathtub overflowing, singing as if in a choir. Gulb, gulb, shsh, shsh, whoosh, whoosh.

Luke grabs his phone, and Mustang key, before he bolts into the  car, leaving his briefcase to be drowned by the water and blood that swells the walls in the living room. 

The radio is playing, “oh oh ophelia, you've been on my mind girl since the flood, oh oh..” but is quickly cut off by Luke’s hand slamming on the Off button. He is flooded with anxiety as he speeds out of his driveway, straight to the coffee shop. 

The barista is already waiting for  him. 

He sits down at the table closest to the door with the big windows to outside and watches the street, awaiting whomever is  going to meet him in the coffee shop. He waits for an hour until the barista approaches him. 

“You got stood up?”

“Yeah, I guess… I don’t even know who I was looking for.”

 “Oh, well do you want a coffee?”

“Sure?” 

“It's on the house,” the barista brings the coffee back to him and sits down because it is a slow night.

They talk for hours about his wife and what he is going to do when finds the person who killed her. 

As the barista talks to him, she begins to fall even more in love than before. When she tells him about her husband, who left her for a more “adventurous” life touring the Midwestern deserts, Luke seems a little uncomfortable, wondering if it could be the same man he killed two years before. 

The barista had planned this out for so long, hoping they would someday be together. And here they are, talking for hours, together at last. 

Maybe they will fall in love, after all the barista offered an…extra push. Maybe the saying opposites attract, is not true after all.

10 years later 

Luke and the barista, Ellie, are married. Ellie decides it is time to come clean about her killing the blonde girl. Luke responds, “ I have always known. I assume you killed my wife too? No hard feelings, I was planning on getting a divorce anyways…” 

“No, I didn’t,” Ellie butts in. Ellie assumes Luke is just joking, but he is not. Ellie didn’t kill her, and neither did he. 

The Next day 

Sirens wail as police drive to 100 Hemingway Avenue. The police walk in and water rushes to their feet. Inside a familiar scene of a woman drowning in the water and blood that fills the house. The barista is left there with her pen in her leg. Maybe she wasn’t the one who killed Luke’s wife after all.