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The coffee tastes burned. Charred, even. That’s the very first thing Trucy realises on her very first sip, but as she looks into the brown-almost-black liquid swirling lazily in her cup, disturbed from her drinking, she knows Phoenix is watching her over the rim of his own. So she’s not gonna let it show. Especially not after all the convincing she’d had to do to get him to add one for her alongside his, because he’d been too otherwise convinced that she’d hate the taste. And maybe it’s too early to tell on that...
She takes another, more measured sip.
...It tastes bitter now. How does he drink this stuff? And daily?
Phoenix scrapes his chair back from their table, and she’s distracted from the terrible taste. Her gaze snaps to his.
“I’ll be back in just a sec,” he says, smiling at her, and then gets up and walks further into the belly of the café.
A ‘greasy spoon’, Phoenix had called it, when he’d asked her if she’d wanted to go out for lunch that day. And although she’d smiled and agreed, Trucy had first worried over the name- if the spoons were greasy, her dry clean-only gloves would get dirty quicker than normal, and maybe this daddy would also want to get them freshened up as soon as possible, which is why she’d worried, because she hates having to go without them-
But when they’d arrived at the café and sat down at a little table in the corner, and Phoenix had slid her a menu and become engrossed in reading from his own, Trucy had carried out a quick recon of this ‘greasy spoon’ under the guise of pretending to read hers, and had soon decided that there’s nothing at all greasy about the place. It’s a nice place, actually. She can tell it’s old- the table they’re at see-saws when she shifts from her right elbow to her left and then again from her left to her right, she can see which slaloming routes the servers take from kitchen to tables by the way the floor tiles are ruddied and worn more-so in some places than in others, and two out of the six round lamp shades hanging from the ceiling above are unlit despite their glass bulbs peeking out of their metal skirts- but it’s not old in the way that would make it tired, and it’s certainly not greasy. Maybe she’ll ask Phoenix what he had meant by that. Later, though. Right now, she’s tracking what he’s doing away from their see-saw table.
She’s still learning what he means when he says he’ll be ‘back in just a sec’. A lot of people use that phrase, and it can stand for a lot of different things, and ‘a sec’ is never, ever just ‘a sec’- but so far, she’s been content with what it means for her new daddy. Which is good. The way things are going, her old daddy won’t be back for a long, long time, if at all, and so she needs this new one to stick around.
She gets the impression that he needs her to stick around, too. Which is also good. And reassuring.
He’s got his back to her at a smaller counter just parallel from the one they’d ordered from (where the nice man who had taken their order had specifically asked her what she wanted instead of just getting it from Phoenix), and it looks like he’s grabbing something, or some-things. But when he turns back around to return to their table, there’s nothing in his hands, or they’re too small for her to see.
“Here ya go,” he says, and two types of Thing tumble out of his fist and land next to her coffee cup.
Sugar in little paper cylinders, and milk in little plastic tubs. She’s never seen them like this before- neither in these sizes, nor in this packaging. They’re cute. Toy-like. She looks up at him.
“Mix ‘em into your coffee,” he says, nodding at them. “Will make it taste nicer.” He smiles as he takes his seat across from her again. “C’mon, there’s no way you like the taste of it as is. You might have a performer’s face too good to show it, but there’s no way. You’re only eight.”
Trucy tuts, cognizant. “Who says eight year olds can’t like the taste of coffee?”
Phoenix leans forward and lightly baps the top of her head to punctuate his next word. “ I say. Because I’m twenty-seven, and I’ve drank a lot of coffee in a lot of cafés, and I've yet to see an eight year old doing the same. Well, I mean...” He looks off to the side, his face taking on that slightly pinched look it does when he’s thinking about something faraway. Which he does a lot, actually. Her new daddy is always seeming to disappear into his own head. He’s a strange guy. “When I was nine, I did have a friend who liked to drink tea, but,” he shrugs, and smiles, “he’s just a special case. Plus that’s tea, not coffee. And he was nine, not eight. So.”
So. She frowns in thought and picks up the sugar and milk.
“Will these really make it taste nicer?” she asks.
“They will,” he says, slowly. “But only if you don’t like the taste of it as is.” He cocks his head at her, a corner of his mouth dimpling. “And I thought you did?”
Rats. He’s seen right through her. He’s getting better at that. Not that she was really trying this time. Not that she’s been trying all that much in general with him recently- her usual routine she’s used all her life has been slipping. Consciously so. She’s sure she should feel a little scared about that, but somehow, she doesn’t.
Regardless. She turns an earnest pout onto Phoenix, and admits the truth:
“Okay. So maybe it tastes all bitter and burned...”
He laughs, and Trucy finds herself smiling back as she grabs the cup and the Things that will supposedly make it taste nicer.
She peels back the foils on the milk, tears off the tabs on the sugar, and pours them all in. “You got me, old boy. Saw right through my façade.” She stirs, watching watery black become milky brown. Pushing the cup towards him and waving a hand across it, she says, “Is this your card?”
The joke doesn’t make a lick of sense. But he still laughs at it. This daddy’s laugh is different from her old daddy’s laugh- it’s less booming, and more bright. His shoulders shake, but they’re curled into himself. And it doesn’t happen as often, either, and when it does, it’s usually at stuff she hadn’t expected him to laugh at, like just now.
In other words, she doesn’t have to work hard to get a laugh out of him. In other words, she doesn’t even need that routine. Maybe that’s why she’s almost been glad to see it go. She hasn’t seen rain much, and will probably continue not to now she lives in LA with Phoenix, but still, she likens it to taking off an anorak and coming into the warm and dry. Maybe even getting a hot drink as soon as, too.
...Just not black coffee.
“I can be a sharp one, Trucy-luce,” Phoenix says, and then blows a puff of air through his nostrils. “Sometimes, anyways. Now,” he pushes the cup back towards her, “give it a sip, and see what you think.”
She does so. There’s no bite to it anymore, and it’s cooler- but it’s also syrupy sweet, and feels like it leaves a film in her mouth, even after she’s swallowed and smacked her lips a few times.
She wrinkles her nose. “It’s... better?”
“Better,” Phoenix parrots. He’s grinning. “Well, that’s something, I guess. My journey to counter yonder wasn’t a total waste.” He picks up his own cup, and toasts it to her. “Maybe one day, kiddo.”
Maybe one day. Burned and bitter taste of coffee aside, she’d like that.
“Hey, daddy,” she says, turning this thought over and then stretching it into words. “Can we come here again next Saturday?”
Phoenix’s grin softens into surprise, and then softens further into her favourite smile of all on him: the one where his eyes crinkle at the corners, the one that somehow feels like a hug. “Of course, Truce.” he says. “We can come here as many times as you like.”