sjsprWriting

“So you just,” she grimaces at the girl, stares at the cup wrapped in her hands, “drink it like that?”

“Yes,” the other girl says, not for the first time. She takes a delicate sip.

She frowns. “But that’s not how you drink coffee.” She slurps recklessly from her own steaming cup, petulant, trying to prove a point. She can’t feel her tongue. “Perfect,” she spits out, regardless.

The girl raises a brow and smirks, takes another sip of her room-temperature coffee. Slowly.

“Now you’re just doing that to spite me.”

“Maybe.”

“Coffee needs to be hot,” she repeats, “otherwise there’s no point.”

“I think the real point is the caffeine.”

“And the heat.”

“That’s optional.”

“So is the caffeine.”

She makes a scandalized noise, “Absolutely not. Decaf isn’t real.”

“You can’t just pretend something doesn’t exist.”

She watches her closely, “With the right amount of effort.”

She grins, sharp, “And isn’t that always the case?”