Yesterday, I realized there are four competing brands of coffee on campus. Since Chartwell won the bid for food service, there’s been an Au Bon Pain in Commons, and there’s that shit coffee kiosk in the library atrium that adopted the name Pura Vida. Their coffee is advertised as “fair trade,” but it’s shit. A new Starbucks opened in the UC this semester, and the sandwich place on the first floor of the Admin Building claims to sell authentic Dunkin Donuts coffee. Claims to, as if they have a reason to lie? I think I like the sandwich place the best.

Tuesday. Thursday? A few weeks back, before the Snowpocalypse fucked up all the outdoor seating, I’m standing outside my English class, waiting for whatever other class is in there to disperse so I can take my regular seat. We aren’t in the Fine Arts building, so odds are good we’re not waiting on another English class to let out. Academic IV, where they send all the misfits and rejects without a designated building.

We. There are a handful of others standing outside, waiting. One of them, a guy about my age, slender with sideburns and a nose hooked like a bird’s beak, strikes up conversation. “Guess I shouldn’t show up early anymore, if this professor isn’t letting out.”

I agree. “I grabbed coffee before coming here. That new Starbucks that opened.”

“Really? What’d you get?”

“Coffee…”

“Oh. I stopped by there too, and I ordered a grande mocha with vanilla and hazelnut and two shots of espresso. They messed it up. Gave me a grande mocha with one shot of espresso and NO hazelnut.”

I break eye contact and direct my comment aimlessly at the wall. “Yeah, it’s kind of hard to mess up coffee.”

“That’s what I thought.”

I return my focus with indignation. “No, I meant coffee.”

“Oh.”

The door opened a few minutes later. Everything before that was shrouded in an uncomfortable silence.

Now, weeks later, I’m inside because the benches next to Academic IV are coated in layers of frozen white. The class before English should just be letting out, and it’s getting loud here in the UC. The line to Starbucks is starting to snake around the tables and chairs.