Once upon a Starbucks in a Barnes and Noble, I was working my not so noble shift as a patient barista dealing with all the high life girls of my school. Holiday season is especially the worst. It's always peppermint Mochas, eggnog lattes, seasonal hot chocolates and busy lines of people buzzing with questions about the latest news or where to get food in the shopping complex. The people were like a line of busy bees to a hive full of coffee and overpriced drinks and pastries. Yet, I find that I couldn't ask for a better job. It's perfect for a calm, boring kind of gal like me.

As a patient barista, dealing with all of the high life girls from my school, I get to hear all of the 'high life' gossip. Don't get me wrong, I've never been one to gossip myself, but I guess you could call me nosy. I've always liked to be in the know of things. Talk about your day or complain about how many stressful routines you have to practice for state cheer and you've bored me to sleep on the job. But talk about the know of who's dating who or who broke up with who and why, that's the stuff I can't help but break a sweat to open my ears to. Perhaps it's not the best trait in my personality, but it never harmed anyone to be in the know of things, right? Besides, as the girl who is always in the background and flies under the radar, who would I tell anyways?

"Did you hear about Rhys and Missy breaking up?" A peppy blonde girl said while waiting in line. I started on a man's order of a hot peppermint mocha.

"What?!? Why?!?" A brunette replied.

"He's going off to a boarding school his parents are sending him to. He'll be transferring the day Christmas break begins." My heart stopped a second at the mention of his name. My ears opened up, trying to listen in on the conversation. The day Christmas break was going to begin was tomorrow. The reason him and his girlfriend broke up became clear to me. I felt sorrow and sympathy fill up my stomach and flush my face with a frown.

"But...they could've stayed together..." The final member of the group spoke. She was a black haired vixen I nicknamed Gothel after the Disney villain of Tangled because her hair is always unnaturally poofy from an hour or two of hair product.

"Ew, long distance? Please! We all know Missy or any other girl isn't gonna trust a guy like Rhys with a long distance relationship." Their group stepped up to make their order as I passed the man's cliche coffee on to another employee. I got ready to take their order.

"Welcome to Starbucks, where the Christmas spirit never runs out! How can I help you?" The blonde gave me a stuck up look and spoke.

"Tall caramel macchiato hot please."

"Tall Vanilla bean please." The brunette ordered.

"Venti peppermint mocha please." Gothel flashed me a really wide fake smile. After giving them their receipts, I scurried to get the orders done so I could continue eavesdropping.

"Yeah, I guess you're right Amelia, Rhys is bound to cheat. I can see why she dumped his sorry ass now." Gothel joked, laughing in her usual fake tone.

"Watch your language." I muttered under my breath, which could not be heard over all the blending of different assortments of coffee. What I really meant by that was 'watch your language talking about Rhys'. In the midst of making the peppermint mocha, I wasn't paying attention and poured the coffee over the cup and onto the floor as well as my clothes.

"Caroline! What in the world are you daydreaming about so much that you'd overflow hot coffee?" Pearl, a girl that works with me lectured. I yelped at the pain from the hot liquid making contact with my body through the clothes.

The three girls let out some obnoxious snickering as I handed the overflowed drink carefully to Pearl and grabbed some paper towels to dry the coffee off. I wouldn't have a change of clothes until I got home so I would just have to own the stains. I put their drinks on the counter and listened to their conversation one last time.

"Serves him right. We all know he was no good for her~" it was moments like this where I opened my mouth without thinking and completely crashed and burned.

"Why don't you stop talking about Rhys that way...you don't know him that well." She gave me the bitch stare, an utter classic stank eye meant to strike fear in someone's heart or to ignite their inner flame of fight.

"Says the girl who's now wearing my mocha. You have no room to speak barista." I bit my lip, trying to stay quiet. Everything in me wanted to spit back my best comebacks, to completely humiliate the girl and activate my inner Smart Alec, but it would only mean I fell victim to her classic stare. It is hard to argue with someone who knows the way of the bitch.

I handed them their coffees and went back to trudging through my job. I had to wonder why Rhys's parents were sending him off to a boarding school. I mean it was no secret that Rhys was a bit of a 'troubled kid', but he never did anything as deviant as the people he associated with. I finished up my shift and headed home to sleep. I had trouble falling asleep. I tossed and turned with the thought that I wouldn't be able to say a proper goodbye to Rhys and that I might never see him again...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I heard a tap on my window and my half asleep mind first assumed it was just the tree in the yard right outside my window. But then I heard another tap and realized that there was no tree I my front yard, or at least not one close enough to brush my window.

The second stage of a half asleep mind was believing someone or something was there to kill me. So I did what any rational human in a horror movie would do: pulled the covers over my head to hide. I cautiously reached my hand out from under the blankets, now fully awake. Full of heart pounding adrenaline, I grabbed my phone from the bedside table to see what time it was. The blinding phone screen read '12 am'. I also saw a notification of a text that opened to realize it was from Rhys. It read, 'Open the window dammit!' I felt bad and jumped out of bed to open the window.

He gave me an annoyed look and climbed in through the window. He flopped down on my bed...MY bed. He was panting and looked exhausted.

"Rhys, it's 12 am...what the heck are you doing at my house and how the heck did you even get up here? My room is on the second floor!" He took a moment to catch his breath, so I assumed he had run to my house.

"I climbed up the lattice and onto the roof part by your window. Second of all, I want to...propose a bit of an adventure for the night. Care to tag along...once I catch my breath?" I stared at the boy laying on my bed, staring up at my ceiling with the biggest smile on his face that I had ever seen, trying to catch his breath. This boy was going to be leaving in the morning and I would probably never hear from him again! The boy that was heartbroken and sad only a night ago, the boy I used to like...he was asking me to go on some mysteriously proposed 'adventure' at 12 am.

I had been friends with Rhys ever since freshmen year. I was the new kid at our school. No one knew me and I knew no one. I'm not the most social person ever and it was really hard to adapt to a place where I had to initiate friendships and conversations. I had always grown up in a small town where everyone knew each other from the cradle to the grave and you could make friends with everyone in town before the possibilities of anxiety or depression or anything that could keep you from being social. When my parents moved us to a new town, I didn't plan on being a social butterfly. Part of it was because I didn't know how to initiate conversations with people and build friendships, but another part of it was by choice. But there was one guy who reached out to me. He wasn't bubbly and wasn't always the most friendly person, but he reached out to me. I've always told myself that he was just taking pity on me, that he didn't actually care a whole lot. He just saw me as a loner that needed a friend.

One way or the other, we had been friends for about two years and we had been through so much together. For a bit of time, a year after we'd been friends, I had the hugest crush on Rhys. The only thing that kept me from confessing to him: his girlfriend. Around the same time I had admitted my feelings to myself, he got together with Missy. I stayed silent in our friendship, not wanting to ruin his happiness. He was in love with her, who was I to ruin my best friend's relationship for my own selfish desire for happiness? Eventually, as time allowed, I found ways to get over him, and our friendship almost fell apart. We were still friends, just distant. We didn't talk as much. Naturally, since we hadn't been talking, it was surprising to see him here in my room. Rhys's voice drew me out of my thoughts. He was already halfway out the window.

"You coming? I don't have all night." I stared at him, still in a bit of shock from the whole encounter.

"What? Okay, technically I do have all night because I don't have to be home until a little after dawn. But still, you coming or not?" What was even crazier than the proposition that he was making was that I was ready to accept the invitation. I smiled really wide and walked into my closet to get changed. I figured it was cold outside, so I threw on a long sleeve black shirt with a red turtleneck sweater on top of it. I threw thick black legging pants on and long black, non heeled boots. After lacing up the long front part of the boots, I stepped out of the closet and walked over to the window. He helped me out of the window and on to the roof. We climbed back down the lattice and off we were, walking away from my house on the sidewalk. As I looked back at the house, all of the lights were off expect for the twinkling tree shining through our living room window. There was no going back from there, I was no longer a boring barista, but the best friend of a boy dragging me on a mysteriously proposed adventure that I snuck out of the house to go on.