I Will Not Kiss You

Diamonds Rubys and Emeralds wasn't very full, when we arrived. Gerard smiled and told me to sit in one of the corner tables because he liked the big squashy purple chairs. I liked them too because they were purple.

Gerard sat in his squashy chair opposite me and crossed his legs like he was very comfortable. I sat down and put my hands in my lap so I wouldn't start picking up the ornaments on the table. They were pretty and I wanted to pick them up and look properly but I thought I might drop them and break them. Then the manager would get cross and shout and we'd have to pay to fix them because that's what happened when I broke a vase when Mom took me shopping and I got scared and screamed because of the crowd.

"So," Gerard said.

"So what?" I asked.

"Erm. . . I haven't got a clue," He said, making a haha sound.

"Oh."

“How ‘bout we start by getting our drinks?” He said.

“That would be a good start,” I replied with a nod.

Gerard picked up a menu from the middle of the table and gave it to me, telling me to pick anything I wanted. I looked at all the drinks slowly, reading the descriptions and looking at the pictures to check if it had anything I didn’t like in it.

I liked the hot chocolate because it had lots of squirty cream and chocolate sprinkled on it and I thought it would be nice. But I also liked the latte because I like lattes a lot and I always asked for a latte when Mom and I went in there. And the cappuccinos looked nice too. Then I felt angry with myself because I couldn’t make my mind up and it was making me feel stupid.

“It’s okay if you can’t decide, Frank,” Gerard said “I’m not gonna’ get bored of waiting or yell at you or anything!”

“I can’t decide.”

He nodded and said that it was fine.

“What are you choosing?” I asked.

“Hmm,” He hummed, chewing his lip and looking at the menu I was holding out “I think I’m gonna’ get one of those americanos. How ‘bout you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, getting angrier with myself and clenching my fists.

“Okay, Frank,” He said quickly, sitting down “It’s okay if you can’t choose, don’t get angry!”

“But I’m being stupid!”

“No, you’re not,” He disagreed “Can I touch your hands?”

I nodded and he put his hands on mine. Then he wedged his fingers in between mine so that he could pull them away and stop me clenching my fists. It was nice that he didn’t want me to be angry.

“You’re not stupid, Frank,” He said again “Everyone has trouble making their mind up at some point! I mean, the president has trouble deciding what he wants to do with the country to make it a better country. And he might get a little annoyed by it but he doesn’t get angry and call himself stupid.”

“But the president makes important decisions! I just can’t decide what I want to drink!”

“Well, what drinks d’you like the look of?” He asked, getting up and coming over to the side of the table I was sat at and looked over my shoulder at the menu.

So I told him that I thought the hot chocolate, latte and cappuccino all looked nice. And he said ‘Right’ and walked over to the counter. I wondered if he’d gotten fed up of me and wanted to go home. But he was talking to the waitress and I wondered if he was ordering a drink or if she was his friend.

Gerard was up at the counter for about fifteen or twenty minutes. And the waitress was giving him a lot of drinks. I wondered if he was very thirsty. Or maybe the waitress like liked him and wanted to make him like like her by giving him lots of drinks. But Gerard was gay so he couldn’t like like her back. Unless he decided to be what is called bisexual which means you like both genders. But I don’t think Gerard is bisexual because he once said ‘The thought of kissing a woman makes me feel a little uneasy! Wanna’ hear a secret, Frank? I kissed a girl when I was eleven because my friends made me and I ran away afterwards!’.

“There you go,” Gerard said, putting a tray of drinks on the table.

He picked up one drink and sat in his chair opposite me, sipping from the mug and making an Mm sound. I guessed he liked it. There were two chocolate muffins and three drinks left on the tray; a hot chocolate, a latte and a cappuccino. I stared at them all and then looked at Gerard.

“Are these all for me?”

“Yeah,” He shrugged “I didn’t want you getting upset and angry over a drink, so I got all three.”

“Oh,” I said “I don’t know if I’ll be able to drink all three of them!”

“You don’t have to drink all three of them,” Gerard explained “You can sip all three and decide which one you like best, if you want! It’s just ‘cause you couldn’t make your mind up.”

And I smiled because it was funny that Gerard had bought all three drinks for me and only one for himself. But it was also very nice because Rubys and Emeralds has expensive prices. That meant Gerard spent a lot of money on all four drinks.

“Thank you very much, Gerard,” I smiled “That was a very nice thing to do!”

“No problem,” He smiled back “You’re more than welcome!”

Then he leant forwards and picked up one of the plates with a chocolate muffin on it; the one that didn’t have the wrapping on it anymore.

“I asked her to leave the wrapping on yours because I know you don’t like eating food if you can’t see it being prepared!” Gerard explained “Are you allowed to drink those? I wasn’t sure so I just ordered them.”

“Did she do anything to them?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“Anything she wasn’t supposed to,” I said “With the cappuccino, she should have crushed some coffee beans, put that shiny thing in the machine, put a cappuccino cup underneath it and pressed the button so some water came out and made the coffee beans water; it should have been a shot of espresso. Then she should have heated and frothed some milk and poured that into the cup and put the foam on top and sprinkled some chocolate on it.”

Gerard nodded and said ‘Yep’.

“And with the latte, she should have done the same with the shot of espresso. Then heated and frothed the milk but when she was pouring it in, she should have stopped the foam and let about a centimetre of it to go into the drink at the end.”

Gerard nodded again. I started to feel better.

“And with the hot chocolate, she should have put a teaspoon or two in, depending on the hot chocolate they use, and poured a very little amount of hot water in. Then she should have heated some milk and poured it in but not let any foam in. Then squirted the cream on and put the chocolate sprinkles on.”

“Yeah, that’s what she did. Does it make it better if I told you I know how to make all these drinks because I work at a coffee house?”

And I thought about it. That would make Gerard like an expert which means he would know if it was safe or not because he would have seen if the lady had done something wrong when she was making the drinks.

“Yes, I guess it does,” I said after five minutes.

“Good,” Gerard said with a smile “Y’know, you could steal my job from me, you seem to know that much about making the drinks!”

And I said “I know how to make all the drinks I like because I learned from watching all the people make it for me and one lady was the manager and she let me come behind the counter with her and help make my drink!”

“That was nice of her,” Gerard said.

Then I picked up the cappuccino and sipped it to see if I liked it. It was nice and I decided I’d drink it if I didn’t like one of the other drinks better. The latte was nice too but I liked the cappuccino better. But I liked the hot chocolate best and decided I wanted to drink the hot chocolate. Gerard smiled and watched me use my teaspoon to eat the squirty cream off the top.

“Do you like that, by any chance?” He asked.

“Yes, how did you know?”

“A: You’re drinking it and B: You’ve got this really big smile on your face!”

I smiled again and drank more of my drink. It was really nice and didn't taste too chocolatey or not chocolatey enough. Gerard sipped at his americano and started to eat his muffin. So I started eating my muffin too. I ate it by pulling bitesize pieces off and eating them rather than bite into it and drop crumbs everywhere and annoy the waitress.