Dragonstone Tablet

A Story :: Cynic Finds Coffee & Laughter

Melissa was the eternal ray of sunshine to my perpetual storm cloud. Every bad date, every failed job interview, every time existence decided to kick me in the teeth, Melissa was there with a pep talk and a disturbingly optimistic plan of action. Her latest plan involved dragging my sorry, cynical butt onto a blind date.

"She's a curator, Chris! Into that old movie stuff you obsess over," she'd chirped. "I'm telling you, you two will be quoting Casablanca within five minutes!" The image of quoting cheesy lines with a stranger made me want to crawl under a rock, yet somehow here I was, scanning the crowd at 'The Grind', a hipster caffeine bar that was a painful assault on my anti-aesthetic sensibilities.

Then, I saw her – Emily. The description 'sweet' hadn't done her justice. Her eyes were the color of well-aged whiskey, and her smile, when she finally spotted me, held a touch of wry amusement that set off alarm bells. Were those... laugh lines at the corners of her eyes? Damn, she was going to see right through me.

My carefully crafted armor of cynicism began to clang with discomfort. I managed a pathetic wave and what I hoped passed for a suave smile while internally cringing. This was a mistake. A huge, hairy, Melissa-shaped mistake.

"So...you come here often?" God, I hated myself. Emily, thankfully, didn't seem to notice my spectacularly lame attempt at conversation. Instead, she raised an eyebrow.

"Bold opening gambit. Are you always this smooth, or am I getting the special-edition awkward?" The way she said it – not mean, just genuinely curious – threw me completely.

"Look, I blame Melissa. This whole blind date thing… it’s not exactly my scene," I admitted, sinking a little lower into the armchair. Time to rip the band-aid off, reveal my full cynical glory, and get this over with.

But Emily didn't look horrified. Instead, a slow grin spread across her face, and she leaned forward conspiratorially. "Don't worry, my roommate roped me into this. I spent my commute wondering if you were going to be an axe murderer."

Her honesty disarmed me. For the first time in ages, I didn't feel the need to hide behind sarcasm and preemptive disappointment. Something shifted, and as the conversation flowed, I found myself dredging up the funniest, most bizarre tales from the depths of my dating disaster archive. There was the mime, the guy who brought his emotional support iguana, the date that ended in a police report… Okay, maybe I needed to tone down the crazy anecdotes.

Emily though, just laughed. It was a full-body laugh, head tilted back, eyes crinkling at the corners. It felt like a warm ray of sunshine breaking through a decade-long drizzle. We traded stories for hours, skipping from shared guilty-pleasure movies to the questionable haircuts of our childhood. The irony wasn't lost on me - the blind date I'd been dreading was turning into one of the best evenings I'd had in years.

Of course, the cynicism was still there, lurking in the background. It was like a grumpy old dog, growling from its corner. But it was drowned out by Emily's infectious energy, her ability to find the absurdly funny side of everything, even the disasters.

"Think this place might kick us out soon?" I finally asked, hating the way my voice sounded a little too hopeful.

"Probably. Unless you want to make a run for it, Bonnie and Clyde style?" She was teasing, but there was a spark in her eyes that made my stomach do a weird little flip-flop.

"Listen, as tempting as that sounds, how about we skip the jail time and go for round two? Deliberately this time," I found myself saying. The cynicism was battling with a newfound, absurd thing called hope.

Emily's grin widened. "Deal. But if you even think about ordering pineapple pizza, I'm walking out."

Hope, it seemed, decisively won that round. As we left the coffee shop, a warm breeze rustled through the palm trees. Maybe… just maybe, Melissa's ridiculous matchmaking schemes weren't the worst thing in the world.

WORD COUNT: 688 Words
PROMPT: WHAT'S HIS STORY?
5. Write about a cynical character who somehow ends up on a blind date.
THE RAVEN TASK: "Raven Task #3"