Frappuccino Days

 

            Some people have good days and bad days; I have frappuccino days.

 

            Mocha for the days my heart has been broken, caramel for when I am feeling homesick, java chip for when I’ve been betrayed.  

 

            My car key is in the ignition and my phone is in my hand. This is my ritual: speed dial three, and my best friend picks up before the second ring. “Hazel,” I say, and she hears it my voice. Today is a frappuccino day.

 

            “Caramel or mocha?”

 

            “Haven’t decided. Meet me at Starbucks in ten?”

 

            I get my frap—this day, caramel—and she grabs two Cosmopolitan magazines off the shelves, and we sip and flip through some of the trashiest and most fascinating articles I have ever read. Mid-way through “10 Ways to Please Your Man” I say, “How can everything have changed this much already?” I slam down my frap as if we’re through. Then, as an afterthought, I take a sip. “I’ve only been gone one semester.”

 

            “Maybe it isn’t everything that has changed.” Hazel tastes her white hot chocolate. She does not have frappuccino days. “Maybe it’s you.”

 

            “But I don’t want to change,” I say. I wrap my cold hands around my frap as though it is the only constant thing left in the world.

 

            I cried once on a mocha day, nearly threw my drink across the café on a java chip day, and both times sucked on my straw for dear life. But ask me how I feel when I’m done, when I have downed those 2,000 (guiltless) calories of frozen deliciousness and talked everything through with Hazel, and without question, every time, with every therapeutic sip, I am calmed.

 

            I surprised myself one frappuccino day. Pumpkin spice. I usually stay away from the seasonals, but this was a different sort of day. There was something I just could not quite figure out. I sipped. Hazel grabbed the magazines. I flipped. Trashy article after trashy article, and yet the tightening knot in my stomach would not loosen. I looked up and realized that Hazel might need the frappuccino more than I. I pushed it towards her. I tried to think who called who. I could not remember. She pushed it back. “Too cold,” she said. Blasphemy. “I’m moving.” 

 

            To Costa Rica.

 

            I couldn’t finish the pumpkin spice. I threw it out, half-empty—a first, for me.

 

            The day she moved halfway across the world, I ventured into Starbucks alone. It was like realizing for the first time that you’re homesick for a place that no longer exists. It had completely changed. Or maybe I’d changed. I could never figure that one out.

 

            “Caramel frappuccino,” I said to the barista. “Venti.”

 

            Halfway through my drink, I considered demanding a refund. There must have been some sort of recipe change, I thought. I sat by myself with my Cosmo, bewildered. “What His Cuddling Body Language Reveals” read like a humorless textbook essay. I knew exactly why but pushed the thought aside, feeling betrayed by my frap. I considered ordering another, perhaps java chip, then didn’t. I walked out.

 

            I haven’t had a frappuccino since.