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| Where coffee spills become love stories. Maya and James first meeting on a busy Boston morning proves that sometimes the best things in life happen when everything goes wrong. |
Maya Chen got four minutes. Just four. The 8:15 train was coming and her coffee had went everywhere. All over the laptop bag. Brown and wet and bad.
"No, no, no," she said quiet. She stood still at Harvard Station. The coffee dripped down onto the hard ground. That bag had three years of work in it. Drawings she made for buildings. Nights she stayed up late. Papers that got sent back with a no. Her big dream of being a partner at Sullivan & Associates was inside that bag getting all wet.
"Here"
A hand came from the side. It held napkins, a bunch of them all wadded up. Maya looked up. She saw brown eyes that were warm like hot cocoa. His face looked like he really cared. Not mad that she was making a mess while everyone rushed by.
"Thanks," she said and took the napkins quick. She dabbed and dabbed at the leather bag trying to save it.
"I'm a doctor. Well almost one anyway. Fourth-year resident is what I am." He smiled at her. Something moved inside Maya's chest when he did that. "The coffee is dead for sure though."
She laughed and she didn't mean to. "Time of death?"
"8:12 AM. What killed it was gravity. And I'm gonna guess a cup from Dunkin' that was too full."
"It was too full." The train made noise coming in. It rumbled loud. "I'm Maya."
"James. James Walker is my name." He pointed at the doors that were opening up. "You taking this train too?"
She nodded her head yes. They got on the train together.
Three days went by. Then Maya saw him again.
She was in Thinking Cup on Newbury Street. Sitting at a table in the corner. Her blueprints were spread out everywhere, on every bit of the table she could find. A voice she knew said, "The laptop lives?"
There was James. He had coffee in his hand too. He looked so tired but his eyes still had a bright look to them somehow. Under his jacket, which was an old Patriots one, his scrubs peeked out a little.
"It does live," Maya said. She felt surprised at how happy she was seeing him there. Really happy. "You doing residency at Mass General?"
"That obvious is it?"
"The jacket gives it away. The scrubs too. And you look like sleeping hasn't happened since I met you."
He laughed at that. Then he pointed at the chair across from her, the empty one. "Mind if I sit? I got about forty-five minutes before rounds."
She should of said no. Her presentation was in two days. Sullivan himself would look at her waterfront proposal. This project could change her whole life.
"Sure," she said anyway. She moved her blueprints to make room.
Two months passed and they got into a way of doing things together.
James would text her during breaks from his shifts. Sometimes the texts came at 2 AM. Other times at noon. Maya would come meet him whenever she could make it work. They walked on the Freedom Trail when autumn was just starting. Leaves crunched under their shoes. He told her about Roxbury where he grew up. About his mom who called every Sunday still. About his dad who died when James was only sixteen years old.
"He was a teacher," James said. They sat on a bench by Faneuil Hall when he told her this. "Ninth-grade history he taught. The kids loved him so much. When he got sick half of those kids came to the hospital to see him." He stopped talking for a second. "That's when I knew what I wanted. Medicine. I wanted to be the one who saves someone else's dad."
Maya didn't even think about it. She just reached out and took his hand. He put his fingers through hers like it was the most normal thing ever. Like they had done it a hundred times before.
She told him about San Francisco where she grew up. Her parents came from another country. They gave up everything so Maya could follow her dreams. She felt this pressure all the time. Had to do good. Had to make their sacrifice mean something real.
"That's why this project matters so much to me," she said. "It's not just a building. It's everything I got."
"Show me," he said.
So she did show him. She put her designs all over her apartment floor. James sat with his legs crossed next to her while she explained stuff. Every arch. Every window. Every choice she made and why. He asked questions that were real ones, not just being nice questions. When she finished he looked at her. His face had wonder on it.
"Maya this is incredible."
"It's just a building is all."
"No." He shook his head side to side. "It's not just a building. It's you. Every line of it is you."
She kissed him right then. The blueprints crinkled under them making paper sounds. The whole world got small. Just this moment. Just this man. Just the feeling of someone really seeing her for real.
The presentation was a disaster but not how you'd think.
The project went great actually. Sullivan loved it. He said it was the most creative waterfront design he seen in twenty years. But then came the words Maya was scared of hearing:
"The client wants someone on-site for the build. Portland, Maine. Eighteen months at least."
Portland. It was only a hundred miles up the road. But it felt like a thousand miles away. James was stuck at Mass General for another year of residency. Then fellowship applications after that. Then who knows what after. Medicine don't wait for nobody. Medicine don't bend for nobody neither.
Architecture was the same way it turned out.
"Take it," James said that night. They were on her rooftop sitting together. Blankets wrapped around them both. City lights flickered all over the place below them. "Maya you have to take it."
"What about us though?"
He was quiet for awhile. Then he said, "My parents did long distance for two years. My dad was finishing his master's degree. Mom always said the missing part made the having part sweeter."
"That's beautiful."
"She also said it was the hardest thing she ever done." He turned so he was facing her. She could see he was scared even though he was trying to hide it. "But she said she would do it again. Every time she would do it again. Because some people are worth the distance."
Maya's eyes got wet. Tears were coming. "James"
"I'm not letting you go," he said and his voice was firm about it. "Not for eighteen months. Not for eighteen years neither. We'll figure it out somehow. Trains on weekends. Whatever it takes."
"You barely got time to sleep as it is."
"Then I'll sleep less than I do now." He pulled her close to him. "Maya Chen, I'm in love with you. I been in love with you since you stood on that platform covered in coffee. You looked at me like I was crazy for helping you out."
She laughed but tears were coming down her face too. "I thought you was crazy."
"Probably I am. But I'm your kind of crazy."
Eighteen months turned into two years. Two whole years of train rides on weekends. Video calls during James's thirty-minute breaks. Maya driving down to Boston whenever the I-95 wasn't closed from snow.
It wasn't easy at all.
There was fights between them. Tired frustrated arguments at midnight when the distance felt like too much. One time James missed her birthday. Emergency surgery came up. There was a time Maya almost took a job in Seattle. She almost made herself believe that maybe this was just too hard. Maybe some loves aren't supposed to survive all the complicated stuff of life.
But good moments happened too. James showed up in Portland one day. Nobody told Maya he was coming. He had flowers and keys to a rental car. Maya sent him care packages with his favorite cookies inside. One note just said 537 days down. We got this. The way he looked at her every single time she stepped off that train made everything worth it. Like she was the only person in the whole world.
The waterfront building went up little by little. Maya watched it get built. Her dreams becoming concrete and glass and something real you could touch. Every night she came home to a phone call with the man who made her believe she deserved those dreams from the start.
The day came when Maya's building opened up for real. James was there standing beside her.
He finished his residency three months before. Started a fellowship in cardiology at Maine Medical Center. The transfer took a whole year of applications. He had to beg people. He had to make everyone believe that Portland, Maine was exactly where he needed to be.
"You moved for me," Maya whispered when he told her the news.
"No," he said correcting her. "I moved for us."
Now she stood in front of the building she designed. The sunset bounced off the windows. She pictured those same windows years ago on a napkin that had coffee stains on it. She felt something she hadn't felt in a long time inside her.
Peace is what it was.
James took her hand in his. "It's beautiful."
"It's just a building."
"You always say that." He smiled. Then his hand went into his jacket pocket. "Okay so I know this isn't traditional or nothing. I was gonna wait until dinner but"
Maya's heart stopped beating for a second.
He pulled out a little box covered in velvet. He got down on one knee right there on the waterfront. Tourists stopped walking. People who lived there stopped walking too. Everyone stared at them.
"Maya Chen. You are stubborn. You are brilliant. You drink way too much coffee from Dunkin'. You work too hard at your job and you don't sleep enough. You got no idea how amazing you really are." His voice cracked a little when he talked. "But I do know. I knew since the moment I met you that first time. I want to spend the rest of my life making sure you never forget how special you are."
He opened up the box. Inside was a diamond that was simple and pretty. It caught the light from the sunset.
"Will you marry me?"
Maya looked at him. This man who waited for her. This man who fought for her. He moved mountains just to be standing next to her. She felt the last piece of her heart go into the right place. Like a puzzle that was finally done.
"Yes," she said. "A thousand times I say yes."
He slid the ring onto her finger. He stood up and kissed her soft. Somewhere in the crowd a person cheered loud.
The house they found in Portland was small. But it was perfect for them.
A fixer-upper is what it was. They found it on a Saturday when rain was falling. The porch needed new paint real bad. The backyard needed pretty much everything done to it.
"We'll build it together," Maya said back then.
"That's what we do," James said back to her.
Now she stood in that same backyard. Their daughter Emma was there too. Eighteen months old and already not scared of nothing. She toddled after the family dog making happy sounds. Maya thought about the life they built together. All the things they gave up a little bit on. The late nights and the early mornings. All those moments when she had doubts about everything. Somehow it all added up to this life right here.
James came up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and held on gentle. "What's on your mind?"
"Red Line trains. Coffee that got spilled everywhere. All the things that had to happen just right for us to end up standing here."
"You know what I think about it?"
"What?"
He kissed the side of her head soft. "I think the universe knew what it was doing all along."
Emma made a happy shriek sound. The dog was licking her face all over. Maya leaned back into her husband's arms. She watched the sun go down over their home. Over their family. Over this life that wasn't perfect but was perfect for them.
Some love stories start with a spark.
Theirs started with a spill.
And neither of them would of wanted it any other way.
THE END
