Coffee-Stained Romance, Chapter One: Tuesday

Note: Todd and Kelly are the property of Kevin Woodside and Tricia Clem. Use of these characters is not permitted. For further details, please contact Kevin Woodside at the e-mail address provided. The story may not be re-posted anywhere else with the permission of Kevin Woodside.

Author's Note: I've been working on this story on and off for a while now. My hope was to publish it, but to be honest, I don't know how good it is . . . so I'm putting it here, on my LJ, and on my DA page. For now. Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

Chapter One: Tuesday

The alarm thundered and roared, red and loud, echoing through the finished basement of the townhouse. Todd turned in his bed and with an instinct ingrained since the 6^th grade, pressed the bar neatly labeled ‘SNOOZE.’ His hand dropped over to the side of the bed and Todd’s eyes stared mercilessly at the 7:30 AM and calculated in his head just how long it would take him to get up, take a shower, get dressed, and make it to class on time. By his best estimates, he could risk laying in bed for ten more minutes.

And he did.

Nine and a half minutes later, the alarm came again and Todd resisted the urge to depress the snooze bar and instead rose up slowly from a tangle of sheets and blankets. He staggered uneasily to the stairs and ventured into the kitchen. His roommates weren’t up yet, which was kind of a blessing. It meant he could get to the shower before they used up the hot water.

Todd started the coffee maker, then went upstairs to shower. He returned to the kitchen some ten minutes later, clean as a whistle and dressed. He poured his coffee into a mug and slipped back downstairs into his basement bedroom. He had gotten lucky with this room. Despite it being freezing cold in the winter, it was still the biggest out of the three.

Todd gathered together the materials he would need for the day – only after double-checking his schedule. It was only the second week of school. Two classes today – Composition and Literature first, followed by Graphic Design, with forty-five minutes in between.

He began to dig through a pile of sketchbooks until he found his Comp and Lit book. He tossed it into his backpack and it was soon joined by a college ruled notebook and his Graphic Design sketchbook.

Todd turned to his computer and realized that he had left Photoshop on all night. A character sketch he had scanned in yesterday was still open. He closed Photoshop and changed his Away Message. He then finished his coffee, trotted upstairs, and out the back door. His bike was waiting for him.

His friend Jason in Life Drawing had proclaimed Todd’s riding of the bike as ‘uber-lame,’ but Todd didn’t care. It was the only exercise he got. Before starting off, Todd pulled out his iPod, put in the earplugs, and started playing Belle and Sebastian. Best get the day off to good start, right? And what better way than with as great a song as ‘Lazy Line Painter Jane.’

The air was warm and the green leaved trees were defiantly resisting the name ‘Fall Semester.’ Summer still held a firm grip in the early weeks of September, though Todd acknowledged that summer to him was over. It was the day after Labor Day and he considered that the end of summer. He and his buddies celebrated by getting as drunk as they could.

Todd’s bike took him to the end of Beech Hill Road, where it dead-ended with Maxwell. He turned onto Maxwell Road, eyes carefully looking out for pedestrians and cars. It didn’t take very long for him to get onto campus and to follow the campus roads to the Surber Building. By the time he arrived and locked up his bike, the iPod had shuffled over to Belle and Sebastian’s ‘Photo Jenny.’ He popped out the earplugs and arrived in his first floor classroom.

It was a pretty well-packed class and Todd was forced to sit in the middle between a heavy-set weird guy he had a conversation with last semester and a blonde chick that spent more time texting than talking. Todd wasn’t quite early, but there were still people coming in. He glanced up at them every now and then, as did everyone else that was already sitting, thinking that the Professor would step in instead of a student.

At 8:31 AM, the door opened and in walked Professor O’Reily, wearing slacks and a navy blue sweater vest. He was a round man with a salt and pepper beard and a scalp that was overcoming his graying hair. He carried with him a thermos mug of coffee and a stack of books and papers.

“Good morning,” he greeted. The morning class gave a pathetic half-hearted reply. O’Reily sipped his coffee and opened up his attendance book.

The door swung open and a late-comer showed up. It was a girl with chestnut-mocha hair and big brown eyes. She looked uncomfortable and uncertain. Todd looked to her, his eyes automatically drinking in her appearance. Her face was lean and with a nose that turned up just a bit; her chest was medium, but on the larger end of that scale. The girl’s waist was trim and her hips were average. Her legs were not particularly long, but not exactly short. Todd tore his eyes from her, hoping she wouldn’t notice or be offended by his checking her out.

“Hello,” she said, producing an unevenly folded piece of paper from her pocket. “I’m joining your class.”

O’Reily raised a shaggy eyebrow. “You are?”

“Yes, there was an . . . issue with my schedule and they had to re-assign my classes.”

She handed over the paper and he looked hard at it. “Kelly Shaw?”

“Yeah.”

He gave it back to her. “Welcome. Do you have your book?” She nodded. He waved to the rows of tables and chairs. “Take a seat then, Miss Shaw.”

She looked around for an empty chair and found one in the back of the classroom. Todd glanced back at her as a she sat down. This time, she noticed and looked back. He looked away quickly and turned his attention to O’Reily. O’Reily went through his roster and opened his book.

“John Updike’s A&P. What did we think? Mister - ” Glancing at the roster. “- Beckley.”

“Uh, oh,” Todd attempted, sitting up. “I liked it.”

“Good. And why is that?”

“I, uh, used to work at a grocery store and I remember hot chicks coming in and creating a subtle ruckus all the time.”

O’Reily smiled and there were a few sleepy giggles from the class. “‘Subtle ruckus?’” questioned O’Reily with an amused smile. “I like that description. What would you say the story was about?”

“Me?”

“Sure.”

“Uh . . . quitting your job?”

O’Reily looked away from Todd. “Nope. Sorry. Anyone else? Melissa, right?”

The class went on from there. They discussed the theme of A&P, which even by the end of the class, wasn’t exactly clear to Todd, though he had a feeling that even if he had a chance to fully garner the theme of A&P, it would have only stuck around in his head until the exam, then it would be replaced by whatever their next chapter would be shoved into his brain.

Todd glanced at Kelly, but she was long gone before he had a chance to take another long look at her. He popped her earplugs back in, put on something more exciting than Belle and Sebastian (which would be Spoon) and rode off on his bike to Graphic Design.

After a while there, being instructed by Professor Kate Kaufman, Todd headed back to the townhouse, his education finished for the day.

Todd tossed his bag onto the couch of the living room and walked into the kitchen. The good thing about Tuesdays was that after twelve noon, he had the whole day to piss away. Thinking logically, that meant he could do some homework, reading, whatever. But this afternoon, Todd had greater things on his mind. He had his webcomic.

Or, really, what he hoped would someday become his webcomic.

A little over eight months ago, Todd felt inspired by the works of other people and he gathered together ideas from his past. Characters that never found their right place in old D&D campaigns. A sketch of a few random characters. A beautiful painting of a castle he had done back his senior year. Todd poured his creative energy into bringing these things together, to pulling them to a center – to create a basis for which he could launch a comic strip onto the Internet.

But there were problems. The first one being that he had very little to no website building knowledge. He had friends that did, but honestly, he felt like he’d be using them. There were ways around that, of course, and that’s by posting on LiveJournal or DeviantArt or even Blogger. But what webcomic great got their start that way?

The second problem was that he didn’t have the skills he felt he needed to do the job. Basically meaning, his lack of computer-related graphic design programs. He could operate Photoshop enough to clean up his artwork, but it was making it perfect with Photoshop and other programs that eluded Todd.

Finally, and more importantly, was that Todd just couldn’t get the story right. Every time he tried to write a script, it felt wrong. Every time he tried to draw a panel for which his characters to exist, it seemed to just fall apart. Part of him dreamed of this being his epic, his Lord of the Rings, his Harry Potter, and The Chronicles of Narnia. He wanted it to be grand and perfect. Getting it there . . . was proving to be impossible.

Todd poked around a character design on Photoshop until he grew tired of looking at a screen.

Coffee.

Coffee would make him focus and fill him with energy. Getting out of the townhouse from which he had lived for about a year would help too; freshen up the mind. Todd grabbed his satchel and placed within a few sketchbooks, some pencils and erasers, and a few other doodads. He then again took his bike back down Beech Hill Road, this time turning left onto Maxwell. Within moments, he was parking his bike in front of Coffee Haven.

“Hey! Todd!” yelped an overweight kid about Todd’s age from across the room.

“Hello Greg.”

Greg Ashmore was a pain in the ass. Todd liked him okay and was about the only other person he knew that read the same comics Todd did . . . but he took a bizarre pleasure in ranting, raving, and generally over-thinking each and every one of them. As Todd reluctantly walked over, he saw that Greg was in the middle of re-reading last week’s load.

Coffee Haven was what one would expect from a coffeehouse. College-aged hipsters hanging around in the middle of the afternoon, drinking their tea and coffee. It had the expected smell of roasted coffee beans and the sound of clattering dishes mixed with conversation and the roaring of a faucet behind the counter. An espresso machine blared every now and then. The local NPR station (WKMX) played on beneath these sounds, a marathon of classical music that Todd appreciated, even if he wasn’t the biggest fan.

After getting a Café Mocha (cheap, common, but had the certain unique qualities that only Coffee Haven’s baristas offered), Todd took a seat across from Greg. Reluctantly.

“So, what’s up, bro?” asked Greg.

“Nothing much.”

“Is that your sketchbook?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

“Not today, buddy,” Todd answered through an insincere smile. “Not until I’ve got some good stuff to show for it.”

“Oh. Okay. So, hey, did you read Avengers last week?”

“Yeah.”

“Wasn’t it just awful? What is Marvel thinking putting Brian Michael Bendis on Avengers? This Disassembled stuff is crazy.”

“It’s supposed to be. But yeah, Bendis is an odd choice. It’s not terrible though. The art’s nice and the script seems pretty decent.”

Greg rolled his eyes. “The characterization is all off! You ask me, this is just another step towards Marvel replacing their mainstream universe with the ultimate one.”

Todd groaned internally. Greg was obsessed with the idea that Marvel Entertainment was going to replace the universe of characters that had existed since the 1930s and in which the majority of their titles took place with the recently-launched and more accessible Ultimate line. This was in spite of the fact that Marvel’s editorial had claimed this was never going to happen and had never been planned to happen.

“I just hope when it happens, they do it right.”

Todd nodded absently. “Well, they’ll probably do it how they want to. It’s their characters and their universes. But I still don’t think they’re going to.”

Greg half-ignored him. “They better get Grant Morrison back. He’s the only one who could write it.”

“I really don’t think it’s going to happen, Greg. Y’know, you seem so taken with the idea, why don’t you write a fanfic?”

Greg laughed – it was more of a snort, really. “Fanfiction is for losers, Todd.”

Todd shrugged, hoping that Greg would never find that file folder in Todd’s computer labeled ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ It contained seven short stories written by Todd featuring Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and Elizabeth Swan. God, he could never live that down.

The two sat there for half-an-hour, Todd hoping for the moment Greg would look at the watch on his chubby wrist, heave a sigh, slip his comics in his book bag, and leave. Every single second Todd spent with Greg just made him hate Greg a little more. He was so nitpicky, so angry had the medium that he claimed to love so much. Todd had once asked him why he just didn’t stop collecting the books that pissed him off, but Greg snorted/laughed and told him that he was a ‘completist’ – that he needed to have a complete run of Avengers from 200 on up.

At long last, Greg left. Todd sighed and as Greg walked out the door, he pulled out his sketchbook. He was dimly aware of others coming and going from Coffee Haven, but he made himself focus in on the sketch.

“Need some more coffee,” he proclaimed after dismissing a disproportioned arm.

The girl behind the counter was tall and pretty, with her jet-black hair yanked back in a tight ponytail that went through the hole in the back of her ‘Coffee Haven’ baseball cap. He ordered another Café Mocha after a short internal debate as to whether or not he wanted something cheaper.

He was back at it, sketching, moving his pencil with decidedly jerky motions, creating three lines for the forearm – the three lines would later be inked into one. Todd was drawing the hero of his little epic, Barratt, son of Mothran of the kingdom of Benton. After a good fifteen minutes, the sketch was complete and he was satisfied with it, if not bothered by the way the feet looked and the oversized chin.

He worked for the next half-hour, forty-five minutes, sketching two more characters and drawing the Palace of Light. After he finished that, he closed his sketchbook, tossed it in his bag, pulled the strap over his shoulder and walked on out.

Not too much later, Todd returned to the townhouse on Beech Hill. Sitting in the living room was Lorrel, Todd’s roommate and best friend. Lorrel was just a little on the chubby side with very light blonde hair.

The living room was perpetually cluttered. Two huge couches sat on either side of a TV that had at least three game systems, a sound system, and a DVD player hooked up to it. Star Wars posters lined the walls, broken only by a Lord of the Rings poster (much to the agitation of David, their other roommate, who hated the Lord of the Rings movies) and a Super Smash Bros. poster.

“Word up, hommie,” Lorrel greeted in a tone made it so evident that his words were sarcastic.

“Hey,” Todd responded and crashed onto one of the couches. “What are you watching?”

“Some stupid show about rich people. Nothing else on.”

“Gotcha. How’s your stomach?”

“Fine. I’ve recovered well.”

“Good to hear. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you puke so much.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Haha.”

Lorrel got up. “Ugh. I’ve got class here.”

“Have a blast.”

Lorrel grabbed his back-pack from the end of the couch, grabbed his keys, and headed out. Todd gave the show about two minutes to lock in his interest, then turned off the television, picked up his bag and went downstairs in the hope of creating . . . something.