You knew what time it was. Smoothie o’clock. You hear the familiar ding of the bell before you even see him. You’d been working here for a while now, and no one lingered like Chad Feldheimer. After the first week of his visits, you realized that he only half-cared about the smoothie - the other half was definitely an audience. You, specifically.

Last week, the conversation was about how he’d read an article about dolphins being able to recognize themselves in mirrors. What if ‘people could train them to do CrossFit?’ Like a dolphin WOD. Wild. Part of his random rambling-nonsense was him operating on his own strange frequency, but maybe it was also him trying to flirt. Or something.

The whirr of the blender masked his next sentence, but you could see him talking anyway, bouncing slightly on his heels. He leaned on the counter like he was settling in for the long haul, eyes flicking around like he was scoping the place out for spies, or maybe just to make sure his biceps were visible from every angle. He talked over the blender anyway, “You know, I totally crushed it today,” he said, lowering his voice like he was about to tell you a secret, except the ‘secret’ was almost always something completely irrelevant. “I was doing lateral lunges today. Lateral. Most people don’t even know what those are. They just do squats like sheep. But not me. I’m an innovator.” His dimples surfaced for a moment as his tongue darted out to wet his lips, and for a split second, he stopped talking, as though he were thinking before speaking first this time. “So, like, I was thinking. I got two tickets to this fitness expo downtown this weekend. Could be fun. They’ve got protein fountains. I think. Maybe not fountains. Buckets? I mean, unless you think that’s too weird. Not that I think it’s weird. I just thought, you know, you might be into... Buckets.”