I Spilled Coffee All Over a Book Display and My High School Crush Came to My Rescue

The National Book Festival looks like Comic-Con dressed in tweed. Tents and banners and endless lines of people clutching tote bags like they contain the last oxygen on earth. I’m holding a cappuccino I can’t seem to drink without scalding my tongue, which feels like some kind of metaphor for my entire career. I try to walk like I belong—chin up, shoulders back, a guy who definitely sold at least five hundred copies in hardcover. The cup betrays me, seeping heat through the paper sleeve and reminding me I’m just a fraud sweating inside a thrift-store blazer.

A woman in a sweater that says Reading Is Sexy breezes by with three signed hardcovers balanced on her forearm like a pizza. A volunteer with a lanyard longer than my bibliography shouts, “Poetry slam at noon!” and a wave of teenagers cheers. There’s a guy dressed as Hemingway—white beard, fisherman's sweater, stoic misery. Someone else is dressed like a book cover, literally. Bright blue cardboard with cutout letters. I mutter, “Commitment,” and try not to let the roasted espresso smell push my anxiety into heart-palpitation territory.

I’m early for my first-ever panel, which means I get to marinate in dread longer. My stomach is a washing machine. I practiced lines in the mirror last night. Words about craft and voice and why my protagonist steals umbrellas as a coping mechanism. It sounded almost convincing to my toothbrush. Now, in the glare of this daylight and these Very Real Readers, it sounds like something I stole off a writing blog in 2012.

I dodge a stack of crates labeled SWAG and a man in a cape who looks like he teleported from a fantasy aisle. My sneaker catches on a stray cable disguised as a snake. I lurch, save the coffee at the expense of my dignity, and pretend it’s a dance move. The heat licks my wrist. I pull my sleeve down like it’s armor and keep moving toward the row of panels listed on a foam board: The Evolving Novel. And there’s my name, fourth down, tiny but legible. Ulysses Reed. When I see it, I feel taller. Then I remember everyone else on that line-up has probably been on NPR. I was on my cousin’s podcast once, which he recorded in a pantry.

A booth to my left features an author with hair that looks professionally tousled, signing books in a perfect, confident arc. The line snakes around like a conga. I imagine my own signing line as a small, intimate gathering composed of my mother and an old roommate who owes me twenty bucks. I sip my drink and scald my mouth. I swear quietly and immediately start smiling, as if someone just told me a clever joke about the semicolon.

A cluster of bookstagrammers—ring lights clipped to their phones, nails painted in pastel gradients—pose with a stack of galleys like they’re holding newborns. I love them. I fear them. One headset-wearing staffer jogs past yelling, “Does anyone know where the romance author with the dog is?” and four different people point in four different directions. I think about romance authors. I think about romance, period, and how my last date ended with her saying, “I like you, but you feel like a paragraph that keeps qualifying itself.”

Fair.

I check my watch. Twenty-eight minutes until I sit on a stage and try not to say the phrase journey too often. I can see the tent through a gap: rows of chairs, a small, polite stage, a pitcher of water that will make me need a bathroom at the worst possible time. Two people breeze past debating the Oxford comma like it killed their father. I love them too.

I pass a pristine display of hardcovers, white covers gleaming like teeth. The bestselling author’s name is embossed in gold. The books look expensive and smug. I angle my body away protectively, like my coffee might leap out and ruin them out of spite.

I’m going to be careful. I’m going to be the version of me that has a decent posture and an answer about structure that doesn’t include the words vibe-based.

The cappuccino hisses as I loosen the lid to let out steam. I tighten it again. I ease into the current of people and whisper a pep talk that is mostly full of words I’d never let a character say out loud. I’m here. I made it. I can do this without tripping over—

A rolling suitcase slices across my path like a shark fin. I pivot, knees knocking. A laughing group of cosplayers in elaborate cloaks swish by on the other side, glitter in their hair and swords peeking from foam scabbards. I squeeze the cup tighter, heart kicking hard enough to rattle my ribs, trying to thread myself through the moving color and sound without drawing attention.

I’m a real author, I tell myself. I belong. If I keep saying it, maybe I’ll get to the tent without incident. I adjust my grip on the too-hot cup, lift my chin, take a step.

My ankle kisses that treacherous cable again. My foot hooks, my body pitches forward, and my grip tightens on the cup the way you grab a lifeline on a sinking ship. The lid loosens in one traitorous pop. Time slows into cruel detail: the foamy crest rising, the paper sleeve twisting, the white display three feet away gleaming like a stage under bright lights.

“No, no, no—” I hiss, as if words have gravitational power.

They don’t. The cappuccino leaves the cup in a graceful arc that would impress a physics professor and devastates a bookseller. Brown foam sails, freckles the air, and lands with a soft, wet chumph on the front row of pristine hardcovers. The gold-embossed name catches the splash like it’s winking at me. Tricks of fate. Warm coffee cascades down glossy dust jackets, pooling in the curve of a price sticker. It splatters outward like I let a toddler finger-paint with espresso.

Someone gasps. Then someone else. The booth attendant’s gasp is an aria. The cosplayers scatter with a hiss of fabric, cloaks swishing in slow-motion retreat. The rolling suitcase misses my shin by a miracle and plows on, oblivious. I stumble into the corner of the display, which shudders like it’s considering full collapse. A top book slides off and flops onto its face with a wet slap.

“I—I—” I sound like dial-up internet. I right myself and reach for napkins that do not exist, then for a pen in my pocket like that will sign me out of this nightmare. Strangers stare. One person lifts their phone and I swear if I end up as a meme called Latte of Wrath, I will move to a cabin and make candles for a living.

The books—oh God, the books—are freckled and streaked. Pale covers stained like they’re bleeding sepia. Foam clings to the edges, dissolving as it slides, a melting crown. It’s a coffee oil slick. I lunge for the abandoned cup, which sits on its rim, empty but still mocking me with bubbles clinging to the waxed paper.

“I am so, so sorry.” My voice returns in a rush, too loud, like an apology can mop. “I tripped—there was a—did you see the cable?” I bend, hands hovering, afraid to touch anything, afraid not to. I wipe my palm on my blazer and instantly regret it. It leaves a tan streak like I’m trying to contour.

The booth attendant—a woman with a topknot so tight it looks like it hurts—comes into focus. Her eyes travel from me to the display and back. She says, very calmly, “Sir. What did you do?” It’s not a question. It’s a verdict.

“I’m going to fix this,” I babble. “I’ll—paper towels. I’ll buy them. I’ll buy new books.” I glance at the title and do math that makes me choke. Hardcovers are not cheap. These are not trade paperbacks. These are the kind of books that could pay rent if they were sentient.

Behind me, a child whispers, “Mom, did he pee?” and somewhere inside, a small part of me dies without ceremony.

I yank the sleeve off my cup and use it to dab at the cover nearest to me. It leaves a sad brown ring like a coffee-stained moon. The attendant makes a sound that implies if I touch one more thing the earth will open and swallow me. “Please stop,” she says, ice and resignation. “Just—stop touching them.”

I straighten, hands held out like I’m under arrest. “Right. Yes. Sorry. I’ll get towels.” I pivot and nearly crash into a cardboard cutout of the author, all confident smirk and clean suit. He is unharmed. Of course he is.

People are still staring. The phone is still pointed. I want to say, “Can you at least tag my good side?” but this is not a moment for jokes. Or it is, if the joke is me. The display drips. The coffee slides off the edge and lands on the black tablecloth in a polite patter. A rogue stream runs down the spine of a book and disappears under the dust jacket like it’s hiding its shame.

“Hey!” a volunteer calls from somewhere. “We need towels. Stat.” It’s the most medical anyone has ever been about a beverage.

“I brought my own disaster,” I mutter, because if I don’t narrate, I will vanish. I glance at the title again. The author’s name might as well be printed in tiny letters on my forehead now: Enemy of Major Commercial Success.

“I can pay,” I try again, voice small. My throat is tight. The attendant chews on her lip like it’s an alternative to screaming. “We’ll talk to the publisher,” she says, soothing herself more than me. “Just—step back.”

I step back. My heel bumps the cable. I don’t fall. Small mercies. An older man in a tweed cap shakes his head, disappointed, as though I’ve personally insulted the canon. A teenager snorts a laugh they try to swallow, and it comes out as a hiccup.

The foam finally settles into sticky patches. The books look like they lost a battle with a dessert. I’m sorry in loops. Sorry in every direction. Sorry in the way I stand there uselessly, heat crawling up my neck, my blazer darkening on one side. Sorry that my hands won’t stop shaking. Sorry that I picked today to live out the slapstick version of my life. All I can do is breathe and hope that the ground is merciful enough not to give way beneath me.

“Okay, we’re not going to panic,” a voice says next to my ear, steady and warm enough that my spine recognizes it before my brain does.

I turn and nearly swallow my tongue. Charla. Charla West, except not the girl in a paint-splattered sweatshirt from the art room, but a sleek, composed woman in black jeans and a fitted blazer, her curls pinned back with a gold clip. A lanyard rests against her chest, badge flipped to REED STAFF—DESIGN, like fate’s idea of a joke. Her mouth curves, the exact slope I used to stare at during senior English, and there’s a glint of amusement in her eyes that doesn’t unkindly land on the mess so much as take it in and move past it.

She’s holding a fat roll of paper towels like a hero carrying a lifebuoy. She passes it to me, our fingers brushing for a half-second. My skin sparks, a ridiculous, bright flare, and I almost drop the towels because of the way her touch shoots through a decade.

“Here,” she says, voice low. “Use these. Dab. Don’t rub.”

I nod like a bobblehead. “Dab. Right. I know dabbing. I’ve dabbed before.”

Her mouth twitches. “I remember.” She crouches without hesitation, angling her body between me and the booth attendant’s growing fury, and starts peeling back dust jackets with quick, careful hands. “Can we get a bin?” she calls, professional and calm. A volunteer hustles over with a plastic tub, eager to be useful.

I’m dabbing. I am, in fact, a person who dabs, doing what she told me because doing what she tells me feels like salvation. The towels drink up the coffee in polite circles. Charla tilts one book on its spine, letting the liquid slide into a folded towel she’s wedged underneath. Efficient. Competent. Honey and steel.

“Sorry,” I say to everything. To the attendant. To Charla. To the entire publishing industry. “I tripped on a cable and physics happened.”

“Physics is rude,” she agrees, voice a gentle balm. Her eyes flick up to mine for a beat. “Hi, Ulysses.”

The way she says my name makes my chest ache. “Hi,” I echo, breathless. A laugh leaks out of me. “This isn’t how I pictured seeing you again.”

“How did you picture it?” She’s smiling now, more openly, like the absurdity cracked something open.

“Less… cappuccino homicide.”

She laughs under her breath, then faces the attendant with the kind of practiced empathy that probably keeps this festival from burning to the ground. “We’re comping these,” she tells her, already pulling a notepad from her jacket pocket. “I’ll take the ISBNs, we’ll inventory the damage, and I’ll have distribution overnight replacements. The author has a signing at three, right?” She checks the nearby schedule without waiting for approval. “We’ll rebuild the display with fresh stock from the pallet. I’ll grab marketing to print new jackets.”

The attendant’s shoulders lower a millimeter. She nods, still wounded, but listening. Charla writes quickly, neat block letters, checks the stack with a practiced thumb. When she’s done, she turns back to me, close enough that I can smell her perfume—something clean and soft, like citrus and skin.

“Breathe,” she says, quieter. “You’re okay.”

“I am definitely not okay.” My hands are shaking. She notices and gently takes the wad of soaked towels from me, swapping them for a fresh clutch. Her fingers skim my knuckles. Another spark, a little explosion under the surface, right where old longing meets present-tense reality.

“You will be.” She gives me a frank once-over, landing on the brown streak that has turned my blazer into latte art. “You look the same. Taller.”

“I practiced.” I swallow. “You look… good. Better than good.”

Color rises high on her cheeks. “Flatter me later.” She stands, then reaches up and smooths a droplet off my collar with her thumb, slow enough that the whole room blurs for a second. “There. Less tragic.”

I want to say a lot of things at once. That I kept the flyer from her senior show in a box for years. That my heart is doing a drum solo. That I watched her teach me how to fix a disaster and fell for her all over again in thirty seconds.

Instead, I say, “Thank you.”

She lifts a brow. “For the towels or the rescue?”

“Yes.”

Her grin flashes and steals my breath. “You’re on a panel in, what, twenty minutes?” She tips her head toward the tent. I follow the motion and catch sight of my name again, letters even smaller now because my vision is tunnel-shaped and full of her. “We’ll get you cleaned up.”

We. The word lands like a promise and a dare. She gestures to a volunteer to keep dabbing while she steps aside, radios clipped to her hip crackling. “Green Room,” she says into it, voice half-murmur, half-command. “Need a spare blazer. Men’s medium. And cups with lids that actually lid.”

She tucks the radio back, then faces me. The crowd has started to disperse, crisis downgraded. The attendant is breathing normally. The books look less like casualties and more like salvage. Charla’s presence has bent the chaos into something manageable. She has always done that—take mess and make it look intentional.

“Come on.” She tilts her head toward a gap behind the booth. “Let’s get you out of here before someone asks for a statement.”

I take one step, then stop. “Charla?”

She turns, eyebrows lifted.

“It’s really good to see you.”

Her expression softens, the amused glint melting into something warmer that curls low in my chest. “You too, Ulysses.” She reaches out, squeezes my forearm, a quick, grounding touch that sends heat racing under my skin. “Try not to trip on the way.”

“I make no promises,” I manage. But I follow her anyway, my humiliation humming in the background and my heart beating in a new, inconvenient rhythm—loud, insistent, hers.