Sneak Peek: Dream Bites Cookbook by Kristen Ashley & Suzanne M. Johnson

KA

I fly into Denver International Airport, pick up my rental car, and fret that, after I leave Peña Boulevard, I won’t be able to find my way downtown.

That emotion is wasted.

Time has flown. It’s been nearly two decades since I left Denver. And when I did, I knew the Mile High City like the back of my hand.

But as my car cruises the distance, I find that hasn’t changed.

I’ve made a life in other places.

But being in Denver always feels like coming home.

Arriving downtown, I check into Hotel Teatro, itching to head right back out.

Once I dump my bags in my room, this is what I do.

Get to Speer Boulevard.

Turn onto Broadway.

Go south.

When I near it, I search for a parking spot (not easy).

I then hoof it to that special corner on Broadway where it all began.

All of it.

The realization of my dream.

I open the door and the bell above it rings.

Immediately, I see there’s a huge movie poster of Da 5 Bloods tacked over the shelves behind the espresso counter, this partly obscuring an epic collage of pictures of cats.

I walk to the line extending from the counter, eyeing the two people who are busy behind it.

I wait in line and finally make the front.

Of course, the gorgeous, curvy redhead who waits on me doesn’t recognize me.

I pretend I don’t know her intimately and order a Textual, the bespoke coffee drink named after the famous barista who is working next to her. His hair is wild, his beard wilder, and his manner even wilder.

He’s now banging on the large, red espresso machine, creating his concoctions from what appears to be brute force.

He’s doing this multi-tasking.

The other task he’s performing is having an argument with a man with a long gray ponytail peeking out from under the back of a bandana wrapped around his cranium. A man who is all the way across the bookstore standing behind a counter.

“It’s about where that damned red cap landed in the end, motherfucker,” the barista is saying. “That’s Spike’s statement.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Bandana Man replies.

Famous Barista returns, “Then what were you saying?”

Which brings an exasperated, “Man, the same thing as you. Spike Lee doesn’t give you anything for free, brother. With Spike, you gotta earn it. And to do that, you gotta pay attention.”

Since I’ve seen the film (and the huge-ass poster is a big honking clue), I know they’re talking about Da 5 Bloods.

The redhead gets close to the barista in order to give him a cup with a drink order, a heart with an arrow through it and several stars drawn on it with a hot pink sharpie (my cup has a stick figure alien on it made up of an oval with eyes, nose and smiling mouth, antennae looping from the top, with mitten hands sticking out each side and globs for feet).

“It bums me out when Duke agrees with me,” the barista grumbles to the redhead.

That’s when she looks at me.

And winks.

Indy Nightingale.

Winking at me.