Getting to know Ben again—as an adult—was both wonderful and torturous. Every morning, he greeted her with a big smile and a mug of hazelnut coffee from the Keurig. And every morning, that smile was made of pure, one-hundred percent friendship. No hint of anything beyond that. Hence the “torturous.”
The hazelnut coffee was part of Project Friendship, as he’d named it. On her second morning of work, after she’d settled in, he pulled out a notebook.
“This is a quiz,” he told her. “A friendship quiz. To speed up the ‘getting to know you again’ process.” The first question was how she liked her coffee. Hence the morning ritual of hazelnut with about half a cup of cream added.
Every day, he asked her a few more questions on the list, and they compared their answers about everything from whet
