A/N: This is my first ever Zoe and Wade fic! Well that's not entirely true. I did another one but I didn't publish it. I'm still marinating on that one. My beautiful friend katiekayx read this one and assured me it did not suck, so hopefully this is the start of a lot of fun Zade fic because ugh, I love them so much. Wade is such a precious puppy. Anyway, I don't own anything Hart of Dixie related and I borrowed the title for this from a Jason Aldean song. I hope this does not disappoint!
"So that's a venti caramel iced latte with two shots of espresso, whipped cream and extra caramel?"
"Right," Zoe said, digging through her backpack for her wallet. Usually she stuck with black coffee, but she had woken up late and her hair resembled a brown cotton ball thanks to the humidity. She deserved a ridiculously sugary coffee drink.
The barista waited patiently for her to look through her bag, which made Zoe feel more frantic. She always had her wallet with her. There was no way she had forgotten it. And yet, as she dug to the bottom of her backpack, she remembered taking it out to order something online the night before. Instead of putting it back right away, she had left it on her desk. Cursing silently, she turned back to the barista with a sheepish look on her face. "Actually, not right. I forgot my wallet, sorry." She gave him a weak smile, even though she felt like crying. She was absolutely exhausted and had back to back classes all day. That stupid latte was supposed to be the best part of her day.
Zoe turned to leave, but she felt someone walk up behind her. "I've got it," a male voice said. "Add a large black coffee to that, too."
"You don't have to do that," Zoe said, turning around to take in her knight in shining armor. With his flannel shirt and slightly messy blond hair, he didn't look like any kind of knight she had seen. "Seriously, don't worry about it. No one needs that much sugar in the morning anyway."
He waved her away. "It's 6am on a Friday and you're lugging around the world's biggest backpack. I think you need the coffee more than I need the three bucks."
"Well, thank you," Zoe said. She tried to think of something else to say, but the mystery guy had pulled out his phone and was looking at something on the screen. When the barista set their drinks down she went to grab hers, but he picked it up first.
He handed her the drink, examining the name on the cup as he did. "You have a nice day, Zoe."
"You too…" she trailed off, realizing she didn't know his name.
He winked, which made Zoe flush. She usually thought winking came off as totally slimy, but he made it charming. "See you around," he said, pushing open the door to the coffee shop. Even though Zoe was far too busy with medical school to think about guys, she hoped he was right.
Three days later, Zoe got her wish. After the fiasco that was Friday morning, she had gotten up extra early on Monday so she could actually have a little time to breathe on her way to class. She was halfway through a cup of coffee and reviewing a chapter of an anatomy book when someone sat down across from her. "So you're a doctor?"
It would've been impossible to mistake her mystery coffee guy for anyone else. He looked exactly the same as he had on Friday, down to the red flannel shirt. She didn't understand how anyone could wear flannel in May in Alabama, but from his accent Zoe guessed he was probably used to the heat. "I'm working on it," she said proudly. "Only one more year to go, and then it's back to New York." She couldn't wait to get back to real life.
"How'd a big city girl like you end up in Alabama?" he asked, stifling a yawn. Zoe noticed the dark circles under his eyes and wondered if he'd even gone to bed at all the night before.
"I got a scholarship," Zoe said, not mentioning that the school in Alabama had been her absolute last resort. Apparently smaller schools had more scholarships to give out than Columbia or NYU, though. "Trust me, the second I get my diploma I am hopping on a plane home. I do not fit in here. Nobody here wears black." In her black shorts and striped tank top with sequined straps, Zoe looked practically gothic among the other girls in their bright floral sundresses.
He gave her a shirt an appraising look. "I think that shirt is working for you just fine," he said. Zoe instinctively covered up her (admittedly minimal) cleavage with her hand, which made him smirk.
"If you're going to stare at my boobs will you at least tell me your name?" Zoe asked. "You got to see my name on Friday but you never told me yours." As romcom as it was to chat with a stranger in a coffee shop, Zoe liked being able to put names to faces. Especially when the face came with such a contagious smile.
He pushed his coffee toward her so she could see the name on the cup. "Wade," she read, looking back and forth between the cup and his face. "You look like a Wade." She had never met anyone else named Wade before, but she knew whenever she heard the name from now on she would picture him.
"And you look like a Zoe," Wade countered, taking a long drink of his coffee. Zoe liked that he was sitting there talking to her instead of going about his day, even though he looked absolutely exhausted.
Zoe hoped she looked better off than Wade did. "How do I look like a Zoe?"
Wade started ticking off reasons on his fingers. "It's short. And perky." He thought for a moment and then shrugged. "I guess that's it."
"First of all, I'm not that short," Zoe said. "I am almost average height for a woman. And I am so not perky." Perky made her think of cheerleaders, bouncing around in pleated skirts waving pom pons. She was so not that type of girl.
"It is the crack of dawn and you're babbling about clothes and your boobs," Wade said through a huge yawn. Zoe could see every single one of his teeth, and they were all perfect.
Zoe looked down at chest again and pulled up the neck of her tank top. "I was not talking about my boobs," she said, realizing how loud she sounded in the nearly empty coffee shop. "And I don't babble. Also, it's not that early. I've been up for over an hour already."
"I've been up for fifteen," Wade shot back.
Fifteen hours didn't seemed like an extraordinarily long time to Zoe, but the hours were definitely strange. "Are you secretly Batman or something?"
"A bartender," Wade said. "So, kind of like Batman."
Zoe shook her head. "Nothing like Batman. Don't bars close early on Sunday nights? Why are you still awake at 6 a.m.? And drinking coffee? That's really not healthy," she said. She tried her best to sound concerned, but she was very aware that she just came off as judgmental. A couple of her teachers had made comments about her lack of appropriate bedside manner, but she wasn't sure how to change her entire personality.
Wade gave a low chuckle. The deep, throaty noise seemed out of place in a public coffee shop. It seemed too intimate. "Calm down, Doc. I sleep a normal amount, even if it's not at the same time as everyone else. And when I drink coffee, it's not covered in whipped cream."
"That was once!" Zoe argued, pointing at her coffee cup. "I just have black coffee today." It also had espresso in it, but she didn't mention that. Being constantly caffeinated was practically a requirement in med school.
He tried to look at what was written on her cup, but Zoe rotated the cup so he couldn't see her order. "That kind of makes it look like you're lying," Wade said, stretching. He glanced at his watch as it slipped down his wrist. "It's not 6 a.m., by the way. It's 6:45."
"That's even worse," Zoe said, shaking her head. She had her coffee cup halfway to her mouth before she registered what he said. "Wait, it's 6:45?"
"6:47, actually," Wade said, checking the time on his phone. He took a sip of his coffee like he had all the time in the world, but Zoe shot to her feet.
"I have class at 7," she said, hefting her backpack onto her shoulders. If she hauled ass she could probably make it to class in time, but she really had to go. "Maybe I'll see you again tomorrow!" She didn't know if Wade visited the coffee shop every day like she did, but maybe he would since she brought it up.