It was the fourth time in the past two minutes that Gil’s eyes had darted to the box of sugar packets that perched haughtily between him and his interviewer.  The box, in a show of insolence, did not move.  Gil shot the sugar packets a reproachful glare.
The interviewer had a dour, cynical face.  One side of his lip curled upwards toward an offensively large mole with a single white hair sprouting from it.  His face was lined with wrinkles which seemed to grow alive every time he spoke, jumping and curving in a kind of dance.  His notepad, clearly visible from where Gil sat, bore the crest of Princeton University.  His hands lay gently folded on the table in front of him, tamed from years of corporate etiquette training.
Gil had adopted this hand posture as well.  Gil’s hands, however, showed none of the habitual ease of those of his interviewer.  His left thumb insistently drew circles on his right palm, which was starting to take on a reddish hue from the constant abuse.  He kept his fingers curled in so that the interviewer would not see how ragged his nails were.  He had bitten them the entire car ride to the coffee shop.
The interviewer made a short note on his notepad, and then looked up.
“What qualities do you think you would be able to bring to the Princeton University campus?”
Gil blinked.  He then began describing his leadership role in his latest project with the robotics team- providing resources to low income middle schools in the area to encourage an interest in engineering.  The interviewer made a few appreciative noises as Gil spoke, which often made him pause his rambling for a few seconds, before he began speaking again. 
He began his speech looking at the interviewer’s eyes, which were brown and boring and judgmental, but after a few moments of that he looked away, not able to stand it.  He tried looking slightly to the right of the interviewer’s shoulder, but the interviewer just furrowed his eyebrows slightly in confusion and moved his head to meet Gil’s glance.  Gil quickly looked over the man’s other shoulder, but he just moved his head back.  The only place to look that was safe, with no danger of the man sticking his head there, was down at the table at that box of sugar.
It wasn’t all sugar, of course.  It was mainly fake sugar, Splenda and all of its knockoffs.  Gil could have told you what company made each color.  This particular sugar box contained four colors, mostly pastels:  white, blue, yellow and pink.  For the most part, they were in order.  But one lone blue packet, like a soldier making a courageous last stand, stood apart from his army and intermingled with the pinks, without any apparent thought of how much anxiety his placement would cause Gil.
The interviewer made a confused noise, and with a start Gil’s head shot up.  He had somehow stopped speaking without realizing it.  Gil began to apologize, but he was soon interrupted by the acne-faced, barely-out-of-puberty barista (Robert, his nametag said) with a message that their coffees would truly be out soon, very sorry, the people working the counter had decided to break one of the coffee makers and so everything was a bit slower than usual, but the drinks would be out as quickly as possible, sorry for the inconvenience, sirs.  Gil attempted not to make a face at the barista’s pungent body odor and rocked back in his chair, the front legs coming just slightly off the ground.
The interviewer excused Robert with a few mildly condescending words, and he loped away.  Gil allowed his chair to fall back on the floor with a quick flump.  Without thinking, Gil lifted his chair and did it again.  The second time, he got an almost pleasurable little bounce from the rebound of hitting the floor so hard.  He rose to do it a third time.
The interviewer coughed.  Gil lowered the chair to the floor slowly, ashamedly.
The coffee shop was playing Stairway to Heaven.  The girl next to Gil sang along under her breath, hitting the right notes only occasionally.
The interviewer cleared his throat.
Thankfully, B.O.-barista Robert chose that very moment to return with two coffees.  Gil cracked a smile as Robert set his down in front of him on a pretentious little plate.  Without even a thank you to the barista, Gil grabbed the out-of-place blue sugar pouch.  The interviewer took two pink packets, nodding at Robert to excuse him.
Gil normally didn’t take any sugar, or even fake sweetener, in his coffee.  But he poured the Equal (aspartame was the sweetener’s actual name) into his cup and stirred it with vigor, making the coffee slosh dangerously close to the sides.  In that moment of the first sip, he had never tasted something so satisfying.
“What are you worried that the sugar is going to do to you, son?  Kids these days and their OCD, I swear.”  The man snickered, pleased with his apparent witticism.
Gil opened his mouth. And closed it. 
And opened it. 
And closed it. 
And opened it. 
And closed it.
Then Gil straightened and gathered his fragmented resolve.  The interviewer was too busy preparing his own drin to notice.  He stirred his coffee with the practiced hand of a workplace coffee addict.
“I really love Princeton, and I definitely think it’d be a good place for me.  I appreciate the climate of academic excellence, and the campus is beautiful too, obviously.  I loved my visit there and I just wanted to thank you for interviewing me because it means a lot to me.  I know I don’t interview well, but thank you for coming all the same.”
The interviewer smiled a pained half-smile.  Instead of answering Gil, he picked up his coffee cup and took a long sip, closing his eyes.  Obviously satisfied with the coffee, he set the cup down after using only one of his selected sugar packets.  He leaned forward and put the leftover pink packet on the end of the box, right next to the clearly white packets, which held the actual sugar.