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I don’t often go to Starbucks because I don’t drink coffee. When I go, it’s usually because I am in an unfamiliar place and I need to charge something or use WiFi.

Despite my non-coffee-drinking habits, I am a fan of Starbucks. The baristas are friendly and competent, and I always vaguely feel like I’m in a rom-com and that I will end up sharing a table with the love of my life.

This is the scene: I will be sitting at a table, charging my phone and using my laptop. She will ask if she can use the outlet (there is one available, but it is next to me). I will say yes. We will sit quietly working until she accidentally spills some of her drink on the table. Using my sense of smell, I will notice that it is hot chocolate. I will say that I am also drinking hot chocolate. How weird! Turns out, she also doesn’t drink coffee and is also slightly embarrassed to have ordered it. Also, she has a cello with her, which I didn’t notice until this very moment. She also has all the parts to the Brahms Clarinet Trio on her. We decide that we should play it right now, but we need a pianist. I make an announcement asking for a piano volunteer, and a man with a Yamaha keyboard walks over. We play it right there in the Starbucks, and it is very beautiful. An agent from Naxos happens to be there and offers us a recording contract.

I am not sure what gives me this feeling. Maybe it was the seven antique telephones hanging on the wall, or the fact that the baristas always figure out quirky ways to misspell the most basic of names (that is my favorite thing about Starbucks.).

My typical Starbucks drink is the chai latte. A chai latte is something legit Starbucks goers actually order, unlike hot chocolate, which is the other thing I have gotten more than once. The more I want to appear like a real person, the more likely I am to order a chai latte over hot chocolate.

But sometimes, you’re just feeling hot chocolate (and you need to charge your phone), and there’s no way some frothy tea is going to satisfy your craving.

So on Saturday, I got hot chocolate from Starbucks. For whatever reason, hot chocolate is not listed on the menu. This confused me so much at the first NYC Starbucks I went to that I just left. The unavailability of a charger also played a role in this decision. I walked to another Starbucks, asked if they had hot chocolate, and they said yes.

When I ordered, I requested the smallest size. The barista, realizing that I had made a grave mistake, showed me what the smallest size was, which was a lot smaller than I expected. Then she pointed me to a slightly larger one—the tall—which she figured I probably meant in the first place. About eight more seconds of confusion ensued, and the moral of the story is I will just capitulate to Starbucks lingo next time.

Starbucks hot chocolate is good. It is rich and not overly sweet. My only slight critique is that if you say yes to whipped cream, they skimp out on the liquid part more than I think is necessary. However, as a big fan of whipped cream, I didn’t feel too bad about my choice.

It is probable that I am pretty indiscriminate when it comes to my taste for hot chocolate, since I am used to just putting powder in boiling water. I know you are supposed to use milk, but we always used water at home, so that feels like the default to me. Because of this, any hot chocolate made with milk or cream probably tastes better.

Really, the only ways to mess up hot chocolate are to put way too much powder in, so it gets chunky and powdery, or put in too little, so it tastes like hot chocolate Lacroix. There’s always a little sediment at the bottom of a Starbucks hot chocolate, but you can’t expect a drink to resist gravitational force. It’s still good.

Starbucks hot chocolate w/ whipped cream: 7.9/10

Starbucks hot chocolate w/o whipped cream: 8.0/10

The likelihood that I will meet the love of my life at Starbucks: .00004/10