Unfortunatly I can only upload 3000 words on this blogspot and this chapter is longer, hence I will be uploading part two later! Hope you enjoy.
7th December
If you're a guy, what’s the first thing you see when you look at a girl?
The size of her breasts, no doubt, if you’re really superficial? Her hair; the length, how it’s styled? How kissable her lips look? Her face shape? If her teeth are straight or crooked?
Well, for me, in that moment of awkwardness, it was her eyes. They were all I could look at – literally, I was so close to her. Overall you’d just look at them and see brown, but up close they were a bend of green and brown, swirled together like on a painter’s palate, a thin line of black circling the outside of the iris which accentuated the colours.
I don’t think I’ve stared at anyone as long as I stared at her.
‘Uh, sorry? Can I get up?’
She sounded slightly awkward – she looked it, too, now that I looked beyond her eyes – so, whilst bleating ‘Sorry!’ repeatedly, I fumbled my way to a standing position. This involved me disentangling myself from her arms and legs, and with her still holding a coffee mug and trying to move in a different way from what was the right way to get unstuck, it was a very uncomfortable and tricky situation I have to say.
But, somehow, we became two people from a half-man-half-woman creature, and, after we brushed ourselves free of crumbs and found new coffee stains on ourselves, we looked each other up and down for a moment.
She had a look of curiosity on her face, like she knew me from somewhere but couldn’t quite place her finger on it. I didn’t return this look, just stood there in slight shock, probably looking like an idiot. I offered a smile at her as way of an apology, however, adding, ‘Sorry, again.’ I wanted to tell her that I didn’t mean to knock into her – who would? – but I found that my voice was lost in my throat, and if I did try to speak, it would come out in a tight, awkward string of words.
She was still staring at me weirdly, but if any recognition was coming to me about who she was, it was quickly pushed to the back of my mind as I looked about the room to see Devon, who had his phone pointed in my direction. He waved at me from behind it whilst choking on laughs and it occurred to me only then that he had probably filmed the whole thing which would no doubt be put on Facebook for everyone to laugh at. My face grew even redder at the thought of his malicious act, so red I could feel my ears tingling with heat.
I looked at the girl, to judge her reaction to all of this. Her face, no longer inquisitive, was like mine, pink with embarrassment, which matched the shade of her lip gloss that had, I noticed, accumulated a small number of crumbs on her lips. Her long hair, which tumbled over her shoulders, was dishevelled from the fall; crumbs of bread were stuck in her brown curls – which were curlier than mine, I noted – but she didn’t notice these just yet as she was too busy staring around her at the gawping faces of customers. She looked like she didn’t want all this attention as she seemed to recoil into herself, busying herself by looking at the mess.
I ducked my head away from the stares too and saw the small lion still gripped in my hand, brown now from the coffee which had been poured over me, and I snapped it back up again to look for the man with the pram. He had to be here, right?
But I couldn’t see him anywhere, even as I looked hard in between the tables. I tried to skim through the crowds of people on the other side of the window, hurrying to and fro shops, shopping bags hanging from their arms; perhaps he had just left. But once again I was unsuccessful. Looking down at the stuffed animal in my hands again, I felt a bit stupid; this entire ruckus for pretty much nothing. I blushed again, but this time out of humiliation. The man didn’t even realise that he had dropped his child’s toy. Or maybe I was wrong in the first place. Maybe I just let my imagination get the better with me.
Oh well. Either way I would never know now. Thanks Devon.
Devon.
I glared daggers at his back, wishing they were real daggers that would twist into him and cause him to feel the pain that he caused me to feel every day. He was over with his friends, snickering at the video he took of my fall into the poor barista. ‘Why did you do that?’ I hissed through gritted teeth, though he didn’t hear. How I wanted him to hear, but at the same time how I was fearful that he would.
I don’t quite get what his problem with me is – he must have some anger issues or something, taking it out on me because I somehow turned into his punching bag somewhere in year seven. That or he’s jealous of me; that’s what everyone says the reason is if you get bullied. But I don’t know why anyone would be jealous of me. I’m not particularly smart, or good at sports, or dead handsome, or any of those characteristics that people find attractive. I don’t know… I’m just ordinary. My mum calls me handsome, but I don’t think that counts.
Actually, that’s pretty weird, I shouldn’t have said that.
I looked at the barista again. ‘Hey, I’m really sorry about that.’
She looked down at the mess all over her and smiled. ‘It’s alright,’ she shrugged. ‘Accidents happen, right?’
‘Yeah, accidents…’ I said, looking over to Devon again.
‘Better get a mop,’ she said, more to herself than to me, looking at the floor again.
And since I was the idiot who’d caused the state in the first place, I felt as though I had to do something in order to clean it up, so, in an attempt at least, I bent down to pick up one half of a broken plate.
But we both had decided we were going to pick up the same half-plate at the same time, so when we reached a certain point it was inevitable what was going to happen.
We head-butted.
Like, really hard.
‘Ow!’ we exclaimed at the same time, falling apart and rubbing our foreheads. I covered my eyes with my other hand in embarrassment, peeking a look at the barista through my fingers to find that she wasn’t scowling in annoyance or pain, but smiling – a smile that turned into a laugh; a laugh that was infectious, and soon I was giggling as well, giggling at the stupidity of it all, at my awkwardness and the fact that we couldn’t stop colliding into each other.
‘Sorry,’ she said this time, picking up the plate as well as its other half.
‘Don’t be; it was my fault it happened,’ I said, referring to everything that had happened in the last, like, ten minutes.
There was a slight awkward pause as she stared collecting the plates and cutlery from the floor and I stood there, unsure of what to do next. The coffee shop had shifted on again thank goodness, no longer interested. Even Devon had grown bored of me and I felt relief rush through me.
I checked my watch for something to do, and, seeing what position the hands were at I froze, knowing I was going to be late if I didnt't get a move on.
But I found that I didn’t want to leave her just yet; I felt like I had to make sure that everything got corrected. Anyway, a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt. ‘I didn’t hurt you when I… you know, fell into you?’ I found myself asking out of nowhere.
She looked up, her curtain of curls parting around her pretty face. ‘No… well perhaps a little, but it was gonna happen because you sort of pulled me to the ground!’ She didn’t say this unkindly, however, as she giggled, pulling a lock of hair behind her ear. ‘I’ll be fine though, don’t you worry. See?’ she said, making a show of piling up the plates and everything on the tray and lifting it up like it was exceptionally heavy. ‘If I can pick this up – and it weighs a ton – I’ll be fine.’
‘That’s good,’ I smiled, ‘wouldn’t want you to be sacked because of an injury that was caused by me.’
‘No, I would not want that!’ she laughed, flicking her hair out of her eyes.
Jokes. I was making actual jokes to this stranger.
Well… was she a stranger? I couldn’t tell. On the one hand, her face was vaguely familiar to me; her tanned skin (I presumed, at the time, that she was Indian or perhaps mixed race), her deep brown-green eyes and spiralling curls. But, on the other hand, it was her voice that wasn’t; the softness to it but at the same time, her easy and casual deliverance of words. I hadn’t heard it before. It was irritating me, though; you know that kind of feeling of matching the name to the face to the place but you can’t?
After enough decision making I decided just to let my curiosity be known. ‘Sorry,’ I said, as is the custom in the UK to start everything with an apology, ‘I feel like we’ve met before… it’s just, I don’t know where?’
She’d looked up from cleaning the floor at the start of my sentence and was smiling at me until I mentioned that we may’ve met, to which her face fell into concentration and curiosity. It was a look of mixed emotions that only she seemed to pull off – if I’d have done it I’d have looked like an idiot – but somehow her features managed to remain pretty, sophisticated.
Her eyes locked onto mine in thought before she said, with some hesitation, ‘Uh… you know… you do look a tad familiar to me as well. What’s your name?’
‘Matt.’ I grinned as I said it, surprised at my inner excitement and pride that she found me familiar and was also curious to know my name. ‘What’s–’ but I was cut off, and partially scared out of my wits, by my phone’s shrill ringtone to continue the sentence. I’d quite forgotten about my phone. Unusual for me that the first thing I didn’t check, after being poured with coffee, was my phone.
But as I whipped it out of my blazer pocket the call had ended. When I saw that it was my mother, not my dad – who only rings when it’s urgent – or my brother, I relaxed a little (Only Mum, I was thinking. What could she want?), only to be shocked again to see that I had already gotten two texts from her, one around twenty minutes before, reading: Hi darling, how was school? Don’t forget – band practise today! and one, sounding more urgent from the capitalisation of each word: YOU NEED TO BE AT BAND PRACTISE IN FIVE MINUTES!! five minutes ago.
Shit.
I looked at my phone’s clock to see that time had suddenly sped up somehow, when only a minute ago it was quarter to four when now it was four. ‘Uh, sorry, I should probably get going–’
‘Sorry,’ she said, shaking her head and becoming more professional it seemed, ‘did you get everything you wanted – coffee? A sandwich?’
‘No – actually – I was in the queue, but then… something… happened, and I didn’t get a chance.’
‘Ok – how – how about you get a coffee? It’s on us, don’t worry – after all,’ she gestured to my shirt, ‘I was the person who spilled a whole mug of it down you!’
Yes. I’d love to stay, my brain was saying. ‘No, sorry, I’ve really got to be going, but thanks.’
‘You sure?’ she asked, looking over at the display of tray bakes and sandwiches.
No. I am not sure. I want to stay. ‘Yeah, I’m sure – sorry! I’ll come back tomorrow probably; this is my favourite place in the mall.’
‘Ok, well I hope you have a nice day,’ she said, smiling warmly; she was genuine I felt. Her teeth, I noticed, were white, but not too white, and straight, although not too straight either. There was something about that smile that made me smile back. It was refreshing, in a way, not seeing a smile that was completely perfect for once. I was surprised to find myself looking out for it above any other thing.
Move along eyes – her grin was definitely her best feature.
I smiled back at her, also sincere, inside giggling and high on happiness. ‘Bye, then,’ I said, starting to back away but not turning my back on her.
But I suddenly stopped, noting the ginger lion still in my hand. ‘Actually, could you hang onto this for me? A man dropped it and I think it belongs to him – well, his kid – that’s what I was doing before I… you know… fell into you.’ I chuckled awkwardly, holding it out to her. She took the toy gently in her fingers, which were chipped with purple nail polish, brushing mine a little as she did so.
I started walking backwards again, rather reluctantly I felt. ‘I’d better… yeah. Bye then.’
‘Bye,’ she echoed, smiling gaily. ‘See you tomorrow?’ It was more of a question than a statement, to which I answered, ‘Yes, I promise.’
Her eyes followed me even as I walked out of the door and passed the window of the shop. The only reason I know that she did this was because mine did the same.
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