Work Text:
If Only I
The first thing I saw when I pushed the door open was her. She was behind the counter and had her head thrown back in laughter. The noise of the bell over the door made her look at me with that small sweet smile that always made my heart stop beating only to pick up at double speed on the next second. I didn’t smile back, not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t. Just seeing her petrified me and I couldn’t make my lips form the smile I wish I could give her no matter how hard I tried. I walked fast to my usual table, beside the window and with a perfect view of where she stood preparing the drinks. The waitress that usually got my order came up to the table just as I was putting my sketchbook out of my backpack.
“The usual?”, she asked.
I just nodded. She had tried flirting with me when I first started coming to this coffee shop, but she gave up after giving me her phone number for the third time without getting any type of response from me. My lack of interest was clear. How could I be interested in her after getting the chance to see sunshine incarnated?
I didn’t know many things about the tiny blonde girl that had stolen my heart. Her name was Laura Hollis, according to what I heard her coworkers call her. She had beautiful long honey blonde hair, a smile that made you believe in happiness in this messed up world and her laughter was better than any antidepressive. She worked the morning shifts at this old café I discovered by accident when I took shelter there from the rain one day. Since that first accidental encounter I started going there every morning just to see her. I would sit down at my table, drink a black coffee and try to watch her as discreetly as possible because I didn’t want to come off as a creep to her.
The other people in the café quickly became just blurs, shadows that could barely be noticed in her shimmering presence. Sometimes, when the place was quieter, her voice reached me. It was like the kind of music that tugs at your heartstrings and makes you want to get up and dance with someone you love. Soon she became the center of my life. I lived for the small amount of time that I was allowed to be in the same place as her. Without realizing it, I started to sketch her while sitting at the café. Everyday I would make a new drawing of her, never being able to truly catch the gleam in her eyes or the happy energy behind her smile.
I wished that I had the courage to talk to her, but I could not speak when I was in the café. I felt like an atheist in the presence of a god, rendered completely silent and unmovable by the presence of what I had thought did not exist. The effect she had on me lasted the whole day and I could not sleep at night because thoughts of her impeded my mind from relaxing into the land of dreams.
I was trapped in that café. It was like I was living in an alternative world where time did not exist. She was it, the love of my life, my only reality. In a feeble moment of consciousness I tried to walk away. I passed by the café with the intention of not stopping there, but continuing on my way to the next coffee shop. Then I glanced in the window and she was smiling and singing to herself while she prepared a coffee. I doubled back and voluntarily re-entered my unlocked prison. I never attempted to stay away again after that day.
I glanced up from my drawing and caught her eyes on me. I gulped and stood up, tearing the page from the sketchbook. She watched me as I approached her slowly. Her smile grew bigger with every step I took, as if she had been waiting for me to gather my courage and go talk to her. I reached her and handed her the drawing. She looked down confused and gasped when she realized what I had just given her. She ran her hand over the drawing unhurriedly, taking in every detail in the same way I had taken in every small detail of her beautiful face. Her eyes were suddenly on me again and it was like they were speaking directly to my heart, telling me that we would stay together for the rest of our lives.
The loud noise of my notebook hitting the floor brought me back to reality. All of that had been happening in mind. I was only daydreaming about an inexistent future life where Carmilla Karnstein and Laura Hollis were together. If only I could have spoken to her.