Fragment.
A novel I started writing with a friend that never went anywhere. I was the only one who wrote anything and this was it, churned out in a matter of minutes in an email. Needs editing and, well, a story.
The first time I saw her, I was standing in some trendy coffee shop in the city. It was full of douchebags and I never drink coffee, but I was standing in line to get a latte something-or-other for a friend of mine who I really wanted to go out with for some reason that I can neither recognize nor justify now. She was an actress, totally fitting the cliché with her flakey unreliability, her penchant for causing melodramatic scenes in public, and generally being a silly bitch who was going to drag me along for a few months just for the attention it got her before we parted company and I would cease doing things like standing in line for coffee.
I was in the city to go to college and was entirely lost. It was a big place and I was custom-built for the suburbs. That’s how you end up standing in coffee shops with soft fusion jazz playing over guys in suits talking about whatever fucking bit of business it was that they felt the need to babble about between overly loud conversations on their cell phones. You don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you need to be, and it’ll be several years before you get smart enough to actually handle the day-to-day living that you’ve been doing for years. So, at the behest of a bad collegiate actress, I was waiting on coffee, while trying to find my way through a world I was unprepared for.
I was in line when she walked up behind two bland business-types who were talking about some exciting deal or stock or something. She was easy for me to notice, as she was a redhead. I was young and full of hormones, so I think I sensed her even before I looked directly at her. And, normally, she wouldn’t have even been my type, but, like I was saying, I really love the redheads and I was chocked full of hormones. So I would invariably find some girl to give the eye, no matter where I went. I was nineteen. This is what we do at that age.
She was fairly short and very normal-looking. That probably sounds odd, but I don’t really have a good way to describe it. She was very average, though not from a physical perspective. I just mean that there was nothing that really stood out about her, other than the hair. I usually went for dark or mysterious girls, edgy types that usually came with about four metric shit-tons of baggage and a complete lack of interest in me other than to be the friend that they bitch to about their lives and the losers that they’re fucking. So she was fairly normal-looking in that respect, completely depleted of any darkness or mystery. She seemed happy and well-adjusted, which I can’t say had ever been major turn-ons for me, probably much to my detriment. She was wearing a skirt and a t-shirt and had a sort of happy glow about her, but mainly I was looking at her hair. And her tits. Let’s be honest, I was checking her out. You can never really get a vibe on a girl’s ass in a skirt, as it’s essentially wrapped in a fabric funnel and, therefore, somewhat shapeless, but I like legs too and I was looking over the rather nice set of calves sticking out of the skirt. I always find the combination of skirt and boots to be the most attractive, though. No boots for her. Pity. But there were the tits.
So, this short, average, and surprisingly-enticing girl had walked up behind the two taller men and was waiting for them to get out of her way. They were standing in front of the station with the napkins, sugar, creamer, all the accoutrement of coffee, just talking away and generally ignoring everything and everyone else around them, their backs turned to her. Typical of the city. People are inconsiderate assholes. No one holds doors, no one says “thank you” for anything, and they don’t get the fuck out of your way. And there they stood as she tried to skirt her way around them to get to the napkins.
Of course, as soon as she’d move around one, he’d turn to say something to his friend and block her way. She’s move back in the other direction around the oblivious assholes and the process would repeat itself.
As she was attempting to get to the hard-gained napkins, she looked at me and grinned. It was one of those moments where everyone else is going about their business and you’re the only person watching another person go through the motions of their life. She looked up at me and we shared a moment where her sheepish smile seemed to say “This is fucking stupid, right?” And my return smile replied “I hear you, cutie.” I think. It could have said “I’m a scary stalker” for all I know.
The line moved ahead of me and I barely kept up with it as I was so intent on her struggle to get napkins. Her eyes glimmered with a sharpness that seemed lively and humorous to me, unlike the rest of the dead-eyed fucks in the city, looking directly through the world in their day-to-day crawl through existence instead of looking at it. Her every look, sneer, movement, and smirk all overflowed with expression and, then, a flustered annoyance, which I have to say was adorable.
Finally she said something to them. “Um… Excuse me.” No response from the men, who were animated in their retarded conversation about bullshit and, therefore, unable to pay her any mind. “Can I get around you, please?”
They didn’t hear her or assumed she wasn’t talking to them. She was virtually hidden behind their bodies, but I could hear her easily as her deep voice, almost dripping with a sort of cracking Midwestern niceness, cried out “Would you get the fuck out of my way?”
They looked down and, with an expression generally reserved for solicitors and telemarketers, begrudgingly stepped aside with their coffees, allowing her to get to the napkins.
Her eyes caught mine and she smiled again, toothy and large, victorious in her quest for napkins and I couldn’t help but feel my heart pound and smiled way too much back at her.
“What do you want?” The voice at the counter called to me and I stumbled forward and tried to remember what I was supposed to be ordering, distractedly looking away to see where she was going, and, by the time I had ordered the coffee for the incompetent actress, she was gone.
Of course, I was too much of a gutless loser to have said anything to her, given her my number, or asked what her name was anyway, but I was disappointed that she was gone and that my brief moment with her was over.
Every time I’d pass that god damned coffee shop I’d think of her, for weeks afterwards, but I never saw her there and I never went in again.
And it was a more than a few weeks before I finally ran into her again, though not at a coffee shop.
The first time I saw her, I was standing in some trendy coffee shop in the city. It was full of douchebags and I never drink coffee, but I was standing in line to get a latte something-or-other for a friend of mine who I really wanted to go out with for some reason that I can neither recognize nor justify now. She was an actress, totally fitting the cliché with her flakey unreliability, her penchant for causing melodramatic scenes in public, and generally being a silly bitch who was going to drag me along for a few months just for the attention it got her before we parted company and I would cease doing things like standing in line for coffee.
I was in the city to go to college and was entirely lost. It was a big place and I was custom-built for the suburbs. That’s how you end up standing in coffee shops with soft fusion jazz playing over guys in suits talking about whatever fucking bit of business it was that they felt the need to babble about between overly loud conversations on their cell phones. You don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you need to be, and it’ll be several years before you get smart enough to actually handle the day-to-day living that you’ve been doing for years. So, at the behest of a bad collegiate actress, I was waiting on coffee, while trying to find my way through a world I was unprepared for.
I was in line when she walked up behind two bland business-types who were talking about some exciting deal or stock or something. She was easy for me to notice, as she was a redhead. I was young and full of hormones, so I think I sensed her even before I looked directly at her. And, normally, she wouldn’t have even been my type, but, like I was saying, I really love the redheads and I was chocked full of hormones. So I would invariably find some girl to give the eye, no matter where I went. I was nineteen. This is what we do at that age.
She was fairly short and very normal-looking. That probably sounds odd, but I don’t really have a good way to describe it. She was very average, though not from a physical perspective. I just mean that there was nothing that really stood out about her, other than the hair. I usually went for dark or mysterious girls, edgy types that usually came with about four metric shit-tons of baggage and a complete lack of interest in me other than to be the friend that they bitch to about their lives and the losers that they’re fucking. So she was fairly normal-looking in that respect, completely depleted of any darkness or mystery. She seemed happy and well-adjusted, which I can’t say had ever been major turn-ons for me, probably much to my detriment. She was wearing a skirt and a t-shirt and had a sort of happy glow about her, but mainly I was looking at her hair. And her tits. Let’s be honest, I was checking her out. You can never really get a vibe on a girl’s ass in a skirt, as it’s essentially wrapped in a fabric funnel and, therefore, somewhat shapeless, but I like legs too and I was looking over the rather nice set of calves sticking out of the skirt. I always find the combination of skirt and boots to be the most attractive, though. No boots for her. Pity. But there were the tits.
So, this short, average, and surprisingly-enticing girl had walked up behind the two taller men and was waiting for them to get out of her way. They were standing in front of the station with the napkins, sugar, creamer, all the accoutrement of coffee, just talking away and generally ignoring everything and everyone else around them, their backs turned to her. Typical of the city. People are inconsiderate assholes. No one holds doors, no one says “thank you” for anything, and they don’t get the fuck out of your way. And there they stood as she tried to skirt her way around them to get to the napkins.
Of course, as soon as she’d move around one, he’d turn to say something to his friend and block her way. She’s move back in the other direction around the oblivious assholes and the process would repeat itself.
As she was attempting to get to the hard-gained napkins, she looked at me and grinned. It was one of those moments where everyone else is going about their business and you’re the only person watching another person go through the motions of their life. She looked up at me and we shared a moment where her sheepish smile seemed to say “This is fucking stupid, right?” And my return smile replied “I hear you, cutie.” I think. It could have said “I’m a scary stalker” for all I know.
The line moved ahead of me and I barely kept up with it as I was so intent on her struggle to get napkins. Her eyes glimmered with a sharpness that seemed lively and humorous to me, unlike the rest of the dead-eyed fucks in the city, looking directly through the world in their day-to-day crawl through existence instead of looking at it. Her every look, sneer, movement, and smirk all overflowed with expression and, then, a flustered annoyance, which I have to say was adorable.
Finally she said something to them. “Um… Excuse me.” No response from the men, who were animated in their retarded conversation about bullshit and, therefore, unable to pay her any mind. “Can I get around you, please?”
They didn’t hear her or assumed she wasn’t talking to them. She was virtually hidden behind their bodies, but I could hear her easily as her deep voice, almost dripping with a sort of cracking Midwestern niceness, cried out “Would you get the fuck out of my way?”
They looked down and, with an expression generally reserved for solicitors and telemarketers, begrudgingly stepped aside with their coffees, allowing her to get to the napkins.
Her eyes caught mine and she smiled again, toothy and large, victorious in her quest for napkins and I couldn’t help but feel my heart pound and smiled way too much back at her.
“What do you want?” The voice at the counter called to me and I stumbled forward and tried to remember what I was supposed to be ordering, distractedly looking away to see where she was going, and, by the time I had ordered the coffee for the incompetent actress, she was gone.
Of course, I was too much of a gutless loser to have said anything to her, given her my number, or asked what her name was anyway, but I was disappointed that she was gone and that my brief moment with her was over.
Every time I’d pass that god damned coffee shop I’d think of her, for weeks afterwards, but I never saw her there and I never went in again.
And it was a more than a few weeks before I finally ran into her again, though not at a coffee shop.