Attempt (Currently being edited)

Carter Stevens

Carter Stevens: 21 years old: Hobbies include: Running, Reading, Studying, and of course visiting the coffee shop

He sat in the same seat he sat in every time he came. It was a corner booth that always seemed to be dimly lit, it gave him an aura of mysteriousness which had drawn me to him in the first place. We never were anything, he was merely a customer who was attractive, and I maybe had a little crush on. But he is in college so I knew it would never go anywhere. He started coming in and he had like five textbooks, and tons of papers, his computer, and a tablet. He would put on his glasses and just crank out whatever he was working on, it was adorable. I had to literally beg Adam to let me take that table, how could you pass up a cute boy. He had messy hair like a certain Australian drummer whose band I occasionally listened too, and gorgeous green eyes, and he was tall. He was like a model. I think he is.

My heart was pounding the first time I talked to him. “Hi, I’m Adelaide. What can I get you?”

“I’ll just have a coffee, cream sugar.” He didn’t even look up at me. It was the best day of my life.

Eventually as he came in more frequently, he did look up, and our conversations got longer, and we became pretty good friends, if you’ll call it that. He was majoring in psychology; he wanted to be a therapist. His father had left his family when he was little, and his sister vowed to never speak to their father again. We opened up to each other more and more each time, I loved our conversations so much. We had just connected so well, like no one else I’ve ever met.

In his corner he sat, with nothing but a journal. It was a plain black leather cover, but as he opened it up it was blooming vibrant colors, of ink, paint, flowers. He flipped to the next available page and began to write. When he wrote he would bite his lip, and scrunch his eyebrows together. Every now and then he would scribble something out, then keep writing.

Then he began to read it. “Adelaide, when I heard that you had, you know, I didn’t want to believe it. How could someone so deep, inspiring, beautiful be gone? I even tried to make a math equation to see if it would work. It didn’t. So I was left with some incomprehensible event in front of me. A work of art had been stolen from the museum of earth. How dare they steal you from us? You have, had such an old soul, like no one I had ever known. Every time we talked, it was like I was taken to another century, like you had been around for so long and had seen the whole world. It was intimidating, something I couldn’t figure out. And I am a psychology major. I had to step up my game. I tried to figure you out, how your mind worked, how you lived, breathed and I couldn’t. I didn’t mind, I liked that you were a challenge, I enjoyed struggling to figure you out like the back of my hand. I wish I had asked you out all those time I wanted to, if I hadn’t been so nervous I would have. Every time I would try, my tongue seemed to suffocate me, so if you saw me gagging that’s when I wanted to ask you out.”

“How did I not notice your sadness? How did I not notice that something was wrong? Did anyone know? You could have told me, I would have got you help. I realize help may not have been what you wanted, but it was what you needed. It’s too late to say these things now, I realize that. I hope you are happier now, and peace has been brought to you. I’m still going to come in here for as long as I am around. Or until this place closes, if that ever happens. I doubt it, this place is great.”

“Do you remember that time on your break that you came and sat across from me, and asked me about my school experiences? I told you it was something you’d have to see for yourself. Then you smiled, and I told you everything about college. You were such a good listener when I told you about how my friend had been raped, you weren’t like anyone else. They would always ask: Was she drunk? What was she wearing? Did she say no? As if it had been her fault. Instead you asked if she was okay, and if he got in any trouble. Then you told me about your mother. I wish I could have had the chance to know her, she seemed lovely. Then that guy came out and yelled at you because break was over, you threw your head back laughing, and flashed him a mischievous smile. He rolled his eyes and walked away. You leaned over the table and told me he had a crush on me and was jealous that you had gotten this table instead of him. And you left at that to go back to work. Every now and again you would smile at me, maybe a wink here and there after looking to him. It was then that I knew I had to have you,”

“But it’s too late now, and I regret so much about not forcing myself to ask you. Every conversation we had I wrote about in here, I drew you; I drew everything that embodied you that I knew. There are poems that reminded me of you, your laugh, and your smile. I’d like to think that maybe one day we might have gotten married, and I would have given this to you after our wedding, to show you the story of how I fell in love with you. I miss you Adelaide, I miss everything that reminds me of you, and I miss knowing you’d be here, I miss all the things we didn’t get to do, and all the things we did. I miss our future, whatever it would have been, I miss our past, I miss learning about you. I miss you so damn much. It’s like my bones are trees stripped of their leaves in the dead of winter. I am hollow with out you,”

 He closed the book, left it on the table with a note that said “ To Adelaide” and walked out, he wasn’t coming back, he never would, he didn’t so much as look back.