The Teddy Bear Agreement | Updating

6 - the coffee shop

Birds sing outside of my window in the morning, it's picturesque, really, as the golden light spills in through the pane, and the trees outside cast shadows across my bedroom walls. The spell is sadly broken when my alarm goes off and I have to grasp my phone to turn it off.

I never did manage to go to sleep last night, at least not that I can remember. When you're tossing and turning the time awake and the light flashes of sleep merge together. The good news about that was that I didn't really have nightmares.

When I come out into the hall to take a shower William is nowhere to be seen, his bedroom door is cracked open and the kitchen and living room are both empty, so it might mean he's out for a run or at school already. With a shrug, I push open the bathroom door and continue on with my morning routine.

My first class is in Communications, then I have a break I could use to come back home and eat and then out again for the rest of the classes. I decided to keep a fairly normal schedule for my first semester, a major in Forensic Science had not been my first choice, but other than that I had no idea what to choose. I know I like science, and I like Forensics, I want to find the truth and help other people, but other than that I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, I'm just here.

With the jingling of my keys, I lock the front door and head down the stairs. The day outside is bright with sunlight and a few scattered fluffy clouds, its already warm, as usual, and will soon get insufferable, so I climb into my car as fast as I can and start the AC. My mind goes to Will, to last night, the ache in my limbs after not being able to catch any Zs keeping me awake until I park in the student parking lot farther away from the school buildings than I would like.

I have five minutes. I think, climbing out of my car and looking at my phone for my contacts. I can talk for five minutes.

With a quick click and putting on my headphones, I begin walking as the background is filled with the sound of a phone ringing, trying to connect.

"Hey Lizzie, how are you?" My mother's voice sounds almost normal, calm, a warm unexpected surprise. I can picture her in the kitchen, drinking her morning coffee, getting paperwork ready for whatever it was she was going to do online. She never had a real job, her family was better off than we ourselves were, and he and dad met in college where he was getting a degree in business after his own father told him he'd one day acquire the company and should be getting ready for it.

Mom was in sales or accounting, I can never remember but she's always done things from home. A business trip every now and then, but worked less than thirty hours a week, sometimes I ask myself if she ever uses her office at home. Of course, this all fell apart after last year after the divorce and all the things that happened, but we started getting checks from grandpa (who rarely talks to us) and the settlement, so money was never an issue.

That was until I decided to walk away from that. A decision I'm starting to regret, yet my pride makes me unable to go back on that.

"Hey mom, I'm good, how are you?" A lie, but she doesn't have to know that.

"Oh, I'm fine you know that." She brushes it off like it's nothing like she's not pretending to be fine and then breaks down at strange times during the day and night. "I'm going to have dinner with Erica, you remember her right?"

I don't.

"Yeah, that's awesome, I'm glad you're going out!" I pause my walking to look at the café close to the library, it's in the middle of campus, and has a few chairs and tables outside of it, the flavors of the day are written in a chalkboard outside of the door and a few students are walking inside as I stare at it. The building itself doesn't match the modern concrete and glass buildings of the school, instead, it looks like a little house, made out of redwood and with blue shingles on the roof. Some would even go ahead and call it aesthetically pleasing, or cozy.