Figuring Her Out

‹t h r e e›

Today seems to be my lucky day.

This is the first thought in my mind as I walk over to help whoever it was who'd dropped the books. It's her. I smile automatically at the sight of her, and walk over to help. She seems to have dropped a handful of books in her quest to find one, and I quickly help her pick them up and stack them back on the shelves.

"Thank you so much, Neil, is it?" she says, a little breathlessly. "Yeah, and it's no problem," I smile. She smiles back and as she turns around, probably to take the book she was actually looking for off the shelf, I can't help but stare at her.

She's quite thin, and around 5'7" from what I can tell, and she has wavy brown hair that cascades down her shoulders to the middle of her back like a soft waterfall. Wow way to go with the poetry dude. Her wide set eyes, somewhere between hazel and honey coloured, are framed by large square rimmed glasses, and a very cute smile with a dimple on her left cheek, which I noticed when she smiled at me earlier.

It's these eyes that I find staring at me when I'm broken out of my reverie by the sound of her clearing her throat. Damn it, I hope she didn't catch me staring, I don't want to freak her out.

She smiles at me politely but she seems to be a little embarrassed about something. "Um, I'm sorry but do you mind helping me?" "Yeah sure, what do you need?" "The book I'm looking for is on the top shelf, and I can't really reach it.." she trails off, rubbing her nose a little embarrassedly. "Oh of course," I reply, and as she points to where the book is, I take a step closer to her to be able to reach the shelf. Her scent hits me in full force when she moves. Damn she smells good. I think I'm actually inhaling in deeper because it's so pleasant.

It's not really like a super strong or - get in your nose and annoy you all day- type of smell, it's just so..refreshing, for lack of a better word. Most of the girls I know smell like flowers or something, which is good, but after a while the scent starts getting to me. Natalie, on the other hand, smells sort of cool and fresh. It's the sort of fragrances that brings the color blue to mind, or the ocean or fresh leaves and rain.

All these thoughts cross my mind as I'm handing her the book. I take a quick look at the title, and I realize that I've actually read this book. It's Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie, who's one of my favourite authors. I tell her as much, and I detect a faint look of surprise in her eyes when she says "I didn't know you read?" "Yeah I used read a lot actually, but haven't been able to read much in a while, cause of school and everything." She smiles at this as she walks towards one of the tables, and I follow behind, wondering if it'd be rude to sit with her?

Those doubts are quickly expelled from my mind when she takes a chair opposite the one from where I'm standing and looks at me expectantly. I sit down in front of her, and before she can start reading, I take the book out of my bag to give her. "Hey, before I forget, my sister Elizabeth gave me this to give to you, she borrowed it from Lee," I tell her, handing her the book. She takes it from me, a slightly surprised look on her face, but that clears when she sees the book. "Oh yeah, I remember Lee saying something about this, thanks." She puts the book in her bag and takes out some homework to do.

No no no. This is my only chance to talk to her and I can't let it slip away. Keeping this in mind, I toss around some ideas to start a conversation in my mind, but none of them seem engaging enough.

So I just start off with, "You spend a lot of time here?"

Lame, I know.

But it's the best I can come up with without seeming overly interested, so it'll have to do.

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So Natalie is finally here! What's your first impression of her?

Their conversation in detail will be in the next chapter :)

Vote/comment if you enjoyed it❤

Love,
Nix :)