white blank page // luke hemmings

02.

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luke's pov

 My knee's bouncing so hard it's practically jostling the table, and I can't decide if it's because I'm nervous or because of the two espressos I downed before she got here. I've never been much of a coffee person - I think it's the bitterness that turns me off - but I hardly slept at all last night, so I needed the caffeine. Badly.

She doesn't even seem to mind the fact that the table's almost shaking, she doesn't even seem to notice it.   

The cafe's more crowded then I've ever seen it, and there's so many couples here today you can practically smell the hormones. We're sitting just behind some blonde girl and her redheaded boyfriend, whose hands are crawling all over each other's bodies heatedly. I feel like I've walked in on them accidentally or something just being near to them, honestly.   

"So," Isobel grins up at me from her seat across from mine, fiddling with a plastic stirring stick nervously.   

"This is crazy." She takes a long sip of her coffee, giving me a flustered glance.  

"Good crazy or bad crazy?" I question, chuckling a little. It's so weird to be talking to her in person - to finally have a face and voice to match the letters.  

"Well, I guess I'm just glad you haven't viciously murdered me yet." She widens her eyes at me innocently and blows a piece of her brown hair out of her face. "Are we saving that for later?"   

A full-blown grin tugs at the corners of my mouth and we laugh loudly together, too loudly from the looks we're getting from the other customers. Isobel lowers her laugh to a quiet snicker, her cheeks pink with embarrassment. It's kind of cute.  

"I was really scared to meet you." I whisper, throwing away all the plans of trying to impress her I've been harbouring in my mind since I recognized her as the girl in the blue dress.  

She leans across the table, nearly knocking over her mug. She clumsily recovers, propping her elbows up on the table.   

"I was nervous too." She smiles shyly, glancing out the window we're seated beside. She's pretty. Beautiful, even.   

"Do your friends know you're here?" She asks, smirking at me resting her face in her hands. We all tease each other about girls, and she's no exception.  

"Yeah," I chuckle, drumming out a beat with my fingers on the tables edge. "Michael was bugging me about it, but they all just want to meet you."   

She's silent for a long second, sliding her elbows off the table and adding more sugar to her coffee. Her eyes flicker to mine again, blinking slowly.   

"Is that weird? Is, it's just that-"  

"No, it's sweet Luke. They're just looking out for you." She cuts me off before I can finish, giving a little shrug. Her eyes are really blue.  

I can't even believe I convinced her to come here today. She doesn't seem like Isobel to me yet, not the girl I know from the letters. We're too shy with each other in real life, no effortless conversation or easy confession. It's lame of me to be thinking about this, when I could be talking to a girl who is neither unattractive or uninteresting, but I guess I had hoped we'd be exactly the same in person. What's really insane about this, though, is that I know all her secrets and fears, and she knows a few of mine, but we're still careful and hesitant like two people who've just been introduced.   

She pushes back her chair with a deafening screech, taking her mug to the counter for a refill. She walks with short, delicate steps, like the floor beneath her is made out of glass and at any moment it could all collapse around her.