Simply Love Me

Chapter 1

Note: While actual places may be mentioned in the story, other places will be made up because I don't know the geography of the city. The underlined title is the title of the chapter and the name attached is who's perspective the chapter is on. Fundamentals, the animation company, is one that I made up.

Morning Coffee - London

One of the reasons I always send my assistant, Emily, to fetch morning coffee is for this exact reason. The unbelievably long amount of time people take to choose a beverage and then the insanely stupid amount of time it takes for them to fetch their phones from their purse, or their credit cards, or their cash to pay for it should be banned as a liability to all normal functioning and busy people out there.

Oh for god's sakes woman, take the Americano already!

"What would you like sir?" I almost wanted to tell the young lady behind the counter (Lindly according to the hastily clipped name tag) to drop the act. Anyone could clearly tell she was less than happy to be serving a mile long line of annoyed 7:00 rush hour employees. I don't blame her.

"One Expresso. Large. Hot. Thanks." Handing her the credit card, I hardly spare a glance at the register. My phone rings. "London! How's it going, ordering coffee all by yourself?" James's voice rang through. I could almost see James, the prick, leaning back in his office chair; feet propped up on the large black wooden table in front of him.

"Curse you James. This line is annoyingly slow and there's this lady who just won't order her Americano fast enough." Said lady heard me and turned around, her eyes shooting daggers at me. "It's so much easier to have Emily pick it up." Emily, a short brunette with a soft voice and kind heart, normally picked up my coffee, along with hers, before coming to work.

"Tut. Tut. You know Emily's sick today. You heard her on the phone, poor girl."

"She sounded miserable. How're the interviews going?"

The company was looking for another artist to sign on as a storyboard artist. Fundamentals, the animation company I was the CEO for, hosts a sort of auditions every year in search of fresh minds. The audition consists of two parts, the art viewing bit supervised by the art team and the interviews filtered by James and myself.

"Horrible. I had to turn two of them away since they were late. Poor fellows." James sighed. As the other CEO of the company, yes we have two, he was the softer, kinder one. "Next one's here in 10."

"Don't be too soft on them. We need proper employees."

"Says the man who went out to get coffee."

"You know I can't work without it."

I felt a tug on my suit and looked down to see a young toddler, maybe about 4 years old, grasp onto one of the gold colored buttons with a squeal of delight. "Shiny!" She giggled. I shot a complete look of horror and disgust her sticky hands.

The mother, an exhausted petite young woman, apologetically led the kid away, but not before the little devil stomped rather heavily on my polished, black shoe. Oh god, if I make it out of this zoo in one piece it will be a miracle.

"Dear god James this is horrible."

"It's a cafe during rush hours London, of course it's going to be horrible!"

"I am never having children."

"Excuse me?"

"Little devils ruin perfectly polished shoes."

A pause on the other end. Then laughter, long loud and obnoxious. My left eye twitched in annoyance. A baby started crying in the arms of the woman behind me.

"Oh lord... London, how in the world did you survive before now?" I could still hear him chortling. "Oh geez. Damn. Sorry London, much as I'd love to listen to you complain about lines and americano ordering women, the girl just arrived. Gotta interview. Good luck!"

I scowled, shoving the phone deep into my pocket. The line to pick up the coffee was just as slow, if not more so, than the line to order. By the time I picked up my order, the same kid from before had come back and stepped on my other shoe. Oh the day just kept on getting better and better.

Balancing my phone and my coffee in one hand proved to be a horrible mistake. A woman, while turning away from the counter, spun right into my chest. Knocked off balance, I in turn stumbled backwards, barely hearing the stream of apologies coming from the woman, and all but fell against a tall burly man standing near the wall.

In his surprise, he turned, saying something but by then I'd already been shoved forward. My feet tripped over themselves, leg hitting the chair of a nearby table, and as if the world decided to play a cruel joke on me, I watched as my coffee tumbled from the palm of my hand.

Flying through the air, lid lifting gracefully. Steaming hot liquid twisting and twirling like some sort of expert ballerina. Splashing onto the girl's white paper. And then everything moved.

She was horrified, the girl whose sketchbook I'd just ruined with my coffee. Pencil still in hand, her own steaming hot drink placed far away from the white papers, her eyes met mine with a look of burning anger.

Wait. Anger? No, now it was gone.

"You." She pushed herself up out of her chair. "Replace it."

Where were her manners?

Recovering my composure, I nodded. "Yes of course. Give me your number, I'll call you later on after I've gotten a new one. You can come pick it up then." I held out my business card to her. "You can find me here."

She grabbed the card, her drink, and her soiled sketchbook, all while glaring at me. "Common courtesy would be to say I'm sorry first." She said. The sketchbook was clutched protectively to her chest. "And you are a complete idiot! I didn't mean the sketchbook! I meant that." She pointed at a spoiled scribbled mountain scenery picture still soaking in coffee on the table. "The little girl over there drew it." She pointed at the little devil that'd stepped on my shoes. "I'd hate for her to be disappointed."

She ripped a blank page that had somehow survived the tsunami of coffee and shoved it at me along with her pencil. "Now, since you spilled the coffee, you get to replicate the drawing."

For once in my life, my mind was drawing a blank. She wants me to do what?

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Alright! That concludes the first chapter. I'm sorry if it was a bit boring, but I needed to introduce a couple character and give London a chance to show his personality. What do you guys think of London so far?

I'd also like to add again that Fundamentals is a made-up company. The jobs and what they do at the company will be made up as well as best I can from what little knowledge I know of animation companies. I'm going to try to see if I can find out more.

Thanks for reading! Vote if you enjoyed and leave a comment if there's any questions, advice, or criticism :)