He Changed My Life

Encounter 2

It was about two weeks later when I saw him the next time, this time at the coffee shop. It was a very rainy day and being the middle of September, it was a chilly rain. We had been slow all morning so I was by myself in the shop for an hour until the next person came in. I was keeping myself busy cleaning when I heard the bell on the door.

Looking up I saw him shaking the rain out of his hair. He looked vaguely familiar, but nothing from our previous meeting registered. As he made his way up to the counter I wiped my hands on my rag and greeted him.

"Hello, what can I get for you?"

"Hi, can I get a large tea please?"

I was a little surprised by his order. We didn't often have people come in and order tea. "Um, sure. Do you have a preference on a type of tea?"

He smiled. "Do you have black tea?"

I nodded and began making his tea. His smile looked familiar too, but I couldn't place him. I turned around and handed him his tea. "That will be $2.85."

"So you aren't as judgmental about tea as you are about books I see." He smiled again handing me the money.

I almost dropped the money and looked at him. "What?"

"You don't remember me do you?"

"I'm sorry, no." My heart was racing a bit. He looked familiar, but I just figured he was a previous customer. Now I figured he must be a customer from the bookshop.

"I was in your bookshop a couple of weeks ago to buy a book for a friend of mine, and you had some trouble hiding your dislike of the book..." He smirked a bit as he told the story.

My cheeks heated up as I remembered the encounter. "Oh, now I remember." I weakly smiled and handed back his change.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to embarrass you." He actually looked like he felt bad.

"No, it's okay." I just nodded. I didn't really know what to say. I was a little embarrassed, but it wasn't really bad.

"So you work here and the bookshop?" He asked as he sipped on his tea, leaning against the counter.

"Yeah." I shrugged my shoulders and picked up the rag, wiping the counter. I wasn't trying to be rude, but it felt odd starting a conversation with a stranger. I'm a friendly person, but for some reason I just felt like this wasn't a superficial friendly conversation.

He nodded. "That must be exhausting. So, which do you prefer coffee or books?"

I looked up at him startled, no one had ever asked me that before, and I had never really thought about it. "I'm not sure, I guess books. I can't ever really get the smell of coffee out of my clothes."

I was surprised to hear him laugh out loud at that. "I can imagine. I'm not much of a coffee person myself." He held indicated his tea. "I know that's shocking, me being British and all. I'm perpetuating the stereotype." He chuckled.

I smiled. "We don't get many tea drinkers in here."

"Yeah, it really isn't that popular here. My mates here always take the piss out of me for drinking tea." He chuckled again.

I laughed. "Wow, you really are British." I was starting to feel a bit more comfortable talking with him so I was coming out of my shell a bit.

He smirked. "What, did you think the accent was fake?"

"Ha ha."

"So moving on, do you work both jobs everyday?"

"It didn't start out that way, but now I do most days. I open here and then close at the bookshop."

"Wow. You're like a superhero. I can barely get my lazy arse to work the normal eight hours a day."

I laughed. "Well, I don't really have much of a choice. I have to get in the hours and that's the only way to do it."

"I get that." He nodded.

He looked like he wanted to ask more, but thought better of it, which I was glad about. I didn't want to get into my whole messy life.

After a moment he looked down at his watch. "Well it's been nice chatting with you, but I best be getting back to work."

"You too. Have a good rest of your day." I looked outside seeing that the rain had let up a bit. Hopefully I wouldn't get drenched when I walked from here to the bookshop.

I went back to cleaning the counters when I heard him speak again. "I'm Louis by the way, Louis Tomlinson."

I looked up to see him by the door, ready to open it. "I'm Maggie Curran."

"Nice to meet you Maggie. Maybe I'll be seeing you again." He smiled before walking out the door.

I found myself smiling as I continued with my day.

I enjoyed my second encounter with LouisTomlinson, but I still had no indication what an important role he would cometo play in my life.