Favourite Girl

Chapter 1

Books had always been a strange object to you. You would sit for hours before them, reading words that formed not just pictures but whole worlds behind your eyes. Your mind was full of these worlds from the time you were old enough to link letters to the sounds they made. Aside from everything else you had always known that much would never change about you. Books and the living, breathing worlds that they held between their pages were your medicine. A way to shift your vision from harsh reality and lose yourself in the paper and ink that lay between your fingers.

As you'd grown older music had become another one of your escapes. The beats and lyrics that sung through your headphones and into your veins. Music could inspire any emotion within you no matter how you felt. It could make you laugh, dance, cry and so much more.

The mixture of music and books was intoxicating, occasionally even poisonous. It created a bubble around you, a world that you could wrap yourself in whenever you needed, which you suppose was quite often.

So, with those things in mind, it made sense that on the day everything changed you were holding a copy of your favourite novel. Norwegian Wood. That particular copy had been placed on your bed one night by your mothers hand. The last present she ever delivered to you. You'd been searching within it ever since for the answer as to why she left. You still hadn't found it, not even all those years later.

You sat behind the counter of your father's coffee shop. The air around you was too warm, suffocating even. The kind of air that coffee shops held in winter, when it was so cold outside that people craved heat from any and every source. Winter coats were slung over the back of chairs and jumpers were removed until the illusion of summer was held to anyone passing by.

You sipped slowly on your iced tea, letting its fresh chill slide down your throats and settle comfortably in your stomach. You gave yourself a second to take in your surroundings, your book placed face down. The world of Norwegian Wood paused for a moment between pages 218 and 219.

There was nothing of immediate interest as you glanced around. A businessman in an expensive suit sipping his espresso, a young mother more focused on her phone then her child, who was pouring cake crumbs on the floor, the old couple that came in everyday for a cup of tea. You smiled at the mixture of noise that filled your ears. The consistent beat of everyday life along with the tones of your favourite song playing in your mind through the one headphone you still had plugged in. It was simple, impossibly simple, but somehow one of the most relaxing things in the world. If you had known what was about to happen you would probably of enjoyed that relaxing moment for a second longer before returning to your book, because your world was about to spiral far away from the norm. But really, how could you of ever known?

You had hardly read another paragraph by the time you were putting your book down again. You had heard the door open, signalling the presence of a new customer. You carefully folded down the corner of the page and slide your book aside.

You raised your eyes to the door and they grew wide as you saw a familiar face pulling down his hood and patting the snow from his shoulders. Snow you hadn't even noticed had begun to fall.

The man was tall with blonde hair, pushed back to reveal his forehead. He wore black ripped jeans, a puffy black coat and white converse. You blinked rapidly, completely stunned.

'Hey, can I have a coffee please?' He asked in the deep, familiar tone that you had only ever heard through the very headphones that currently hung from your ear. You threw them off and placed them, along with your phone atop your book.

'Erm...yeah.' You said, as loudly as your voice would allow in the wake of this surprising scenario. You turned your back to him and strode towards the coffee machine, thankful for a moment to reorganise your thoughts and extinguish the fire that had lit itself beneath your cheeks. The coffee was made all too quickly, before you could do either of these things. You cursed yourself under your breath for being such a damn good barista.