Stories of Love

Of Mere Existence

She breathed in the scent wafting off of her coffee, and clumsily took a sip of the warm beverage.

She almost ungracefully let out a choke at the sudden sour taste at the back of her throat. But she managed to kept it down to a low choking sound, and held back her coughing fit before her embarassment could be any more aggravated.

It was her first time coming to this coffeeshop, heck, to any coffeeshop ever actually. She had never stepped foot in one, because she mostly couldn't understand why she should spend her precious money on buying mere coffees at such an unreasonable price. She better saved up her money where she could, she thought, and since she's never too fond of caffeine, it was not hard to do at all.

But her friends back from college suddenly contacted her, saying that she was around the area and that they should meet up, so she agreed when her friend gave her this place as the only available option of meeting point.

Cozy.

She read the name of the coffeeshop plastered beautifully on one of the walls to her right, and she winced at the irony. She hardly felt cozy at all. Not exactly the owner's or any other people's fault but hers though, as she was usually like this whenever she came to a place that was foreign to her.

Three years living in this town and she only knew the walk from her apartment to her working place, two diners, one near her work and one near the apartment, two convenient store, one marketplace, and the airport to take her back hometown.

Sure, she knew almost all the blocks, the streets, the town's library, the parks, schools. She took many walks circling around the small town, but she never actually had the courage to try up going inside places, afraid that she would be feeling out of place and highly clumsy, as she did now, because there's just way too many strangers than she could handle around.

Suddenly, amidst her continuous babble inside her head, a bigger figure had sat down directly in front of her, making her already tiny comfort zone shrink to almost zero.

She realized it was a guy. Hence her heart suddenly beating too fast. She hit her temple with her palm slowly, after she realized her stupidity upon reading the simple board on the table. Of course he sat there, this is a share table, she murmured to herself quietly, afraid he might heard.

She almost too quickly took a gulp of her coffee, and for the second time she was dealing with the agony of holding back her rising coughing fit. It's hooot.

She heard a deep chuckle coming from the guy, and she inwardly wince.

Good. He laughed at her. And now her tongue burns.

She puffed out a sigh. Her feet was now moving up and down uncontrollably, a bad habit she always find herself in whenever she was stuck in a nerve-wracking situation, such as now.

She watched from her peripheral view as he put down his small bag, and pulled out a shiny black laptop, readying it on the table. She didn't dare look to his direction, too paranoid to have to share a look with him if he happened to also look her way.

The atmosphere around the coffeeshop didn't change much. There's always one of the brewer making coffees once in a while, and the sound was almost soothing enough for her. Too bad it was never long enough to actually calmed her down.

Heck, she was far from feeling comfortable and cozy. She almost felt  suffocated.

Her eyes went back and forth from one thing to another, trying to find something to focus her sight on, anything beside the presence sharing the table with her. Dealing with strangers always made her nervous.

The person in front of her, though, was the complete opposite. He was absorbed in whatever it is he was doing on his laptop.

She fiddled with her cup, again watching in peripheral view without actually looking at him, of him looking back and forth from his laptop to his phone. She heard him muttering to himself lowly, but she couldn't catch a thing he said. Not that she was nosy, it's just her feeling awkward about the whole situation.