Meeting Him in a Coffee Shop ✓

I might love him...

I take a sip of my coffee to prepare me for what he had to see, "And, what did he say?"

"Why don't you ask him yourself?"

"Joe! You know full well that I will probably never see him again and even if I did, what difference would that make? I can't keep-"

I stop when I notice Joe looking behind me silently. I follow his gaze and am met with ocean blue eyes that I wanted and didn't need to see.

I'm frozen, unsure if I should run out the door like a coward, run up and greet him with a kiss like I want to, or say hello like a civilized and mature person should.

He, however, acts mature for the both of us, "Hello there, fancy seeing you here. I um- I wanna-"

"Wait, before you say anything let me just," I cut him off. "I'm only here for a few more months for an internship and then I'm heading back home. So please don't try to change my mind because I promised my little brother that I would be back home as soon as this was over and I wanna keep that promise" I let out in one breath.

"That was my sister."

"What?"

"The girl you saw me with last week, that was my sister. The one who lives in Brighton." He runs his fingers through his mop of brown curls and I'm immediately taken back to the first day that I met him and the butterflies come fluttering back to their long empty posts in my core.

I shake my head in disbelief but also feeling ashamed.

"And I understand that you're time here is limited, but why don't we spend it together. I won't try to convince you to stay. Let's go into this understanding that it's short term, nothing has to last. When you finish your internship you can go home and I'll go back to my life here, alone." He also gets out in one breath.

I try to weigh out the pros and cons in my head, the list of cons growing by the second; I would get too attached, he might get too attached, what if I didn't want to leave, what if he didn't want to leave, my earlier claim that I would stay in a heartbeat if he asked me to, my little brother, my heart breaking. There was one pro on the list though that somehow outshone the other things on the list; I might love him. Of course I wasn't going to say that out loud, but I felt things when I was with him that I never experienced before, in the less than 24 hours that we were together I had never felt more connected to anyone, he made me feel safe, loved, like my opinion on everything mattered, butterflies.

I would definitely regret the following words that came out, but I didn't wanna live my life without him, even if it was for only a brief moment in the grand scheme of things.

"Okay, short-term, no strings attached."

His beaming smile made it worth it though.