Where Two Collide

Chapter Twenty-Two - Alice

Chapter Twenty-Two

Alice

I stared at him in disbelief. He'd pushed me against a wall, and he was forgiving me. Shouldn't it have been the other way around?

"Do you know how much I love you?" he asked, kissing me again. "It's a lot a lot."

I nodded and looked at the floor. "I know."

"Anyway, I've got to go, I have a thing. Are you heading home now?"

"I was just going to get some fries with Tia, she's just a bit late."

Owen watched me carefully. "Oh right, ok. Well message me later."

As he turned around, Tia came sliding around the corner. "Hi Owen, bye Owen," she said, coming to a skidding stop in front of me. "Sorry I'm late, Mr Blake made me stay behind so he could talk to me about my last assignment." She rolled her eyes. "Apparently it didn't represent the essence of the class."

"It's cool," I said shrugging as Owen disappeared the way she'd come. "Shall we go?"

It turned out we weren't going for fries anymore. Tia's cravings changed and therefore so did our plans. Instead we were eating cookies sat at a table in the weird café in town.

"I think I'm going to make Ashton my boyfriend," said Tia, licking the crumbs of her cookie off of her fingers. "He's cute and his family own boat."

"I'm not sure that someone's family owning a boat is a good reason to date them." I lift my fancy looking teacup to my lips and took a sip. This is the kind of place Cat loves, the inside of this café is kind of like Alice and Wonderland vomited all over it, with its haphazard eccentricity. Their chai tea was pretty fantastic though and I could have killed for another large cookie.

Tia looked thoughtfully at her empty plate and then up at me. "What about if it's a big boat, like a yacht, where you could throw a rather excellent end of year party?" She waggled her brows at me.

I hadn't told her about my plans for moving my studies temporarily abroad, which would mean I wouldn't be here for any end of year parties. There was no reason to bring it up now, I'd not even submitted the paperwork yet. "The size doesn't matter."

"Oh it definitely matters," she said with a laugh.

I rolled my eyes. "I mean that maybe you just need someone who is kind."

"Like Owen?" she asked, and I glanced away. I didn't want to talk about Owen.

"You spend so much time looking for the perfect guy, maybe you should just be single for a bit and let him find you."

"I don't want to spend my final years in High School single, that would mean I'd have to go to all the school events alone. Besides, I don't want to end up being all sad and desolate like Cat."

I frowned and set my teacup back on its saucer. "Cat's not sad and desolate, she's just super studious and doesn't have time for boys." Though she wasn't entirely wrong, I didn't think my sister had even been on a date before. We may have been twins but I was far more experienced than she was at this point.

"It's nice that she's smart, but don't you think it would really suck to go to college still so naïve and innocent?"

"I don't know." I didn't. Maybe it would be hard, at this rate we'd be going to different colleges with our interests and studies being so far apart. I wasn't sure how I felt about her going into college life without even knowing anything about boys and dating. It was like a staple thing in a girl's life.

Tia left before I did. She had plans to meet up with Ashton and I had no reason to rush off, especially with another cup of chai tea still in my teapot. I poured it out and stared into the bottom of my cup. If I studied abroad, that was really going to be the beginning of everything changing. Soon me and Cat would be seventeen, and then eighteen and off to college. We were almost adult's, and then everything would be different.

"You look sad, so I brought you another cookie," said a boy's voice.

Deep inside my own thoughts I looked up in surprise saying automatically. "I have a boyfriend, sorry." Then did a double take. I knew him, it was the boy from the hospital.

He laughed and brushed his ash-coloured curls from his eyes. "I'm not sure what kind of admissions of love you usually receive but this is just a cookie, there is no intent behind it other than a girl looking sad in the corner and a boy wanting to cheer her up."

"Thanks," I said and looked around the room at the other customers. Where'd he even come from; I was sure I hadn't seen him earlier. "I feel bad that you bought it me though and it's also a bit weird, I don't even know you."

He slid into the seat in front of me, where Tia had been sitting. "Sure you do, we met in the hospital, which is just another reason why you need a cookie. When you're sick, cookies are basically the best medicine. Also, I didn't buy it, I work here." He paused looking hungrily at the cookie plate on the table between us. "However, if you don't want the cookie you don't have to have it, in fact I'll just eat it myself."

"I want the cookie," I said quickly and took it off the plate in front of him and put it onto my own empty plate. It was silent for a moment, I kept waiting for him to leave, but he didn't, he just sit there with an airy expression. "You work here?" I asked, not enjoying the silence.

"I sure do," he said, smiling brightly. "The names Damien, nice to meet you."

"I'm Alice," I said, assessing him uncertainly. "I don't mean to be rude Damien, but if you aren't here to ask me out, what do you want?"

He leaned back in his chair, grinning. "Can't a guy just be nice; I mean you clearly are having a rough time at the moment."

"I'm fine," I snapped. Who even was this guy? He didn't know anything about me. I didn't like that a stranger could look at me and decide that my life wasn't going too great at the moment. I was fine. I had survived a car accident after all, and I had awesome friends and a boyfriend who loved me. "Besides, there is no such thing as a nice guy. Nice guys are a myth, there are only okay guys, or they'll do guys. I think men wanting us girls to believe that they are nice is just a devious rouse to trick us into thinking we are safe with them. When in fact, no girl should trust any guy more than they trust themselves," I said. Then swiftly shut my mouth, surprised at myself for that rant and where the heck it came from.

"That's an interesting view," he said, leaning across the table, breaking a piece off of my cookie and popping it in his mouth. "Do you really think that about all guys, even your boyfriend?"

"No, Owen's great," I said, but wasn't sure I sounded as sure as I had in my rant. I repeated myself just to make sure he knew I was serious. "He's great."

"He sure sounds great," he said nodding his head slowly. "I even heard he saved you from a car accident he caused. Which honestly doesn't sound all that believable, how do you even save someone in that kind of situation. And it really sounds like he's less a great guy and more like those crap guys you were talking about. I saw him at the hospital, he seemed more bothered about himself than he did about his girlfriend being in a hospital bed. But whatever, as you said I don't know you, I can just look at it based on what I hear." He used a lot of air quotations as he talked, as if he thought they really solidified what he was saying.

The nerve of this guy! "You shouldn't be eavesdropping on stranger's conversations; you should have just focused on your sick grandma in the hospital like normal people would do. You have no idea what happened in the car accident. You don't know anything. Owen's great, and I'm not even sad about anything so you shouldn't have bothered bringing me a cookie, but since you were so rude..." I picked up the cookie and shoved the whole thing in my mouth in one go. I stood angrily from my chair ready to storm out of the café. My mouth full, I sprayed cookie crumbs when I spoke. "Goodbye Damien, I hope we don't bump into each other again."

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