THE DOOR OF the coffee café swung open with the help of a gust of wind. The sound of someone playing the piano poured out along with the aroma of fresh coffee.
Jensen's stomach shifted uneasily, and all the reasons not to be there flooded her mind. She wasn't a regular at the café, but she occasionally visited for a caffeine fix. Today, in particular, was different. Jensen desperately wanted to stop overthinking, but suffocating in her thoughts was inevitable.
A barista greeted Jensen, and she ordered her favorite, a venti hazelnut latte. She sat her belongings down before she took a seat. She wrapped her hands around the cup and enjoyed the heat that spread through her fingers.
She inhaled slowly and glanced around to aim her attention elsewhere. Jensen's gaze stopped abruptly on a boy near the window. He had a tired look on his face with his space littered with crumbled up pieces of paper. He so often looked up to apologize to the people trying to skim past his guitar leaning up on the table. The unblinking, focused look on his honey-colored face was the most beautiful thing Jensen had ever seen. It calmed her, along with the sound of the rain on the roof, and it almost seemed criminal to breathe in case it all ended.
The world was terrible because even though he was right there, she needed an excuse to walk over to him, and because there wasn't one in the world good enough, she couldn't. She considered bumping into his guitar, fainting, spilling her coffee on his shirt, but those seemed cliché.
Jensen sighed and retrieved a notebook from her backpack. She glanced over some paragraphs she had written last year. She so often glanced around only to find herself staring at the boy near the window. She wanted to know what he was writing about.
The boy stood up and wiped the crumbs of his blueberry muffin onto the floor. He gathered the crumbled-up pieces of paper. Jensen swallowed hard because the boy was walking towards her.
As the boy walked past Jensen, he nearly tripped over her guitar leaning on the couch, and he smiled at her. The world was grey and cold today. Everything was some form of grey on a rainy day, but his smile was bright and radiated warmth like the sun. The rest of the café ceased to exist, and their eye contact lasted for what seemed like forever.
He apologized repeatedly, but Jensen was unsure of what he was saying because he disconnected her. He was even cuter now that she could see the specs of light blue in his eyes. The world was terrible because even though he was right in front on her, she had to think of a reason to ask him to sit next to her, but because there wasn't one in the world good enough, she couldn't.
He adverted his eyes to his worn-out sneakers and walked away.
Jensen wanted to follow him, swallow her shyness, and introduce herself, but before she could consider her next move, the café owner called her name. It echoed off the walls, and her breathing rapidly increased. Her mind replayed two Septembers ago when she fled the café stage on a loop. Ever since her father passed away, her brain would constantly search for him in the sea of faces, and when she couldn't find him, she'd panic. She thought of leaving, but then she'd have to do it all again another day. The owner repeated himself, and she clasped her hands together to stop the tremble. She mumbled words of wisdom to herself, the same words her father unfailingly spoke before she went on stage. She closed her notebook, stood up, swallowed, and adjusted the strap of her guitar over her shoulder. The walk to the stage felt long, and she focused on her breathing a little more.
"I wrote his song for my father." Her voice came out a croak.
The first note came out flat, and a flush of champagne pink had arisen in her cheeks. She tried to continue, but her nerves made her miss a chord. She apologized for her mistakes and breathed slowly out of her nose. Tersely, her eyes flicked into the sea of faces, a majority of the crowd seemed disconnected, and she felt more like she was singing at a bus stop with faces staring at her from a traffic jam. There was a discomfort in her chest, a feeling that begged her to disappear. Just as Jensen was about to accept her defeat, her gaze fell upon the boy near the window. There was something about him that drew Jensen to him. It didn't hurt that he was attractive, but it was more than that. He soothed her without even saying a word.
Her fingers graced over the strings once more, but this time, her voice appeared strong. She noticed the boy tapping his foot and nodding his head in sync with the rhythm.
Jensen desperately wanted to get to know the boy.