Coffee Shop Girl

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Dear Stranger,

'Noah,' I said, gently shaking him awake like the day before. Oh never mind, I thought to myself, trying for second day running, to wriggle out from beneath his arm and escape. Again, he woke up as soon as I begun to move. 'Its early again,' he murmured, he could probably tell, as I could, by the light in the room that the sun was still rising. 'I know but I'm working at the cafe today, it's my first day, I don't want to be late,'

'okay, I'll walk you along there then,' he said with a yawn.

Within ten minutes both of us were up, I carried all of my possesions in my guitar case like the day before. I could see that Noah's eyes were tired, he wasn't getting used to sleeping rough the way I had had to. I felt bad, we could have gone searching for a friend of his he could stay with yesterday, he must have plenty, but instead he decided to amuse me and I decided to let him. He seemed determined to hide how crap he seemed to be feeling from me, and with every terrible endearing joke he attempted to make I felt a little worse. Never the less, I was pleased he offered to take me to Grace's cafe, for the company almost more than the fact that I had entirely forgotten where it was.

Again, the sky was grey and the tube was full of business people. The combination of my worry about Noah and my nerves about my first day at work were making me feel rather sick and I was desperately hoping I wasn't going to throw up or something whenever the tube gave an in any way violent jolt.

As we approached the cafe I saw an all too familiar bright blue head of hair sitting on a bar stool behind the cafes window. 'Oh it's Isabelle! Is she here because of me, I don't..' I trailed off, standing stock still in the middle of the pavement. But she had already seen us. She came running out of the cafe shouting my name, I wasn't sure whether she was about to run up and hug me or just scream at me. When she got to us she stopped, seeming conflicted about that very thing.

'I was...I was okay...I'm okay Iz,' I said in an awkward attempt to console her, she ignored me, shouting 'NOAH!' as she suddenly noticed him, 'what did you have to do with this? I would have hoped you'd have taken her back to mine, I know you lost your apartment, Tom told me, no ones seen either of you two around for the past day or so, where have you been?'

'We were fine Isabelle! We're okay! It's Amelia's first day at work- can we go focus on that please?' he looked at her emploringly. She glared back, clearly still fuming.

We had all fallen into a cold silence, I knew I would have to be the one to break it, no-one else would. 'Isabelle?' I said calmly

'Mmhmm'

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry if you were really worried, I didn't...I wanted to get away, and it just so happened that Noah did at the same time,' I went over to her and hugged her, to my relief she hugged me back tightly. 'Where did you go anyway?' she asked, calmer now. I was still trying to stay clear of this question, as was Noah, there was no need for her to know. Thankfully she ignored the fact that I had ignored her question and carried on 'So you guys weren't...you know?' Oh she had to ask that question, I thought to myself. 'No we weren't-'

'No, of course not we were-' me and Noah said at the same time, Isabelle burst out laughing,

'Okay, okay, I guess we had better get inside,' she said, finally a little more cheerful.

'Ah,' said Grace the moment we walked in 'we all wondered where you two had got to, I knew you would turn up for work though, you seem the hardworking sort Amelia,' I smiled and nodded, though I didn't completely agree with what she was saying. I was relieved to be back within the bounds of what had become normalcy. Grace showed me to the little stage, in the corner of the room, it was just big enough to fit a stool and the piano I had seen on it when I was last here for my interview. Now however, the little stage held only the stool and a mic on a stand. The cafe had not tecnically opened yet and she let me try out the mic and the amp and everything- the three of them where surprised to discover that although I had never played with an amp, for I had never needed to, the guitar was an electro acoustic.