"This is the worst coffee I have ever tasted."
Louis glared at the scowling teenage girl sitting on a rotating bar stool, sunglasses tucked back into her blonde hair and a look of distaste on her face. The coffee sat lonely between the two of them, steam rising into the air as Louis had just made it.
"Our coffee is the best in this whole town," Louis snapped, grabbing the cup and taking a sip just to prove a point. "You're just picky. All you want is Starbucks, all day, all night. Most ridiculous thing I've ever seen."
The girl looked taken aback, raising her eyebrows in surprise as Louis snatched the coffee cup and dumped it in the sink, the whole time mumbling profanities and shaking his head.
"Someone must've had a bad day," she commented, swivelling back and forth in her chair and resting her chin in her hands.
Louis whipped around. "Screw off," he growled, slapping a rag on the counter to wipe off the tiny bit of liquid he had spilt.
"Dude, what's your problem?" She drummed her blue fingernails on the counter in front of the boy. The rest of the small cafe was empty, only a few students from the uni nearby sitting at an occasional table or two. Louis was usually relaxed at his job; being a barista was great when all of the customers weren't nosy like this girl and didn't remind him of his sour mood. And his supervisor always let him drink as much tea as he wanted.
"I don't see why I should be telling you anything. You spit the coffee I put my heart and soul into all over the place and I had to clean up your mess."
She scoffed. "I guarantee you didn't put a horse's leg into the crappy cup of coffee. It tasted like water and creamer. Awful."
"Do you want me to shove a cactus up your-"
"Louis."
Louis closed his eyes, sighing deeply and turning around to face one of his co-workers, Liam. He had a deep, worried frown on his face, his eyebrows furrowed and warm eyes full of confusion. "Lou, what's wrong? Did this girl say something to you?"
Louis shook his head. "No, she's fine. Liam, I have a favor to ask. You get off an hour earlier than me, right?"
Liam nodded, clearly not understand where the older boy was going with this.
"Can you cover my shift so I can leave early?" He ran a hand over his face, hoping Liam would say yes.
The boy sighed, closing his eyes before agreeing, defeated. "Fine. I was just gonna go home and read anyway."
The thought of reading made Louis' heart stutter. Ever since he closed his book last night, he had been so confused.
***
The time passed slowly, although half of it Louis and the girl he never knew the name of shot stupid insults and clever comments back and forth at each other, until the hour hand reached five and Louis' shift was over. He let out a breath, untying his purple apron with white polka dots. After hanging it up and gathering his satchel and dark plum beanie, he strolled outside into the cool summer air of Doncaster. The walk back to his dorm was quite short; that's one of the main reasons he chose his job at Donnie Cafe, that and because it smelled good and left his clothes scented like coffee beans.
He pulled the beanie over his fringe that had grew tangled and messy throughout his long day at work. It wasn't cold enough to wear the sweatshirt he had brought, so he stuck with his thin black shirt and khakis he had to wear on the job. The city smelled of food and gasoline, a smell he had grown quite used to, it being his second year of uni.
When he finally arrived at his dorm, he threw his bag on the ground and took his clothes off, before climbing into the shower. He had to lean against the shower wall because his legs were shaking from standing so long. That was his least favorite part of work. He would prefer if he could sit on a bar stool like the customers could. At least he wasn't the cashier, who had to stand in one place. He got to move around and make the coffee and squeeze the whip cream and drizzle the caramel.
He scrubbed the vanilla shampoo into his honey brown hair, feeling soap bubbles run down his face, past his neck and over his legs, before the swirled onto the floor and disappeared in the drain. He scrubbed his hair until their were bubbles everywhere before he finally stepped under the water from his shower.
Once he had rubbed soap over every crevice of his body, he shut off the hot water and stepped out, wiping the foggy mirror to reveal himself. His cheeks were flushed red from the hot water, his light blue eyes surrounded by the colour lilac due to his lack of sleep. He blinked slowly, running his toothbrush under the water and squeezing some toothpaste on it before shoving it in his mouth.
After his contacts were out and he was clean and ready for bed, he pulled on some sweatpants and a Doncaster college hoodie, then texted his sisters and mum a small message about how he loved them and missed them. He never liked to go without talking to them for at least a month.
His small, single-bed dorm also was quite lonely.
Louis sighed deeply, grabbing his glasses off of his bedside table and placing them over his eyes. He knew that reading the book sitting under his lamp would only keep him up again, but it wouldn't be long before his classes would be getting harder and studying would be a must, meaning he wouldn't have to time to read.
He was proud of himself, after years and years of searching he had finally found his favorite author. It was a boy that was actually younger than him, which he was extremely impressed with. He was majoring in English to be an English professor, and so finding a book that didn't bother him with bad grammar was a rarity in itself. But this boy, this nineteen year old boy in his freshman year of uni had already published four books, going on five. His name was Harry Styles, a name that for some odd reason made Louis smile. He was jealous of that name.
Louis understood long ago that authors put themselves into their work, that just a simple chapter could identify their past and their feelings towards a certain subject. And he felt as if Harry expressed that so well, he put so much emotion and heart and soul into his writing that was very hard to come across, and for that reason the boy found himself crying and screaming in his pillow as he read these books.
He didn't know what the boy looked like and yet he still felt some deep, personal connection to him. But it wasn't until last night that something inside him snapped, he realised something that had him up all night pondering things, pondering fate and soul mates and crazy stuff like that. Because in his book, the boy had described him, described his personality and looks and even his job. It was absolutely frightening how close Louis related to the character that the protagonist had fell in love with.
Yeah, that was another thing Louis loved about Harry Styles' writing. They were love stories, and they always ended sadly. Louis hated cliches, he hated cheesy, happy endings, because he knew they were unrealistic. He was well aware that teenage girls like the one he met at the coffee shop loved those kind of books, where the boy and girl ended up together and got married and had a perfect child and a perfect house and a perfect life. He hated it. He was working every day to pay for his ready made food and college expenses, only surviving his lack of sleep by several cups of tea and naps between lectures. Every party he went to, he ended up drunk and getting hit on by some girl who could never make him bat an eye.
Louis knew he was gay since the beginning of high school, and he was lucky that everyone accepted him, but that didn't mean anyone was friends with him. He was the definition of a wallflower, a boy with perfect grades and glasses who cared so much about what others said, but the feeling wasn't mutual.
But once he had gotten to college, where he knew nobody and nobody knew him, all that mattered to him was making one friend, one friend. He still had yet to accomplish that goal, if you didn't count the cat he had snuck in the beginning of his second year. Louis wondered if Liam was his friend, but then again he was only a co-worker and had never been to Louis' dorm once. Liam had been the one who recommended that the lonely boy get a cat though, which Louis still had yet to thank him for.
Lucile was laying on the other side of his queen sized bed, her white tail wrapped around her body like a blanket, moving back and forth to the rhythm of the instrumental music playing softly out of Louis' phone on his bedside table. Her light green eyes never failed to make Louis smile; Louis had loved the cat since the day he had bought her, when she was a little kitten that didn't know what a litter box was. The thing that Louis loved her for the most was the company she provided when nobody was there.
Louis adjusted his glasses on his nose and opened the book titled, "Messy." The boy had known when he saw the wonderfully created cover in the uni library that he had to read it. Now, he was in the middle of the book, the climax, were the girl and the boy finally got together for real. It was in the girl's point of view, something else Harry did that Louis had grown to like.
"I walked down the stairs of the airplane and met his blue eyes, his wonderful pale blue eyes and wondered how someone could look so radiant, so beautiful after a two hour drive with nothing but music to accompany them. My hands were shaking beneath me and I struggled to carry my luggage and run at the same time. The airport smelled of perfume and food, a smell that soon faded when I got closer to him. He engulfed me in his embrace, his warm arms wrapping around my waist gently as he picked me up. He smelled of vanilla and I squeezed my eyes shut to barricade my tears from slipping past. Without opening my eyes, I reached up and ran a hand through his light brown hair, that was just as soft as I remembered, although when I did it before we were just best friends. Now I had no idea what we were. All I knew was this boy wearing a baggy sweatshirt and sweapants was the most magical boy I had ever seen."
Louis had a cheesy smile on his face as he read it. He tucked his bookmark between the pages and shut the book, sliding his glasses of his face and putting them on the table. He gently pulled Lucile to his side, petting her until she purred, before he leaned up and flicked off his lamp.
He wished he hadn't memorised the paragraph so it wouldn't keep him up so late.
***
I hope you liked the first chapter.
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Love you.
-Kayla xxx