At First Sight Hannah Sunderland (free e books to read online txt) 📖

‘Oh, you mean cold tea guy?’ he asked, his eyes momentarily widening, and then he quickly checked over his shoulder to make sure no one had heard him. ‘Sorry, we’re not supposed to refer to regulars by the nicknames we give them.’

‘Nicknames? Do I have one?’ I asked, getting a little distracted.

He grinned. ‘Yeah. You’re smiley girl.’ He leaned in and whispered, ‘But if anyone asks, I didn’t tell you that.’ He resumed his position and cleared his throat. ‘So, it’s him you’re looking for? The one who always leaves his tea?’

‘That’s the one,’ I replied.

‘Yeah, he was in here not too long ago.’

‘As in … today?’ I asked.

‘As in, like, five minutes ago. He took a tea and some banana bread.’ He grinned, terribly pleased with himself that he could remember the order.

‘Did you see which way he went?’ I asked, even though I could feel the impatient eyes of every person in the queue boring into me.

He scrunched up his face as if his usefulness was coming to an end and began to shake his head. ‘Erm, well,’ his face unscrunched and his eyebrows rose a little higher. ‘Isn’t that him there?’ He pointed out the window to one of the few tables put out front for smokers and in one of those cold, rain-spattered chairs, was the melancholy outline of Charlie Stone.

I turned back to Russel and nodded my thanks, taking all the change I had out of my pocket, which amounted to about three pounds, and cast it into the tips jar. ‘Thank you. You’re doing a great job here, Russ. Keep it up.’ He straightened a little, infused with pride, as I turned on my heel and walked back along the queue of staring people.

I walked to the door and stepped outside, wondering what I was meant to do now that I had this information. Maybe he’d lost his phone or maybe he had that daily amnesia like Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates. Unlikely, but maybe.

A far more likely and far more upsetting explanation was that I was just another person getting ghosted by their crush.

I took a deep breath, attempted to slow the beat of my heart back to usual human levels and turned in his direction. A sad, rain-spotted brown paper bag lay on the table, dripped upon by the leaky awning. The remnants of his banana bread lay scattered around the tabletop in the form of crumbs and a discarded, unused serviette. He looked up when I was a couple of paces away, doing a double take and looking back up the second time with an expression of horror on his face.

‘Nell, err, how are yer?’

‘Great,’ I said a little too enthusiastically and with a definite edge of suppressed anger. ‘You been busy?’

He shrugged. ‘Not really. You?’

Not really? Was that really all he had to say? My anger started to simmer in my stomach and I felt like I might say something too telling, something too much for this stage in the … I was going to say relationship but that probably wasn’t what this was.

‘Did you find someone to get your phone fixed?’ I asked, tilting my head passive-aggressively to the side.

‘My phone?’ Confusion found his face. ‘It’s not brok— ohh.’ Realisation hit. ‘I see what yer did there.’

‘Are you injured? Hurt? Did you run away with the circus or get hit by a car and die in a ditch? Am I talking to your ghost right now?’ I snapped.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t reply.’

I didn’t acknowledge his apology. I was too angry. I should probably have tried to calm down, but rational Nell was lost beneath hurt Nell.

‘All I wanted to do was get to know you a little more, help you out and be the friend that you say you so desperately need. But apparently you can’t quite decide what it is you want. I even thought I had a little crush on you there for a minute too.’ Understatement of the century right there.

‘I do want to be your friend.’ He stood from the table, picking up his takeaway cup of probably untouched tea and warming his hands around the cardboard. ‘I’ve just had quite a lot going on this week.’

‘But you just said you hadn’t been busy.’ I lifted my coffee to my lips and took a confident swig through the little plastic lid, the liquid coming out too hot and scalding my lip, but I didn’t react. He would not see weakness from me.

‘Look, Nell, I—’

I held up my hand and cut him off. ‘No need. I totally understand.’ I stared coldly into his eyes with what I hoped was an unreadably deadpan face. He slid his hand into mine and I shook it forcefully, trying not to acknowledge the twinge in my chest that felt like it might implode at any second. ‘It was nice to meet you, Charlie Stone. I hope you have a very nice rest of your life.’

‘Nell, I didn’t mean to—’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ I smiled a clearly meaningless smile, dropped his hand, turned around and called, ‘See you,’ over my shoulder.

I walked quickly, so quickly that I must have looked ridiculous.

I felt like crying but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of making me cry. I only cried at things that mattered like Instagram videos about abandoned dogs or episodes of Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings on Netflix. Charlie Stone didn’t matter to me and so I wasn’t going to cry about him. Why should he matter to me when I so clearly wasn’t even worth a text after all I’d done for him? No, my time spent thinking about brooding Irishmen was over.

I thought back to how embarrassingly sentimental I’d been about that first meeting in the coffee shop that I used to love, but would now only associate with Charlie Bloody Stone. How excited I’d been during that first meeting, how hopeful that Charlie and me were only at the beginning of what I’d hoped would