Flowers And Coffee
"What am I doing here?" I thought.
I got up from the stairs where I was sitting, in front of her front door. She hadn’t moved since I had opened my eyes, not knowing if everything was just a big joke or what was going through my mind and most important why I had just flown all those miles just to see her. But I could have given an answer to all those questions not asked out loud.
"Why are you here, Clarke?" she asked a second time while I slowly descended the three steps ahead of me like an antelope afraid of being hunted down by the cheetah.
After a minute of silence I was finally able to open my mouth, not caring about how things would have turned out at the end of my day, there was nothing else to lose.
"Okay, why am I here? Because I can’t stop thinking about what has happened. Because I can’t stop thinking about you every minute of my day” I blurted out.
The silence reappeared for a moment.
“Are you like kidding me or something?” she finally asked, not being able to believe my words.
I shook my head without looking away for even a second from her eyes that sparkled like emeralds in the dark.
"How am I supposed to trust you now after all that you said when we were on the porch?" she finally asked.
"It may be a good answer the fact that I've flown all these kilometers just to see you" I quickly found an answer to her question.
She looked at me without saying a single word.
”Can we just start all over again? Please?” I asked, unable to bear the space between us filled with silence anymore.
After a moment of indecision, she nodded sighing.
"Thanks" I said. “I’m Clarke, nice to meet you” I said, handing her a hand with a smile on my face.
"Okay we’ll skip this step. You got a place where to sleep tonight?” she then asked.
I withdrew my hand quickly embarrassed by the situation I had created all by myself.
"I don’t even know if I have my toothbrush with me let alone I know where I will sleep tonight" I said with a laugh.
To my surprise she laughed too and it pleased me.
"If you want to you can sleep on the couch for tonight" she said.
“That’s fine by me" I said immediately, glad she offered me a place where to stay.
She then walked past me, toward the door, and opened it. I followed her going up the stairs and dragging the trolley behind, I entered her house, for the very first time.
Once inside, the first thing that struck me was the set of odors that I could sense. I didn’t know which flower in particular gave off that scent, it was like someone had joined a bunch of flowers together and the smell that emanated from that was incredible. Flowers and coffee was everything that I could smell. The walls of the entrance were painted in a very light green, almost white, lit by an abat-jour, placed on a large chest of drawers, which gave off a warm light. On the left there was the living room with a large cream-colored sofa in it full of pillows placed in no specific order on it. That would have been my bed for the night, my lovely bed.
”The bathroom is upstairs along with my room. There there’s the kitchen and the living room of course. It's not much but it's home” she said removing me from my thoughts.
"It's beautiful" I said in a whisper as I continued to look around myself.
”I’ll give you some space if you want get comfortable” she said, approaching the stairs.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"Where do you think I’m going? I will get into a PJ or something” she said, going up the stairs. Soon after I heard a light laugh.
"Why the fuck you ask these questions, Clarke? Where the fuck could she go locked inside this house?” a voice inside my head asked, scolding me.
After I removed the tight black jeans and my bra I got into my comfy sweat pants and sat down on the couch waiting for Lexa to come back down. In front of me there was a TV which seemed to be pretty old, I remembered having one like that in my house too as a kid. Everywhere I looked there were books of different sizes: on the coffee table in front of the sofa, next to the TV and in a magazine stand in a corner. She always read so much and I would have not being surprised if she had read every book in there at least twice.
"Would you like a soup for dinner? I didn’t really want to cook tonight” Lexa suddenly asked behind my back. The kitchen and living room were separated by a meter high wall placed on my right.
“For sure" I answered her question.
In just fifteen minutes we found ourselves on the couch eating a soup heated in the microwave. It wasn’t much, but that night I could have settled for anything.
“Considering it’s June, it’s quite cold in here” Lexa said.
"It's cold because you're wearing shorts and you don’t have a sweater on" I said on the other side of the sofa not looking up from the hot bowl in my hands.
She then looked at me and saw that I was wearing long sweat pants and a large bordeaux vans sweater. She looked away and continued to watch television. An old black and white movie with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis, that I had probably already seen hundreds of times, was airing giving me a strange feeling of warmth and home.
After finishing the soup Lexa got up from the couch and when she returned to sit on the same spot of the sofa she had a stack of papers filled with handwritten notes in a hand.
"I have to study some stuff for tomorrow, it’s a project we're doing with the kids at school" she said, covering herself with a blanket.
“Oh okay, I will turn off the TV" I said quickly.
"No, it's not necessary. I don’t mind at all” she said.
I kept on watching the movie or at least trying to watch it. My eyes involuntarily moved on her from time to time. She was wearing round glasses and wore her hair in a bun. Every five minutes she looked up from her papers and whispered a few words to memorize what she would have said the next day to the children of her class.
Curling up and laying my head on a pillow wasn’t a great idea because after only a few minutes I fell asleep, tired of the long day full of events.
When I re-opened my eyes it was four in the morning and a blanket was covering me. The same blanket Lexa had used that night while studying. I had an urgent need to go to the bathroom and, although I didn’t really want to get up and go upstairs, I made an effort and went on. Once I arrived upstairs I recognized the toilet thanks to a plate with a little girl that was peeing on it nailed to the white door. As I left the bathroom I saw that Lexa’s bedroom door was open and, as I walked past it, I spotted a shadow on the bed. I paused on the door jamb and there she was, sleeping like a baby. Her mouth was slightly open and one arm wasn’t under the sheets. She was peaceful and I prayed to God she was having a sweet dream.
I don’t know how long I stood there looking at her, saying nothing, thinking about nothing, just to observe. I then realized that I could feel the same butterflies in my stomach that I had felt the first time I had seen Bellamy sleeping next to me. The same exact feeling.
The feeling that, maybe, I loved her.