Twice Shy {h.s. au}

I.

Harry was in love with someone who he was pretty sure didn't know he existed.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. The girl he'd been infatuated with for over a year now saw him every day at the coffee house, asked for her usual drink—an iced Americano—said thanks when he called out her name from his side of the counter, and told him to have a nice day. She at least knew him as the boy who made her coffee in the mornings and after her midday classes. But Harry felt like he knew her a little more than that.

He knew her name was Maggie, and he knew she was in a sorority and lived with her sisters off campus and often came into the coffee house with a couple of them. He knew she only drank iced coffee, even when it was cold out, and he knew that what days she didn't have classes because she would stay inside to study or work on an assignment instead of rush out the door, hoping to get to class on time, which also told Harry that Maggie either had a habit of running or late or couldn't function without coffee, or possibly both.

Sometimes Harry felt like a creepy stalker for knowing so much about Maggie when she didn't even know his name, but he told himself he was just observant, that he knew just as much about the other student regulars who came into the on-campus coffee house looking for their caffeine fix. He just couldn't help it, there was something about Maggie—her kind smile that revealed a small gap in her front teeth, the dimple in her right cheek, her voice that sounded like angelic music to his ears, her seemingly endless collection of cozy looking sweaters, and the funky patterned socks that peeked out beneath her jeans—that he couldn't help but feel drawn to. His job at the coffee house was just meant to be something to put a little extra cash in his pocket so he could afford going out—the few times he actually decided to go out, that is. But now he found himself looking forward to putting on his apron and making drinks with ridiculous requests just so he could see her for a total of three minutes every day.

The coffee house was quiet and not busy in the slightest, a typical occurrence in the middle of the day when most classes were in session. Harry was decorating the chalkboard that advertised the coffee house's holiday specials, trying his best to draw a gingerbread man next to its corresponding specially flavored drink. His phone was in his lap with a picture reference, his tongue poking out slightly as he tried to make the arms of the gingerbread man even. He was so focused on his work he didn't notice the jingle of the bells above the front door as someone came inside.

"Um... hello?"

Harry fell out of his crouch by the chalkboard and back onto his ass, startled by the voice he sometimes heard in his dreams. He wasn't a creep, though. He wasn't. He was just a teeny, tiny bit in love.

"Oh my gosh, Harry, are you okay?" Maggie said, coming around so that she was facing him. Her blue eyes were widened with concern, but all Harry could register was the all-encompassing self-consciousness that had taken over his body, his body heating up from head to toe. "Harry?" she asked again when he didn't answer her right away, resting a hand on his elbow to help him stand up.

She knows my name, was all he could think as he let her help him to his feet. He had never thought that was a possibility, had always assumed he was a blank face that took her coffee order every day, but here she was, saying his name and asking him if he was okay.

"You—You know my name?"

He hadn't meant to say that, he was supposed to say that he was alright so he could get back to work behind the counter, make her drink, and that would be the end of their interaction. But of course he had to go and embarrass himself further. He never liked the idea of Maggie not knowing who he was, but now that she probably thought he was a clumsy, stuttering idiot, he wished she didn't.