Let Love Win

Chapter 33 - Zeek

It had been another couple weeks since the arts performance and I'd spend at least 3 nights a week awake and staring at my ceiling thinking of reasons why she acted like she did around me that night. I mean, if she had done the same thing I did to her, to me, I would take a lot longer to treat her like a human being than she did. But then again, she still wasn't scheduled on the same shifts as I was at the café upon request, says Austin. So it didn't make much sense to me—if she was fine with me now, why wouldn't she take her regular shifts again? Or if she wasn't, what was it that made her act so normally on the Friday?

I don't know how she did it, how she was still doing it. No matter what I was thinking about of what I was doing, she always seemed to weave her way into my thought. Hell, she consumed them. It had been 2 weeks and all I could do still was think about her. I was the one who broke her heart when I knew I had it, if anything I should be getting over her quicker than she could say she loved me.

Love. What gave me the right to use that word around her? If I really loved her, I would have told her about Shawna earlier. If I really loved her, there would have been no secrets between us. If I really loved her, I would have told her everything and trusted that nothing would have changed between us. If I really loved her, she would still be with me, and I wouldn't be having this conversation with myself.

I served another couple their drinks and leaned on the counter, watching the door like I always did on my shifts. I wasn't going to admit that I was willing her to walk in the door to begin working, but I was actually waiting to see if she came in to order a coffee like she did sometimes when we were still together. She would always ask for the most complicated things and degrade my decoration skills. At first, it pissed me off, but then it became cute in a sense, and then she was just doing it to talk to me—and I only knew that because she told me one night when she was drunk off her ass.

Lately, I was trying to hide my wishful stares at the door in attempts not to look as desperate as I felt. However, it hadn't been working since almost everyone could tell that's exactly what was on my mind. "Dude, seriously," Austin said coming to stand beside me. "The more you pray for her to walk in the door, the longer it's going to seem before she actually does."

"What are you talking about?" I asked evasively, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye before looking back at the door.

"What I mean is that a watched kettle never boils. Come on, you've been staring at the door for like 5 hours."

I looked down at my watch. "It's been 10 minutes."

"Yeah, 10 minutes plus the hour that you've stayed past the end of your shift because you've bee staring at the door, longing for your lover to walk in and order a coffee. And let's not even get into the 3 breaks you were supposed to have that you spent staring at the door—by the way, Cal says he's not paying you for the extra time you've spent serving coffees—but anyways, do you still want to argue about what you've been doing all day?"

I looked at my watch again and saw that it was now 6 o'clock, which was in fact an hour after the end of my shift. I sighed and stood up straight and looked at him. "Okay, you made your point. Are we done here?"

"Hey, no need to get snappy with me, everyone has noticed that you've been a little spaced out since the break-up. Me and some of the other guys in the bakery thing that you should just pick up a rebound. We're going out tomorrow night to celebrate the end of exams. Come with us."

Tomorrow night—Saturday night. "Thanks for the invite, but I'm not gonna be here tomorrow night to go out."

"What? Where are you going and when?"

"I'm going to see my family and I'm leaving sometime between now and then. I can't go."

"Well, can't you see if you can go Sunday instead?"