Find Her, Keep Her (CFTM Sequel)

Chapter 8 (Part 2)

*Note: Check out the AUDIOBOOK version of this chapter voiced by Kristen Maglonzo by clicking the Youtube video above! Featuring music by Landon Pigg, Jimmy Eat World, All American Rejects, Secondhand Serenade, and The Used.

Elias

Northern Lights is packed to the doors with people. 

The FroYo line's chockfull of six-foot jocks and their spray-tanned girlfriends, while the tea and coffee side of the counter is one-hundred percent hipster. 

If Alex was as high-maintenance as that Annie chick, she'd probably ditch this place for a Coffee Bean or Starbucks down in Westwood, but she's the type to stick out a mob of a line just to finish what she started.

My kinda girl.

I grab my hat out of my backpack, and pull it down over my eyes hoping to God I can do a better job at keeping a low profile today than I did twenty-four hours ago. Luckily, almost everybody in the room's too busy staring at their laptops or drowning their mid-day exhaustion in steaming cups of coffee to notice. 

I weave through what feels like a never-ending crowd of strangers, stopping every couple seconds to search for her face in a place I know I'll find it. I open my mouth to call out her name, but my voice dies out the second I realize what I'm doing.

Shit.

It hasn't even been two days, and I'm already chasing this girl all over creation even though some part of me knows I'm out of the running.

But as pissed at me as she is, I'm still gonna put everything I can into trying to turn things around. Is it desperate? 

Fuck yeah, it's desperate.

But I am desperate.

'Cause after 365 days of waiting for God to give me a second shot at seeing her again, I've finally got it.

And I'll be damned if I let her slip through my fingers a second time.

I walk over to a dude in dreadlocks sitting at a two-person table with his feet propped up on an empty chair across from him. I tap him on the shoulder, and he lifts up one of his headphones so he can hear me.

"Can I use this for a sec? I'm trying to find a friend," I say.

He nods and then goes right back into his dubstep daze. I hop up on the seat and scan the crowd for Alex, but all I see is a room full of people I don't recognize, and people who I don't want recognizing me. 

I try to pick Alex out of the crowd as fast as I can, but there's way too many people inside. You'd think a girl wearing a sexy pink-lemonade-colored outfit wouldn't be too hard to spot, but apparently neon's super popular this afternoon.

Every other girl in the room's got on hot pink shorts, shirts, or tank tops.

Screw it, I gotta get on the ground. This whole birds-eye rescue and recovery thing only works out in video games.

I wave to dread head and subtly let him know he can have his seat back, but I don't think he notices. 

Doesn't matter anyway.

I give the coffee/froyo line one last look over before I swallow the beginnings of disappointment building in my throat and hop down off the chair.

Somewhere between me hovering mid-air and hitting the floor my nuts catch on fire.

Literally.

Ball-searing pain seeps straight through my pants and hits me so hard I fuck up my landing and crash straight into the concrete.