Say Hello For Me

f o r t y || the end

Nessa has barely taken two steps out her bedroom when a fist pounds on the door. In a cloudy daze, she slowly walks to the door still half asleep. Morning classes are the worst. She nearly runs into her bookshelf on the way over there. As she walks, the bun on the top of her head bobs around. By the time she opens the door, half of her hair has already fallen out of the bun. Sometimes she really hates having thick hair.

On the other side of the door, Liam stands clad in a pair of dark jeans and his signature white vans. His blue eyes look even brighter when the sun's rays are shining on them. In his hands are two cups of coffee. He tries his best to control the grin on his face, but his smile has a mind of its own.

"Did I wake you up, sleeping beauty?" Liam asks, handing Nessa her drink.

"No, I've been up for a couple of minutes now," she responds. "Is this a—"

"Iced caramel mocha macchiato with soy milk? I even got them to put your name on it. Tell me how great I am, Nessa. Don't hold anything back now."

"And here I thought you were trying to make me feel special, not the other and way around." She curls her hand around the pivot of her wrist, turning the cup around to reveal thick, sharpie written cursive letters on the back that spell out Nesa. "It's a really shame they forgot an S."

"Baby steps, Nessa, baby steps. I'm sure they'll get it next time."

"As in there will be a next time." She takes a sip of the coffee, the cold liquid rushing down her throat. Liam laughs, watching her shiver. "How'd you even know my order?"

"You give me absolutely no credit, do you? Did you really think I wouldn't have it memorized after watching you order the same thing every morning for the past two weeks? But that's actually not the reason I'm here."

"So you're telling me you're just not a coffee delivery boy for sleep deprived college students?"

"That's only a part time job. Today is the day, Ness," Liam tells Nessa, his eyes lighting up with excitement that's overshadowing his anxiety.

"The day for what?"

"I'm finally going to ask her out," he says. "The girl I like. She reminds me a lot of you."

"What's going to happen if she says no? Have you thought about that?"

"Then she'll have the liberty of shattering my heart into a million little pieces, and I'll never get her coffee before class again. That seems like a fair trade off. What do you think?"

"So you're going to blackmail her? I don't know if I approve of this. Girls take their caffeine very seriously, Liam."

"That's the plan as of right now."

"Well, why don't you say hello for me while you're at it."

Liam pokes his head in the doorway, his eyes scanning her apartment. Untouched homework assignments collect in piles on the floor. Spines of books less an inch from slipping off the bookshelves stare back at him. Mismatched shoes make themselves comfortable under couches and wooden stools. Nessa's apartment is anything but organized. The space in itself is a complicated mess, much like their relationships and the feelings that took Liam an eternity to understand.

"I would invite you inside, but I haven't really cleaned anything up. Sorry about the mess"

"I love it this way."

His eyes land on the spot where he told Nessa that he had fallen for her, the words just seeming to slip out of her mouth. Somewhere between the first phone call and the moment they ran into each other, everything changed. Their relationship has been anything but conventional since the beginning.

They still haven't been on their first date.

Liam smiles at her, the curve of his lips practically meeting his radiant eyes. As her eyes meet his, she can't help but smile back. It's become a reflex, an intuition. It's when he sees her smile widen that he realizes something that's been known to everyone else all along. He's ready. They're ready.

"Wait, where are you going?" Nessa calls after Liam down the hallway, watching the distance between them increase exponentially as he starts sprinting for the stairs at the end of the hall. "You're not going even to say goodbye?"

"I'll be right back, Nessa!" he assures her, waving his hand in the air. "You'll see."

Five minutes later, Liam knocks on Nessa's door for the second time in a row. His heart is poundings against his ribcage, sweat lining his brow. He's a little nervous to say the least even though he has no reason to be.

"It's open!" she yells from the living room while she slips on her shoes, taking her time to double knot the laces.

"I need you to come to the door, Nessa. No questions asked."

Nessa runs to her front door, not knowing what to expect all. When she pulls the door open, she sees Liam standing on the other side with a bouquet of red roses in one hand and a box of Papa John's pizza in the other hand. She can smell the roses from where she's standing.

"Hi, Liam," she says with a smile.

"Hello, Nessa."

-----

F I N I S H

there are three more bonuses of liam + nessa after this chapter if you all want to check that out!

when I started this story, I never thought I would ever get past one thousand votes overall let alone four thousand. thank you so much for sticking with me for liam and nessa's adventure! I hope you all will join me in my next short story, Secondhand Embarrassment, for lennon and noah's peculiar love-hate relationship. it looks like I have a thing for l and n names. there's a little snippet below.

lennon || noah

☼~☼~☼~☼~☼

tinder: congratulations! you have a new match!
noah lyons has just sent you a message!

did it hurt when you fell
straight down from heaven?

how are you so sure i didn't crawl
up from the inner workings of a
burning hell instead?

it's what's underneath that
really matters at the end of the day
you'll always be an angel to me ;)

out of pure curiosity, what is your
success rate with this pickup line?

you know what they say, lennon
a magician should never reveal the
secrets to his greatest magic tricks

funny because your profile didn't mention
anything about you being a magician

neither did yours, but i think
i've already fallen under your spell