Mr. Babydoll and the journals of his inner blizzard [peterick]

III

My tiny apartment was part of the old buildings from the 1950s at the back of town. It was quiet here and the people living inside these bricks of heartless architecture barely interacted with each other. It was nothing but polite nods of acknowledgement every time our eyes met and I was more than eager for it to stay that way. My apartment was like a box, shielding me from everything. Maybe I was a coward, maybe I was.

But I simply couldn't be because I had taken a step towards the possibility of human interaction, the kind I possibly had never encountered before. But the possibility was still just a possibility and nowhere near a confirmation or a promise. This guy, I didn't even know his name, he had moved something inside of me. When I looked down at it all, I hadn't even talked to him for longer than a minute, there was no chance I could've left any sort of impression in his mind.
Still I felt as if I had known him for years, as if I was meant to be the only one to ever know him, as if he had a part of me in his possession that he had been carrying around for years, looking for its rightful owner.

A small part of my conscience wished that he just threw the cup away. But what if he's going to come to the coffee shop again? Or even every day. I'm just going to pretend it didn't happen.
If he asks, i'm just going to say that I didn't know how it happened. He didn't know my name, so I had every chance to deny it being my fault.

This is all Brendons fault. But it wasn't within my right to blame him, knowing in the end, it was my conscious decision to go trough with it.

Suddenly my phone buzzed, which startled the living hell out of me. I looked over to my nightstand where it was and reached out to get it. For some reason I was scared to turn it on and read the message. However,after an amount of time which felt like an eternity, I decided to just do it. The message came from an anonymous number i didn't know.

"What do you want from me?"

Well, looks like we're getting right to the point here.
I felt like I should respond. But how? "Hey i'm a creep who gives his number to random people?"
No, it can't go like this.
I started typing.

"Hey, i'm sorry about this. It was my friends idea to do this and i'm sorry for bothering you|

I stared at the screen. The brightness gave me a fucking headache.
There's no way i could write that. That's the number one best way to end up on the worst subreddits.

"I apologise if this is weird. I was intrigued to talk to you. I'm Pete."

I pressed send. I sounded like I was fucking high.
I felt the anxiety eating me up from the inside when it said that he's typing. I genuinely believed this was going to be the end of me.

"I know. You wrote your name on the cup."

Somehow I felt the same feeling like in middle school when my teacher sent a letter to my parents.
He probably thinks I'm drunk. I could actually use that for my own advantage. When he enters the shop tomorrow . I'm just gonna say I drank to much and played truth or dare with my friends or some shit like that. That's not an acceptable apology, but I really had no other way.
He was typing again.

"My name is Patrick."

"You were the guy who ran into me at the store. I remember now."

My heart did a somersault backwards. He remembered me, proofing that I'm not just a ghost amongst the crowd, going unnoticed by everyone and fading into nothingness. This had to go somewhere.

"I'm still sorry about that" I replied. "I was in a hurry."

He responded within a second. "No worries. I instantly recognised you at the café. I wanted to say something, but I wasn't sure."

The feeling that I've known him all my life, washed over me once again like an ocean wave. Cold and wet, but full of life. Maybe we were supposed to be part of each others lives. Maybe Brendon was right. Taking this risk could've been the best decision I've ever made in my entire life even if it wouldn't last too long.

"Will you be at the café tomorrow? I asked not without the fear of sounding too desperate, but he again replied instantly.

"Sure. I'll be at the church again for the piano lessons of a few boys from the upper-class quarter tomorrow afternoon. I'll pass by the shop before. But I don't think I could stay for too long."

I was happy about things went, but the feeling in my chest didn't let go of me. There had to be something.

"Patrick, is it possible we've ever met before? Not even briefly? I'm just asking to make sure because my brain always makes up things"

This time it took him a while to respond and for a minute I feared he had finally noticed that I was not worth talking to, that I was a creep or maybe he had fallen asleep. Sometime later he replied.

"I don't think that's too possible. I fully moved into town yesterday night. Don't think too much about it, Pete."

The last part of the message raised a decent amount of confusion inside of my head. As if he knew that I thought about things too much.

"Good night." he replied one last time. I laid my phone down on my nightstand and decided to watch the back of my eyes until I fell asleep eventually.

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