Neverland

“Can I have large iced mocha, no whip, please?” Alex wasn’t expecting his eyes to land on such a beautiful girl. Her long dark hair flowed passed her chest in loose curls and her hazel-green eyes were outlined with a light brown, nothing dramatic but enough to make her eyes stand out. A shy smile sat on her features but the smile didn’t reach her eyes, damaged, he could see it in her eyes. Alex could tell that she had money only by the keys she set on the counter while she handed him the debit card from her wallet.

“You must be new around here,” Alex flirted, no comeback, just a shrug. “I would have remembered a pretty face like yours.” Anastasia smiled bashfully and walked away, leaving Alex stunned; he thought he had her but he didn’t, he liked it though. Alex liked knowing that there were still girls out there that weren’t easy and who still had a moral center.

Alex watched Anastasia as she waited for her drink but before he could pay attention to her reaction what he had wrote on her cup a blond had entered the café. “Good afternoon, welcome to Coffee Corner,” Alex said somewhat flirtatiously. His eyes couldn’t help but travel down to her chest, where too much cleavage hung out; he snapped out of it and looked back at her face, dark black eyeliner lined her dull brown eyes and too much make up covered her face. Alex knew this woman, she came in every day just to flirt with him but he never showed any interest. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the girl, who he had previously tried to woo, smile and blush before going to a chair to sit down and read. Alex looked back at Leslie, the girl in front of him, and took her order; at first the flirting was fun but Leslie had grown boring, she looked the same every day and tried too hard but Alex had to be friendly.

For the next few hours Alex became lost in his thoughts, of the band, of the girl who still resided in the corner, of his brother, of his family, of his friends, and too much more. Alex frequently went on autopilot at work, his coworkers called him a robot sometimes because that’s what he did, he became a robot when he became too lost in his mind. Alex left his mind when his best friends came bursting into the coffee shop, smiling at their best friend. Alex noticed the girl’s head pop up, pulling her from her book; he could see that she was too distracted to read but she still sat in the chair. Her eyes cast on something that was written in the front cover of her book, he could see that she was crying but he let her be and looked at his friends. “She’s knew,” Jack, the first boy he met when he moved to America, stated. “Did you get her name, Casanova? She’s very pretty.”

“Nope,” Alex shrugged, glancing at the time. Alex smiled, he could get out of that hell hole in ten minutes since he didn’t have to close. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t want anything to do with me,” Alex glanced back over at the girl in the corner, she had wiped her eyes and was now standing up, sliding her things in her bag.

“We all have our off days,” Rian, a boy he had met when entering high school, said teasingly. Alex rolled his eyes and started to wipe down the counters behind the bar, “Alex.” Alex looked up at his drummer but his eye caught the girl from earlier leaving the coffee shop. Alex glanced at the place she was sitting and noticed a book laying on the floor, groaning a little he quickly ran over to it and picked it up, sliding a piece of receipt paper inside the front cover he darted outside to giver her the book.

“Hey beautiful!” Alex called after her just a she was sliding into her car. He didn’t mean for the second word to come out but he also didn’t regret it, she turned around to face him. Her eyes met his in curiosity, “you dropped this.” Alex handed Anastasia her book and shoved his hands in his pockets. Anastasia looked down at her book in hand, her eyes filled with tears, how could she almost forget his last present to her. The book it haunted her but she could never let it go no matter how much pain it caused.

“Thank you,” Anastasia told him, looking back down at the book. “I’m Anastasia by the way, so you can tell your friend that you know my name.” The words were almost bitter because she didn’t want people to know her; she wanted to be invisible. “Not that it’s any of his business,” Alex was taken aback by her bitterness, she seemed so docile, timid even, when he first met her and now she was snapping at him for no reason.

“That was a complete 360,” Alex said. “Who do you think you are? Snapping at me for no damn reason, my friends were picking on me because for once in my life I didn’t get a pretty girl’s number.” Anastasia frowned, she had no right to snap at him but the way his friends were acting brought back old memories.

“I’m sorry,” Anastasia said, blinking her tears away. Alex looked at her, the moonlight hitting her face perfectly, it was cliché in every sense but Alex didn’t care. “I um-I have to go.” She quickly got in her car and drove off in what he assumed was the direction of her house. Alex shook his head and walked back into the coffee shop with his head hung; he knew the look in her eye and he wanted to help but he could already tell that she wasn’t keen on letting people in.

“What happened?” Rian asked, obviously watching from the window.

“Nothing.”