Stranger short story competition - Runner Up

That first second, when she looked at me, the world stopped moving for a second. My heat beat faster than a hummingbird, and her smile lit up an entire house. Attempting to breathe was my first priority around her. My voice became louder, more annoying when I spoke. My jokes became less funny. The laughter from my friends around me meant so little if she was sat there, at that table next to me, straight-faced. For the first time in my life I had felt that rare breed of butterfly. Warm, bubbly butterflies that buzz up to your heart, wrapping tightly around it. They tug at your heartstrings, and their wings cover your lungs protectively. This breed of butterflies doesn’t even hurt. In fact, the odd pain is sort of nice.

Catching a crush for the first time is never how they tell you it will be. It’s not like the songs in the charts, because those artists are singing songs they didn’t write, about feelings they haven’t known in years. Nothing is quite like that first feeling of elation mixed with unadulterated fear for the possibility of rejection. I snuck glances across at the tall blonde sat on the table next to me. My friends and I sat at the small, circular table next to hers. Their voices drifted to white noise anytime I stole a glance at her. A perfect stranger. The café my friends had chosen to meet at was delightfully vintage, if not a little tacky. It sat in the small town of Ashby, a sunny escape from city life, the old stomping ground for my friends and I. We normally chose to visit each other in the cities where we went to university, but this was the last holiday before we were thrust out into the world. I had found my head travelling to far off visions of an unexpected future, found in the comfort of a woman I didn’t even know. It was ridiculous, to pine over someone from a first glance.

I had spent years trying to have feelings for boys, desperate to fit into the world’s view of normal. My last boyfriend had been a month of uncomfortable kisses and awkward hands held at public events. I’d pushed back feelings of difference, imagining myself married to a man, holding our children for family photos. I imagined taking my boyfriend home to my parents at Christmas, merging families together. Some part of me always knew that the storyline I’d planned out so perfectly in my head would never fit. My friends sat there, perched on designer stools, chatting about their boyfriends, and I had never felt more out of place. A wolf in a crowd of perfect sheep.

Seeing that stranger, sat on a table in the café next to myself and my friends, I could suddenly never imagine life without her. Is love at first sight real? I pondered over the thought, trying my best not to look over at her. ‘Are you okay?’ My friend, Chrissy, pulled my attention back to real life. ‘Yea, I’m fine. My head’s in the clouds, that’s all.’ Chrissy smiled, and turned conversation back to her boyfriend, looking around the table to check she had everyone’s eyes on her. I could suddenly see her infatuation. I could suddenly understand that shy, tingly feeling that courses through your body when you think about the person you like. I was 21 years old, and this was the first time I was experiencing anything like it. I felt robbed of years of overwhelming emotion. The realisation that I may be into girls calmed me rather than scared me. But how could a person take back 21 years, claim an identity they knew nothing about, and begin an entirely new path?

The girl on the table next to us got up, and I inwardly prayed she wouldn’t leave the café. Instead she walked up to the counter to get a snack. The café was virtually empty, save a few university students typing away on computers, so the line was non-existent. She was tall. Taller than me, by at least a few inches. Her hair came down to the middle of her back, thick, blonde hair that I would have wanted when I was teenager. She looked like the kind of girl that caused a lot of heartbreaks. I found myself wishing it was mine she could be breaking right now, so I could at least have the opportunity to be in her life, even for a footnote of a second. I thought about rushing up to that counter right there, telling her how beautiful she was, and then inwardly cringed at myself. Declarations of love rarely went well for anyone, unless that person wanted to make a fool of themselves. I was never even the type to like romance, but I could see the pull of it as I watched her walk back to her table.

She glanced at me. One glance and my heart definitely stopped. It stopped. It must have at least skipped three beats, because for a second I couldn’t even think, let alone make my body do its normal thing of keeping me alive. Those big blue eyes on mine for even a second reduced me to a pathetic love song by the latest awful artist in the charts.

‘Okay, something is definitely up with you.’ Pip and Chrissy were staring at me, and then all eyes of the table were on me. Tilly raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m fine,’ I said, attempting to roll my eyes, still grasping for control over my body. ‘Seriously,’ Tilly lowered her voice; ‘you’ve been looking at that girl on the table next to us for the entire time we’ve been here. Do you know her, or something?’ Of course, the instant assumption was that if I am looking at a girl I clearly must know her. ‘I don’t, I—’

‘Right, so what’s going on then?’

‘Nothing!’

I wished they would stop asking me questions. Lowering their voices did nothing in a café so quiet; I was certain the girl next to us could hear every word. She was buried in a book now, sipping her coffee, the croissant she’d bought on the table, untouched.

Unfortunately, I had captured their attention. I was never one for lying, and they could tell by the rising red that was making its way up my face that I wasn’t being honest. They would sit here and wait all day if they had to. That’s the thing about best friends. They know your every move and thought, often before even you do. But this shade was a different kind of red to ones they’d seen before, and it was not one ever seen on me. That blush that accompanies a new found love interest was one that had only touched my friends’ faces before. Strange, how such a small moment in a life, a minor catch up among friends, changes a life’s course forever.

I had been with these girls forever, from sleepovers to first dates, to first break ups, and perhaps even last ones, for some of them. There had never been anything that had gone unshared between us, save the looming secret I had come to the sudden realisation about. Chrissy’s short black bob, her red lipstick, Pip’s extravagant outfits, Tilly’s beautiful jewellery; they all fit into the same box, feminine women who’d grown beautifully into themselves. By contrast, I was still awkward in my baggy ‘mom’ jeans, a baggy band t-shirt. I refused to age into the woman that society pushed for. I wondered now, though, whether that refusal to grow was coming from a path of denial. I had been denying my identity for so long I was lost inside it. Imagine! The path to self-acceptance, coming from a woman- a stranger- in a coffee shop.

I stole another look at the woman next to us. She was reading The Age of Innocence. I almost laughed at the title’s reference to my own sudden loss of an innocence. I found all those fantasies I’d had for my life do a full 180. My story was rewriting itself in an instant, perceptions changed as quickly as those of Newland Archer’s. A blonde vision of the future, sitting just less than two feet from me. My friends were still looking expectantly at me, waiting for me to divulge some sort of news, perhaps thinking I was lost in thought about a new boyfriend, or something.

I looked them each in the eye. Pip nodded at me expectantly, willing me to speak. This was an unexpected twist on the path my life was meant to take, and I had never gone so quiet at a catch up before. I had 21 years under my belt, yet the chapter of an entirely new book was starting. I could feel the words coming out. Years of desperate suppression of myself had made this very moment all the more forceful. I took one last look at the girl on the table next to me.

‘I’m gay.’

I said it loud, and found that I didn’t care. An unexpected weight fell off my shoulders. The girl on the table next to me lifted her head out of the book, and smiled, directly at me. Somehow, this beautiful stranger, some type of lesbian cupid, had pushed me out of the closet, head first, blushing; breathing honest air.