Everton Park

This was her last chance. It wasn’t too late. Her heart was still hers. She could turn back now: pretend she didn’t feel, didn’t hear, didn’t say anything. Pretence was her only defence, and she was intending on using it a lot.

The cup she held in her hand was quickly turning cold. She had gulped down her coffee in her nervousness, and was left with only a plain white porcelain cup, with a coffee stain which looked like a curved smile. Except, from her point of view, the smile looked more like a frown.

“Don’t fall in love with me,” he had told her, his hollowed eyes - devoid of any detectable emotion - reflecting her furrowed brows and pursed lips.

“I won’t,” she had replied fiercely, but her heart had already betrayed her, for it leapt when he leaned over, and gave her the tiniest flutter of a kiss on her cheek.

She could still feel it now, that impression that he had left behind. It seemed to stick to her skin, like it was there to constantly remind her that he might have felt something too. Had he?

The worst part was that she didn't mind.

The cafe was empty now. If not for the whirr of the coffee machine behind her, she would have thought she was truly alone.

She could still smell him - or was it the coffee that she remembered - a blend of bitter African Java Beans and sweet nicotine.

What was wrong with her? She wasn't usually this way. She recalled with great gusto the time she forced herself to forget about a guy and the way it had worked. She tried thinking of his bad points, but found that nothing came to mind.

He smokes, she thought, triumphant at last, remembering the pack of cigarettes she saw in his back pocket, obscured from her view. She didn't know what brand they were - cigarette boxes had always been a blend of red, white and green to her.

If he was trying to get her to feel something to add to his repertoire of women, he'd succeeded, though of course now that he was gone, he would never need to know. She couldn't stop thinking about what he had meant: who kisses a girl after telling the girl not to fall in love?

She remembered how his eyes crinkled as he pulled away. He had the slightest of a smile, like he was the only one in on an inside joke.

"See you around," he had told her with a cheeky grin.

She wished she didn't feel something tug at her heart as he disappeared into the streets outside, taking the hand he had placed on her with him. Eventually, one by one, the rest of the cafe vanished. She had lost her invisible audience.

But she was grateful for the silence. It helped her think, steered her back... It wasn't too late. It couldn't be.

She had to pretend she had felt nothing. If she pretended long enough, she'd eventually stop feeling. Her heart would slow down. Her brain would stop over-analysing. Her cheeks would stop their foolish blushing.

She would realise that she had been sitting in the same orange, yolk-coloured chair for what felt like an hour, staring at the multi-faceted glass which held his house blend. It now sat on the wooden shelf, waiting for someone else to make their mark on it.

Determined to try to make his mark on her disappear, she rubbed her cheek with a vengeance. What she wanted was just a simple, clear-cut answer, but he had none.

She wished he had an answer. That way, she would know whether to grab onto her last chance or to let herself fall.

There's that moment before; the limbo in between. There's her last chance. She grabbed it, because there was only one thing she could do. She stood, leaving the whirlwind of emotions back in that little cafe down by Everton Park.