Gonna Steal Your Heart Away

“She was there?!!” Claude practically yelled at Brayden, who nodded in confirmation, when they were sitting on the couch in their living room. There was a movie playing on the TV in front of them, but Claude completely lost interest when Brayden dropped a bombshell like that. “What did she say? What did you say?”

“Will you chill out, nothing happened,” Brayden stated with a roll of his eyes at his roommate’s want to gossip. After practice, Brayden had driven out to the front of the building to meet and sign autographs for the fans that waited out there. The girl that had distracted him and caused him to crash into the boards, bruising his ego, had been one of the fans that was there to get some players’ signatures. “She said hi, I signed a hat for her, she thanked me and walked away. End of story.”

“I know that’s not the end of the story. Quit being all secretive!”

A blush had made itself obviously evident on Brayden’s face and had given away that there was part of the story that he was leaving out. With a wave of his hand, hoping that it would make Claude drop the subject, Brayden turned his attention back to the movie playing. Almost instantly, Claude leaned forward on the couch to grab the remote off the coffee table, turned the TV off and tossed the remote to the other side of the room so Brayden could not snatch it away and turn the power on again.

“She made fun of me, alright,” Brayden huffed out as he pushed himself off the couch and made his way into the kitchen in search of something to eat. “She asked how it felt to be on the ice again and smirked. She smirked at me.” After grabbing a bag of pretzels off the counter, Brayden returned to his spot on the couch next to a rather hysterical Claude. When his roommate finally started to calm down his laughter, he continued. “I got one chance to talk to her, dude, and I screwed it up. I’m not gonna get another chance.”

“You don’t know that,” Claude commented with the intensions of sounding comforting and encouraging, but it just came out with a laugh in a joking tone.

Brayden ended up just pushing his friend off the couch when his laughing continued. All he could think to himself was, “Fate doesn’t give you second chances.”

*~*~*~*~*

She was working the last shift of the night at a small, family owned diner in the suburbs directly outside of Philly. Her family didn’t own it. It was owned by her roommate’s – and best friend since their first day at college – family, but they gave her a job because after two years of the girls being practically sisters, her roommate’s family considered her family.

It was about twenty minutes from closing time and she had let her roommate, the only other person working that night, go back to their dorm room on campus early because she had a paper to write before class in the morning. Being a dreary, rainy Sunday night, the diner hadn’t seen customers for almost a half hour and the girl had already started to clean up and close for the night. Of course, Sunday was the night that the café got completely washed down, including the job of mopping up the floors. The two girls usually made a game out of it to make the chore less excruciating, but with only one of them around it was not enjoyable on any level.

After the mopping was done, the girl considered putting up the “caution: wet floor” sign because she had done a rather sloppy job, just wanting to get it over with, so the ground was more slippery than it should have been. She decided against it, assuming that she was going to be alone for the rest of the night.

She was wrong.

While scrubbing down the counter top, with her back to the door, she heard the bell signaling entrance echo through the quiet diner and panic quickly took over her.

“Careful!” she called out and spun around just in time to see the boy walking through the door swiftly fall to ground as his feet slid out from under him. Once she got a good look at the figure on the floor, the concerned look on her face turned into one of disbelief accompanied by a smirk. “If I didn’t know any better, I would think you enjoy spending time on your ass.”

Regret instantly filled the girl’s mind once the words spilled out of her mouth. She was always one to speak way before her brain had a chance to catch up, but she never made an effort to change her ways. The smirk remained on her face to keep her embarrassment from shining through. Thankfully for her, a smile appeared on the boy’s face to show her that she had not offended him.

“Mind helping me up, quippy?” he questioned with a laugh, poking fun at her witty remark. She walked over to him and carefully helped him to his feet, hoping not to lose her balance and fall to the floor herself.

“What can I get you?” she asked as they both made their way to the counter; he took a seat on one of the stools and she moved to the other side to serve him.

“Just a coffee, please.”

“At nearly 10’o’clock at night? You plan on never sleeping?” She was not really sure where these words were coming from. Sometimes she hated that he mouth ran a million miles faster than her brain. It made her talk to strangers in a casual way that she never should. Who did she think she was talking to him as sassy as she was?

“This a habit of yours? Verbally harassing your customers?” he questioned with a smirk of his own dancing on his face. She let out a small chuckle before turning to get him his coffee. “Actually, make it a hot chocolate. I’ve had a rough day and sleep will hopefully make it better.”

“A rough day of falling?” she jokingly replied and handed him his cup of hot chocolate. She then poured herself a cup of hot chocolate as well and leaned against the counter while taking a sip. The boy simply laughed and nodded in response to her question. A surprisingly comfortable silence filled the diner while the two drank from their cups.

“I’m Brayden,” he stated, breaking their silence.

“I know who you are,” she returned, moving her eyes to him only to find him looking sheepishly down at his cup with a blush materializing on his face. She smiled to herself at his reaction. “I’m Olivia.”