Of Our Souls

I watched as her hands trembled in nervousness while she held the cup of chocolate latte close to her lips. Her eyes darted from one side of the coffee shop to the other, never meeting my gaze. She was afraid, maybe even terrified and I understood why. I was a person that she barely knew and she thought that I was going to ask questions about what had happened back in her hotel room.

To say that I didn’t want to find out would have been the biggest lie, because I was dying for her to talk to me about it. I could see it in her eyes that she was conflicted and close to losing her posture. The nervous twitching of her fingers and her rigid posture made me want to wrap my arms around her and calm her down, but I knew that I would be crossing the line right then and there. I had noticed that she was awkward when she met new people or if she conversed with those she hadn’t known for a very long time. She was quick to get embarrassed, but she was also quick to come up with a come-back. But the two sides of her that left me speechless the most was when I first met her and she was genuinely embarrassed whilst the other side was when she performed on stage. The whole time on stage she always looked like she was a different person. It seemed like she could conquer the world with the way she radiated happiness and freedom. She was a person full of surprises.

“How do you cope with people who tell you that what you’re doing is hopeless?” She suddenly spoke up looking up at me with her green eyes that I have grown to like in such short time. They were so beautiful.

“I don’t listen to them.” My answer is simple and I find myself feeling empty when her green eyes turn to the ground. Her fingers stop twitching and her shoulders fall in defeat. I bring my own cup of coffee towards my lips to stop myself from making her look at me. It seems that I had developed a big crush on Greta and I felt so happy when she watched me. I couldn’t really explain why. It just brought joy to me when I knew that her eyes were on me and not on someone else.

“Do you want to talk about what’s occupying your mind?” I ask slowly and Greta stands up straighter and looks around. For a second it seems that she’s looking for someone, but then she turns to me and leans a bit closer. I find my heart speeding up at that action and when her eyes meet my own I stop breathing.

“My aunt and grandma think they know better what’s best for me and want to make me come back home.” I watch her baffled before I remember that I need to breathe and I take a deep intake of air as Greta leans back from me and looks around once again.

“What do you mean?” As Greta looks at me I see her eyes widen a bit and she gets nervous once again. She clutches the cup tightly in her hand and I see her eyes water a bit. I get so scared that maybe Greta has something bad going on in her life and no one else knows. That thought alone makes me want to grab her and keep her close.

“You don’t know the whole story, right…” I barely hear her mumble to herself as she looks at the ground. I clutch the cup in my hand and lean closer to Greta.

“What do I need to know?” I ask, but I’m pretty sure it sounds a bit too demanding, because Greta looks up at me surprised. I think that I can see some fear in her gaze, but it disappears quickly as if it was never there.

“My parents died in a car crash when I was 18,” her gaze is unwavering and I feel my mouth drop open in surprise. “and I had to live with my grandma and aunt for a while.” She takes a huge gulp of her coffee and I close my mouth to not look like an idiot. “Now, they believe that they can make decisions for me, because they’re older and have more experience in life.” She rolls her eyes, clearly in anger. “For God’s sake, I’m 22, not 13.” A pout settles on her lips and I smile at how cute she looks that moment, but then I remember what she had revealed just a few moments ago.

“I…” I try to speak, but I find myself at a loss of words when Greta looks at me with such a piercing gaze, I feel like everything that’s around us just disappears and I’m left standing only with her. “I’m so sorry to hear that.” As she starts shaking her head, I don’t stop myself from grabbing her shoulders and making her look at me. I want to hear more about everything that she has to say, but the fact that her eyes are full of tears and it seems that she’s going to burst out crying, makes me re-think everything. I can’t push her or make her tell me about her life, because I may scare her away.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.” Her voice breaks at the end of her sentence and she closes her eyes, letting only one tear slip out from her eye. I immediately grab her head and wipe away the tear. Then I put mine and her cups on the nearby table and then I envelope her in my arms.

“Do you want to talk it out?” I mutter out and Greta tenses up in my arms. The next few moments are so hard for me, because I’m debating whether Greta will trust me with her life story or not. I’m so surprised by this whole thing, because I would have never thought she’d had something so sad happen to her.

“What would you like to hear?” She leaves my arms and looks up at me. There are no more tears in her eyes and it almost seems like she hadn’t spilled a few tears just moments ago, but I know better and I’m glad that I had seen another side of her.

“Why do they want you to come back home?” I form my question slowly and Greta sighs lightly. Her cup’s back in her hand and she takes a sip quickly. With furrowed eyebrows she meets my gaze once again.

“Well, before we were serious as a band, I was studying psychology. I barely got through the first year, because I concentrated on music the most. I mean, I was 18 and from where I come it means that you’re a full-grown adult so after the first year of university, I dropped out because we got a serious proposal to come here to make music. My aunt and grandma were furious and they even tried to lock me up and not let me leave.” Greta chuckled sarcastically and I furrowed my brows. “I tried to tell them that music was the only thing that I wanted to do and that it helped me cope with life after the accident, but they didn’t listen. They only screamed at me that I was stupid and that music will never get me anywhere in life.” The smile on her face was very sad as she watched something in the distance that I felt my heart get a painful tug. “Now, look at where me and the rest of the guys are… We’re living our dream and if that means that we’re not getting anywhere in life, then I don’t know what is.” She looked at me and I smiled slightly.

“I’m sure that they’ll understand some day.” I told her and Greta shook her head.

“They’re full of themselves. They wanted to lock me up in the nut house so that I could cope with the death of my parents more easily.” M eyes widened at that and I exclaimed a loud ‘what?’ while Greta chuckled at my outburst.

“Yeah, but they couldn’t. Paul’s and Adam’s parents made sure to get me out of their house when they heard that they were thinking about that.” Greta smiled as she took a sip of her coffee. I felt myself get angry at what she had said.

“Why did they even think about that?” I tried to control myself from sounding angry, but I think Greta sensed that my anger wasn’t directed at her.

“Well, I was in the same car when my parents got into the car accident. When I woke up in the hospital, they told me that I was the only one who survived. I felt really guilty and got depressed that I started having nightmares which led to insomnia. I started writing lyrics a lot and I just closed up from the outside world. They got tired of such behavior and thought that the nut house would help me cope with everything.” She shrugged her shoulders and I looked away from her to glare at the wall.

“That’s just stupid.” I muttered as I tried to wrap my head around the whole story. I couldn’t even imagine how someone could so casually come up with such an idea.

“I’m just glad that the guys saved me.” I looked at Greta and saw her smiling as she watched something. Just the fact that she was smiling calmed me down and I smiled too.

“I’m glad too.” I muttered and Greta looked up at me. The smile stayed on her face and I felt heat start to crawl up my neck, but I didn’t look away. Now it was my turn to tell her about my mom…

“I know how you felt when you lost them…” I whispered and Greta immediately grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Maybe she had seen it in my eyes that it was hard for me to say that. “I lost my mom when I was 17.” I felt myself choke on my words and I felt really stupid. Greta had shared her story and I couldn’t.

“I know that it’s hard to talk about it, Austin.” I looked at Greta’s smiling face. “We don’t need to talk about it right now.” She squeezed my hand tightly and I nodded my head.

“I just wanted you to know that I know how it feels to lose someone and that you can talk to me whenever you want.” I told her, still feeling stupid for getting so emotional when I only spoke a few sentences.

“I will.” Her smile assured me that she would talk to me and I smiled right back. “Now, let’s go get that junk food. The guys will get suspicious if we don’t come back soon.” And this time it was Greta who held my hand as she led me out of the coffee shop towards the supermarket. And the whole time as we were walking I could only admire the fact that our hands fit perfectly together.