To Be Alone With You

It had been three days. I was beginning to think he wasn’t ever going to show up.

It was unlike me to feel anxious like this about a guy. I never cared more or less if any guy ever liked me or paid any attention to me. And yet every day as I sat in the library, my nose buried in my studies, I couldn’t keep my eyes from flicking up every time someone walked by, wondering if it was him. Hoping it was him, maybe, but certainly wondering.

That day, I sat at my usual table beneath the great wide window on the south side of the building. I had a thing for places with big windows – it made me not feel so caged up and claustrophobic. My hands firmly grasped the book I was very much so distracted from, Dostoyevsky’s Demons, as my gaze flicked across the page, only half absorbing every word. I could see someone approaching my table in my peripheral vision, but I resisted the urge to look up. At any moment, they were guaranteed to turn right into the historical fiction or left into the historical non-fiction. I convinced myself I couldn’t allow myself to search for that boy any longer.

Until a raspy “Hey” came from across the table, and I truly did search no longer. Startled, I looked up to see that obnoxious, arrogant, completely gorgeous John from three days prior. My heart skipped a beat and a fleeting annoyance with myself settled in. This guy was clearly an asshat. I didn’t want my heart to be skipping any beats for him. And yet I put up no protest when he pulled out the chair across from me and sat down.

“I thought for sure you forgot about me,” I hummed as I returned my gaze to my book, trying to feign disinterest.

“Josselyn,” he tutted. “You’re not supposed to call a girl back until three days after you’ve got her number. You didn’t give me your number – you gave me this. It’s only the rules.”

“I didn’t perceive you to be the kind of guy that follows the rules,” I replied coolly, glancing up at him. Complacency was written all over his face, complete with a smug smirk.

“Touché,” he responded, leaning forward on his elbows. His forearms looked strong, the muscles flexing in them as he played with the various charms on his keychain absentmindedly. “What are you reading?”

“Dostoyevsky.”

“Sounds foreign.”

“Russian,” I clarified, closing the book and pressing it to the table before sliding it over to him. “Don’t you read?”

John picked it up and turned it over in his large hands, eyes fluttering across the summary. “Not as much as I should,” he answered as he turned it back over again to examine the cover, the look of genuine interest on his face irresistibly endearing. “Never been in this library before. More of a writer myself.”

“What do you write?” I asked, my curiosity piqued. John appeared self-conscious for a moment, an emotion I’d yet to see him express. It was fleeting however, replaced by a casual smile as he ran a hand through his already unkempt hair.

“Music,” he responded as he slid the book back across the table to me. “I’m in a band. We kinda just formed a few weeks ago but I think we could be great.”

“Ah, a starving artist,” I teased, leaning forward on my elbows to match him. He laughed a hearty laugh, choppy and rasping like his voice. He rolled his head around on his neck and shoulders, a shameful stretch of sorts.

“Not quite yet,” he quipped, licking his thin, rose tinted lips. “How do you feel about going and getting something to eat with me? Like right now?”

“Like a date?”

“Do you think Dost…ovanov will mind if I steal you away for awhile?” he asked, running a hand through his hair. The corners of my mouth tugged up involuntarily as I exuded a chuckle, eyes drawn to him like a magnet.

“Dostoyevsky,” I corrected before tucking the book into my purse. “He would argue that free will is the crippling burden that plagues us all, but that it’s up to me.”

John looked at me inquisitively and I burst into laughter. “You’ll have to read The Brothers Karamazov. In fact, since I’m letting you take me out to eat, you can pay me back by reading a book by one of my favorite authors.”

“Letting me take you out to eat?” he repeated incredulously. “That’s pretty vain of you, don’t you think?”

“Still want to take me out?” I asked playfully, raising my eyebrows enquiringly.

John nodded his head and stood up from the table, his full lanky height coming into perfect view. His muscular arms peeked out from the sleeves of his heather grey v-neck and I struggled to suppress a squeak.

“Offer still stands if you want to come with.”

“Alright, fine then,” I replied, standing up and going to his side – he absolutely dwarfed me in comparison. “But you should know, I have pretty high standards.”

John flashed that increasingly iconic smirk, his green eyes glinting with laughter. “Well, Josselyn, I plan to impress.”



Every morning when I woke up, New York amazed me. Already at seven in the morning, the city was completely awake, never having truly gone to sleep the night before. I loved the way it breathed, the buildings and cars sighing out the carbon dioxide and methane, the polluted oxygen supply now familiar and less appalling than it was at the start.

At noon, on my lunch break, it still amazed me. The plethora of restaurants, coffee shops, and bars that lined the streets cried for me to come in and try their “world-famous-whatever.” The streets bled culture in all the colors you could imagine – Ethiopian, Thai, Brazilian, Greek; you name it, the city would look it up in its Rolodex and lead you there by hand, telling you the history of that part of town as you went.

Night was the time that New York amazed me the most, of course – that wouldn’t come as a surprise to those who knew me intimately. While most other cities fell into a lull of sleepy darkness, New York glowed with light, life, and dreams. I owed those bright lights and screaming colors absolutely everything. My dreams had come true in the city. But that morning in September was not one of the days where it particularly felt like it.

As I climbed the stairs of the small office building – comparatively small to the office buildings on Wall, at least – my boots felt like they were lined with lead. I had never dreaded going to work before, but then again I had never been forced to work under circumstances like those I was under then.

“Today’s the day,” the receptionist, my friend Charlotte, chirped at me as I came through the door. I sighed in defeat, approaching her desk and leaning against it wearily.

“Have you called him yet?” she asked in a lower, more hushed tone, concerned. I shook my head.
“He deserves a warning, Joss,” she groaned, pushing her white blonde hair back from her face. “This is even freaking you out. Just imagine how much it’s gonna freak him out.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I snapped tiredly as I rubbed my temples with my forefingers. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, too worried about how the next day would play out. It was the day of my biggest assignment yet, my first solo assignment with a high profile client.

Charlotte opened her mouth to speak again, but was interrupted by our boss, Rick, rounding the corner. He was a large man in the sense that he was tall and robust, with thick brown hair and a matching, very much so full beard.

“There’s my star girl!” he cheered, approaching me and clapping me on the back firmly. It jolted me suddenly, pushing my elbow into a cup of pens situated on Charlotte’s desk and spilling them everywhere. I was so flustered as I tried to collect the pens and replace them to their original spot, bowing my head to avoid eye contact. Rick was always overly friendly with me, in a way that I didn’t know if he was hitting on me or if it was just his personality. That morning, I was certainly not in the mood for any of his games.

“Are you ready?” he asked excitedly, running his hand down my arm to grasp my elbow in what I hoped was a reassuring gesture.

“I’m still not sure that I’m the right person for the job, Rick,” I protested, pulling my elbow back from him in a manner that he wouldn’t find offensive: slowly and carefully.

“Josselyn! We’ve talked about this. You’re the one with the best background experience with the clients. Think about what this project could do for your career!”

I chuckled half-heartedly, glancing to Charlotte – the one who understood my resistance to the project – who was trying her best to look supportive. “’Best’ maybe isn’t the right word,” I mumbled. “That’s in my past, a part of my past that I’m trying hard to leave behind.”

“You’d better go,” he spoke over me, checking the Rolex on his wrist. “You’re gonna be late.”

“I thought we were meeting here?” I questioned as I gathered myself, trying my best to appear professional. I could almost feel Charlotte laughing at me as I adjusted the bright mauve briefcase over my shoulder.

“I wanted them to feel more comfortable, so I thought it might be better for you to meet at your favorite place,” he answered. “They’re not from around here, so what better way to give them a taste of the city?”

“I see what you did there,” I grumbled, heading back toward the door. “There’s a cab waiting for me down stairs, right?”

“You got it,” he replied. Rick, always the predictable one. For being as disorganized as he was, he got things in order very quickly when it came down to the wire.

The cab ride to the restaurant was excruciating. The wait alone at the table set for six was even worse. I kept my eyes glued to the door, anxious and afraid for the moment when my mealtime company would finally join me. My heart pounded, every nerve on fire – the cores white hot and fanning out into red orange tongues, like the candle on the table in front of me. The waitress brought by a round of waters in preparation for the rest of the party and mine sat untouched, the surface quaking every time someone passed.

And finally, in the wide windows spanning the front of the building, appeared five young men, dressed casually and chattering amongst each other. My pulse blipped, and its source threatened to crawl up my esophagus and run down the street in sheer terror. One, with stringy hair down past his shoulders, approached the hostess and requested the location of our table. I felt so small in that seat on the booth that lined the wall, the anticipation building in my stomach as I watched them from afar.

And suddenly they were approaching me and I was standing up to greet them, though we were familiar from a different lifetime, one from long before. None of them had laid eyes on me yet, none of them knew it was me yet; my heart was pounding harder and faster until the one with shaggy brown hair turned to see me.

“Josselyn.”

It was like dominoes after that, the tallest one, the one with the long face and enormous eyes, snapped his head around to set his sights on me. The air was forced out of me, like someone had placed a vacuum on my mouth and sucked everything from my lungs. It was John. My John.

And as soon as I caught the green of his eyes, I was looking at the back of his head as he bolted out the door.