The café they arrived at after a short walk for was for good reason popular among the university students and nearby residents alike. Not only was it close by but also reasonably priced, with friendly service and of course a tasty menu. Amelia also quite liked the atmosphere. The decor had a nice vintage vibe to it. Not much plastic or even metal to be seen, but instead wooden tables and chairs, and furnishings that complimented them.
As they entered, she noticed Lily glancing around.
“First time here, right?” Amelia gestured at a free table, placed her small leather purse on the table and started to take off her trench coat.
“Yes. I don’t go to cafés or restaurants much.” That didn’t exactly surprise Amelia. Her friend also unwrapped the scarf from around her neck and slipped out from her big jacket, revealing a grey oversized shirt underneath. As they placed their removed clothing on the backs of their seats and sat down, Amelia mused that especially the jacket looked like it belonged to someone much bulkier, but at the same time it did look rather cute. Lily definitely seemed to have her own personal look going. Somehow that did slightly surprise her, as based on how she’d been as a child she would’ve thought that she put little value on such things. But perhaps that was a bit unfair to her friend, especially seeing as how just braiding that hair of hers probably took longer than Amelia’s entire morning beauty routine. As she thought that, she also made note that Lily didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup, another non-surprise. She was a light user herself.
“Well, sorry to drag you into one.” With a lopsided grin, she picked up the menu folder from the wooden holder at the middle of the table. Lily gave her a long look, but in the end didn’t say anything, and instead also picked up a menu. “Since you lured me in with tea before, I take it you like tea?” A nod was the only response. “In that case, you might want to try their apple cinnamon tea. It’s their cold season special.”
Amelia looked around and spotted a waitress sporting the establishment’s usual outfit, a black short-sleeved dress shirt with black knee-length skirt, accented by a brown duo of headscarf and waist apron. A frequent customer though she was, she didn’t recognize this particular waitress. She raised her hand to get the waitress’ attention, who then soon walked over with a warm smile on her face.
“Whit wull ye be huvin theday?” Even after having been back to Scotland for two years now, her time away had made the local dialect seem rather quaint, and here she was faced with a particularly thick accent. Her own accent was more American than anything now. Despite not being more than lightly accented, her original manner of speech from her childhood hadn’t exactly earned her any favourable reactions in the southern United States, so she’d tried to learn to hide it as soon as possible. Eventually it had become second nature. Now, even being back in Scotland, that hadn’t really changed. She also rarely seemed to come across such heavily accented speech since her return, but despite the less than fond memories of her time away, she couldn’t help but smile back at the waitress upon hearing her speak.
“I’ll have the apple cinnamon tea and the Danish apple pastry.” The waitress wrote it down on her notepad. “Oh, and the crème brûlée.” After a nod and another scribble, the waitress turned to Lily.
“N’ fur ye?”
“The apple cinnamon tea and two ham pastries.” Lily’s eyes didn’t leave the menu while speaking. In comparison to the waitress’ dialect, Amelia couldn’t but help notice again how plain and formal her friend’s manner of speech was. It had been the same when they were kids. Some of the other kinds had teased her about sounding like a robot. She figured that no matter what way you talk as a kid, if it wasn’t just like everyone else someone was bound to have a problem with it. Of all the things... but at least it was in the past now.
The waitress hurried off, and they put away the menus. As they waited, Amelia glanced around. She usually didn’t come here this early on weekdays and was slightly surprised there weren’t more than a handful of other customers since lunch time had just started. As a result, they didn’t have to wait for their order for long. The flavourful scent of the tea slightly preceded the waitress’ arrival.
“’Ere yer. Enjoy!” With a smile she departed again, and Amelia turned her attention to her sweets. As she reached for the crème brûlée, she noticed that her friend appeared a little restless.
“Something wrong?”
“A little tired.” She turned to look out the window. “Being in the city, especially here in Glasgow compared to Stirling does that to me.”
“I see. Or maybe it’s just my company that you find tiresome,” Amelia offered coolly, causing Lily to turn to look at her and frown.
“Why would you think…” Then she sighed. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Whatever could you possibly mean?” Amelia’s expression was exaggeratedly innocent, causing Lily to close her eyes and turn her head to the side. “Don’t be salty now. You didn’t even eat your pastries yet, after all.” Her friend’s eyes opened, but her frown deepened. She realized maybe she was being too inconsiderate by teasing her like this, especially given what she’d just thought about earlier. But she couldn’t entirely help herself as the continued. “Sorry – I guess that was not very sweet of me. I’ll work on fixing that.” She dug into the crème brûlée with her spoon.
The silence grew rather long as they ate, and Amelia started to feel uncomfortable herself. She was almost done eating, but Lily was still pecking away at her first pastry, as though not hungry.
“Hey, Lily?” She eventually broke the silence. Her friend glanced at her, but then looked away again. “Look, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” After a moment, Lily sighed.
“I never know what to do when people tease or make fun of me. Even if it is about something that is... not important at all.” She was slightly startled when Amelia leaned forward and laid a hand on top of hers and squeezed lightly.
“I guess you used to be like that back then, too. I can get carried away with that sort of thing sometimes. You can tell me to stop if that happens, okay?” Rather than say something more, Lily instead used her free hand to take a big bite out of her pastry and looked outside as she chewed. However, it seemed as though she wasn’t really seeing anything out there, as her eyes looked unfocused. But she hadn’t pulled away her other hand, so Amelia gave her another squeeze before pulling back and focusing on finishing the rest of her own pastry. Things had gone so smoothly the other day – well, at least in a sense – that the current situation felt unexpected despite many similar experiences when they were kids; seemingly frivolous things could cause Lily to go close up suddenly, or otherwise have an adverse reaction. But she supposed that her friend had warned her to that effect when they’d parted that evening.
Lily parked the car in her garage, then walked past a smattering of fitness equipment at the other end to get to the door leading to her living room. She turned to look back at the equipment – she’d been uncharacteristically neglecting her workouts for the past week. She closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh.
She felt like she’d messed things up, just as she’d feared. A punching bag hung from the ceiling nearby, and with a few quick steps she closed the distance and out of sheer frustration sent the bag swinging with a powerful left cross. A series of fast jabs and crosses followed. She almost ended it with a kick but thought better of it. Instead, she grabbed the bag to bring it to a halt and let out another sigh while pressing her forehead against the bag while trying to calm down with deep breaths.
She then made her way into and through the living room, into the hallway and through another door near the front door that led into her bedroom. There she threw herself on the bed before realizing that she hadn’t even taken her scarf, coat and shoes off yet. That was not at all like her normally meticulous self and spoke volumes about her agitation. She rolled over to her back and stared at the ceiling, exasperated.
Intellectually she knew what Amelia did hadn’t been any sort of deal at all, but as usual, the emotional side of her didn’t care to listen. And because it was with Amelia rather than some random person, it was infinitely worse. She had faith that Amelia wouldn’t easily hold such occurrences against her, but she still felt terrible about it. She couldn’t help but wonder why she could never manage to be and act like a normal person.
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