She smiles at me, she squeezes my hand and whispers sweet words in my hear. This is how I could die, I guess.
Three years before.
That day had been hell for Callie. She had been stuck at the university for hours, she didn't even have a chance to grab some lunch, so she was tired and starving. But she got to the moment when she could go out of there, catch her train and go home, where her mother surely had prepared an excellent dinner. On her way out of the building she spotted the blonde that had been in her thoughts for almost two years. She was apparently on her way out as well, and she was laughing at something her friends were saying. Oh my god, that laugh. She was almost running down the stairs, but for a second she thought that the blonde was looking at her. And she was.
"Hey Callie!", she said with a happy voice.
"Hey!", answered Callie, wondering why exactly the blonde was greeting her now, after they spent almost all the day in classes together. Her friends kept walking down the stairs, while the blonde stopped. They were now facing each other.
"I was wondering…", the blonde kept talking, "you… uh…"
Well, she was sure as hell uncomfortable.
"I what?", asked Callie, trying to help her say what she wanted to say. She had a train to catch and she didn't want to miss it. But she didn't want to miss a chat with the blonde either.
"You… I promised I would take you out for a coffee sometime… you remember when I asked you to send me your notes… you remember, right? When I was abroad and I missed classes? So I asked you if you could send me pictures so I could catch up with what you were doing here?"
Of course she remembered, she could have just stopped her, but she found her rambling kind of cute.
"Yes, sure, I remember", Callie answered, when the blonde seemed to have finished her sentence.
"Okay, so I wanted to tell you that whenever you are in town and you have some free time you can just text me, so we'll go out for coffee together…if you like the idea, of course", she started to seem more comfortable.
"Okay, Arizona, I'll just text you when I'm available so I can get my reward", Callie answered, smiling teasingly, "but you don't really need to buy me coffee, it's fine. If you remember, last year I promised you coffee in exchange of your notes more than once, and we never went out for it, so no problem".
Her smile faded slightly when she saw the blonde thinking about it, afraid that she might have really reconsidered the offer. She was just trying to be polite, but there was nothing she wished more than spending some time alone with that blonde girl.
"Oh, no!", Arizona answered after some time spent in silence, looking, or better staring, at the other girl, "I really want to pay my debt… besides, I would like to know everything about your trip to New York".
She seems sure of herself and of really wanting to offer Callie this coffee, her voice was steady and happy.
"Well, then okay. Now I have to go and catch my train. I'll text you… Bye!"
And she disappeared, without even letting the blonde answer. She ran to the train and all she could do was thinking about Arizona.
They were not friends; they had never been. Maybe you could have defined them acquaintances. They both attended the same university and therefore they had some courses together. Having had some mutual friends, above all Lexie, who was a good friend to both of them, they saw each other outside the university a couple of times, but since Lexie dropped the courses and decided to go teaching ice-skating instead, they didn't hang out anymore. However, she found herself thinking about the blonde more than she would like to admit. She never had a relationship with a woman and for what she knew, neither had Arizona. So she wasn't quite sure about the nature of her feelings towards the other girl, but what she knew, was that she wanted to get to know her better, and now she really had a chance to. She only had to send her a text and set up a date.
Whoa, what? A date? Hopefully.
Callie was barely able to catch the train, so slightly out of breath she flopped down in the first empty seat she found and she almost fell asleep listening to a song with her headphones.
45 minutes later the train reached her station, so she got off and walked the short route to her house. Her mum got dinner already on the table, but she wasn't hungry anymore. All she wanted to do was to get a certain blonde, blue-eyed girl that just happened to have asked her out, out of her mind.
"Hey mum. Sorry, save my dinner for later, I want to go to the gym first", she said, apologetically. There was no way her mother would deny her something. She was the only daughter to her parents, so she could define herself spoiled.
"It's okay baby girl, I guess dad and I are waiting for you then. Enjoy your workout".
Callie grabbed her gym bag and stormed out of the door. The hour and a half at the gym helped easing some of the tension in her body, but no way of removing the blonde from her mind.
Guess I'll have to text her tomorrow, I can't wait any longer if it means thinking about her all the time, she said to herself.
Back home, she realized that her parents really waited for her to eat dinner, so she decided to join them even though she would have rather gone straight to bed. Her head was throbbing and she didn't know what was that all about. She had been feeling like that about the blonde for almost two years, but she was always able to keep her in a corner of her mind in some way. But now she asked her out, even though it was only some sort of a payback. It could have led to something; it was a chance. And when Callie knew something was her only chance, she always screwed it up. So she didn't sleep that night, like at all. Next day, she decided to text the blonde while she was on the train.
'Hey Arizona, today I'm in town and I'm free from 1 to 3 p.m. I need to grab lunch first, but then I'm available for our coffee date. Let me know.'
She sent the text before she had the chance to delete the word 'date'. Now she got high hopes and kept bouncing her knee while waiting for an answer. She almost didn't notice her best friend Maggie sitting next to her when the train got to the first station after hers.
"Hey you, what are you thinking about?", Maggie asked, concerned by the unease surrounding Callie.
"It's nothing. I didn't sleep last night so I'm kind of sleepy", she answered avoiding the knowing gaze of her friend. They spent almost all the rest of the travel in silence. Next time she checked her phone, there was a notification. It was a text from her.
'Well, then I guess the coffee becomes lunch. Meet me in the main lobby of our building at 1 and then we decide together where to. Have a good morning :)'
Well, this is indeed a good morning. She started smiling at her phone and her friend, in spite noticing the shift in her mood, didn't comment.
The two lessons of her morning seemed to drag on forever and when 1 came around, Callie wasn't breathing anymore. Fuck, she had to leave Maggie by herself. They had all their lessons together, so they usually spent all their day together, lunch and all.
"Hey, Maggie…", she started, rambling already. "Today I'm not having lunch with you because…uh…I'm going out…well, we are only grabbing some lunch because she thinks she owes me…uh…you know…"
"Wait, who?", Maggie asked, confused by her friend's rambling.
"Arizona…Robbins…, you know her, don't you?"
"Oh, yeah, of course I do… Why does she owe you?"
"Uh…I…I sent her pictures of my notes of Professor Webber's course. She wants to buy me lunch in return. I would ask you to go with us but…since she is buying… I don't think it's nice to bring you too, you know…no offence, but..."
"Stop, Callie!", Maggie snapped, quite annoyed by all that rambling, placing a hand on her friend's forearm, "it's okay, I get it…go!"
"Yeah, it's late, I should go…see you later!"
And with that she was already stumbling down the stairs. Actually she was happy to be five minutes late to their appointment, just to make her wait a little. Hell, she waited for two years. She has had the chance to go out with her, she herself had promised Arizona to offer her coffee more than once the year before, but in the end she never had the guts to actually ask her out. It always looked like a pleading to her, and she really wasn't the type of girl who pleaded, let alone another girl for a stupid payback.
But there she was.
The main lobby was crowded as hell, but she spotted the blonde head in a second. She walked, legs shaking, towards her.
"Hey, here you are!", the blonde greeted her, "I thought you stood me up", she said teasingly.
"Well, I'm starving, I would have never said no to lunch", Callie teased back, in spite of her trembling voice. There was something about Arizona that made her want to kiss her so badly. And make love to her for the rest of their lives.
"You're funny, Callie! Let's go. I have a place in mind where we could go eat pizza…unless you hate the idea and you can just propose something else…", she asked, kind of rambling.
"No, yes, pizza is fine. Let's go out of here!"
The short walk to the place where Arizona had planned to have lunch was almost quiet, as if both of them were not at ease. Callie started wondering if maybe the other girl had some strange feelings for her too. But when they had their pizzas in front of them the conversation became easier. They talked about their respective experiences abroad and about university in general and the upcoming finals. The conversation was going smoothly, but Callie decided that she wasn't going to waist her chance with the blonde, so she shifted a little bit the topic of their conversation, feeling a little bit uncomfortable for the first time since they sat down.
"So…you were able to catch up to Webber's course thanks to my notes, weren't you?", she asked, starting from a simple question.
"Yeah, kind of… I mean, your notes were like awesome, but you know that his exam is evil. So I'll never feel ready enough for it", Arizona answered, still enjoying the conversation.
"Yeah, I know…that course sucks. But maybe if you want we can study together...", feeling too bold all of a sudden, Callie retreated slightly, but probably only because she missed the joy on Arizona's face, "I mean…with your friends and my friends too…"
"Could be a good idea. We could unite to confront the enemy. Sounds good to me".
"Yeah…". Not wanting the conversation to end right there, Callie decided that she absolutely had to be bold, for once, and kept talking. "Besides, I would really like to spend some more time with you… I mean, we haven't seen each other a lot lately, not since Lexie left. So maybe I can buy you dinner, say this weekend, so I can offer you something in return for this amazing lunch and we can set up for this study group".
If Arizona was surprised by the proposal, or was not flattered to be asked out again by the brunette, she didn't show. And Callie took it as a good sign.
"Yeah, I would really like to. I mean, no student who lives by themselves would ever say no to dinner. Just like you would never have said no to lunch today".
They both giggled, leaving the restaurant and going back to the university. They arranged for their dinner on Saturday night, in Callie's city, not far from Seattle.