Today was Thursday. Thursday meant she had Literature 1 with Elsa. It was a Tuesday/Thursday class and despite the hot chocolate incident yesterday she was more excited than usual to sit behind the quiet blond. She would take her aside after class and apologize, and invite her to morning coffee, orchestrate a meeting between the two.
Good plan, Anna.
Except she was running late. It was an early class and she had overslept, smacking the snooze button one too many times this morning, once out of bed she had hurriedly yanked on a pair of jeans, pulled on a pastel green long sleeved shirt, and over that hurriedly stuffed herself into a coat and nearly choked as she wrapped a scarf around her neck, forgetting her gloves completely. She had barely remembered to grab her backpack and keys as she ran out the door. No time for coffee.
No more late nights playing video games with an 8 am class the next day. Which was a total lie to herself and she knew it.
Barging into the room, a couple of heads turned as she clomped up the steps to her seat since the seats were stacked in the lecture room. Elsa was one of the people watching her, but turned her attention back towards the professor as Anna came closer, to her disappointment, she wanted to at least say hi. Then again, they were still practically strangers. All Anna really knew was her name, her major, that she drank tea, and that she owned at least one bra of the blue variety.
Which she shouldn't be thinking about.
Settling into the seat and attempting to pull out her notebook and her copy of Hans Christian Anderson's Best-Loved Fairytales with as minimal noise as possible, she turned to the passage the class was currently analyzing. In her opinion it was a weird selection. She hadn't though her teacher would want them to spend time evaluating the morality of children's stories.
Thirty minutes in, her boredom level began to reach its limits. She was so far in the back that her professor's soft voice, a plump middle-aged woman named Gerda could barely be heard (she didn't know the woman's last name, as she hadn't heard it).
Anna looked down at Elsa, who must have excellent hearing because she was typing away notes at a rapid pace on her laptop. Studiously multitasking her attention between the professor, her laptop, and her book. Anna found herself smiling as she looked down on the elder woman, noticing that her hair was still tightly wrapped in an intricate bun just above her neck, her very pretty, slender neck…
Anna swallowed, her throat dry, and looked back at her own notes. Realizing she had fallen far behind, she began madly scribbling down the snippets of speech she caught as Gerda spoke, a good portion of the lecture lost to her. Trying to push down the funny thought of what it would be like to press her lips against Elsa's neck and replace them with the words in her notes like "symbolism" and "foreshadowing."
"Elsa!" she piped up as the woman slipped her computer into her bag and began to walk away, she turned her gaze at Anna with an expression of confused and sleight shock, like she hadn't realized the other girl would remember her name.
"Yes?" she asked, watching with a moderate amount of disapproval as Anna hurriedly scooped up her papers book, throwing it into her backpack, adding to the compiled mess she would eventually have to sort out.
"Hey yeah, I don't know if you remember me, I'm the one who-"
Elsa gave a little nod, lips pulling back just a tad as though she were trying to repress a smile, "I remember you."
Anna smiled sheepishly. Duh, who wouldn't remember the person who dumped a hot cup of chocolate down their front?
"I…never caught your name."
Perking up, Anna extended her hand, "It's Anna! Anna Sommer."
Elsa nodded, glanced at her extended hand, but didn't take it, "Elsa Neige."
Even her name is classy.
Feeling a bit ridiculous with her limb still hanging in the air, she retracted it and wiggled her phone out of her back pocket, checking the time, "Well," she said looking back up at Elsa, "do you have time before your next class for me to buy you that coffee?"
She hesitated before answering. Biting her lip, weighing the pros and cons of accepting the offer. Anna's eyes stayed there on her lips. Her stomach felt weirdly tight again.
"I do." Elsa replied, finally.
"Good!" she tore her gaze from Elsa's lips and looked back down on her phone, sending a quick message to Kristoff. Grinning Anna stuffed her phone back in her pocket and wrapped her arms around one of Elsa's, who gasped and took on a similar appearance to that of a frightened kitten as Anna pulled the older woman towards the door.
This was a mistake.
Elsa sat with her back to the wall, trapped on the opposite side of the table from the peeved looking man who had been with Anna yesterday in the café. The perky strawberry blonde herself nearly skipping to their table as she set down two cups of coffee, one in front of herself and the other in front of Elsa, settling down next to Kristoff and directing her freckled cheeks and pretty sky blue eyes towards Elsa.
"Sorry I guess I should have asked what kind of coffee you like first? I just got you what I like, it's a mocha, if you don't like it I can get a different one. Hell, I don't even know if you like coffee. Wow that was dumb."
Elsa shook her head, "It's fine. I like chocolate."
Honestly she preferred tea to coffee, but couldn't complain with Anna's beverage selection. Besides, chocolate was her secret weakness.
What Anna hadn't told her when she had agreed to coffee was that she was inviting her friend. Spending time with another person outside of schoolwork was one thing, but two was company. Where she would have to sit and talk about something anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour. Elsa didn't have another class until an hour and a half from now. She could make up an excuse to leave, but then again she was an awful liar. Her social anxiety was trying. She had thought maybe a tiny little step outside her comfort zone would be bearable, but it looks like she had mistaken a tippy toe for a leap.
She stared at her lap, twisting a napkin between her hands and ripping it into little white flecks, trying to keep her poker face up. She had nearly mastered that at least. Kept up an icy appearance to keep people at bay.
"Sooooo," Anna started, breaking the awkward silence that enveloped them like a thick fog as she looked from Elsa to Kristoff. Neither of the two blonds looked at the other. Kristoff was bent forward, an elbow on the table, chin rested in his hand as he stared out the café window, a look of annoyance painting his features.
"So Elsa this is Kristoff." she slapped a hand on Kristoff's back, hard enough to snap him out of his melancholy and force him into the current situation.
"And Kristoff this is Elsa." She nodded her head towards the upperclassman.
"How do you do." Elsa said politely, her emotions in check and reserved.
Something had attracted her to Anna, urged her to agree to the girl's invitation, contrary to her usual social avoidance. There was warmth in her smile, in her eyes, in her voice, that couldn't be ignored. It shifted something in her, made her want to get to know the girl. She had seen the freshman in the café before, had taken secret peeks at her as she chatted animatedly with her gruff male counterpart. Sometimes she overheard the two and found herself smiling over whatever silly joke or story Anna had been telling. And besides that she was damn attractive. Elsa tried not to think about why that mattered or what it meant.
But this Kristoff. She had zero interest in getting to know. It wasn't that she had anything against him, but spending time with two new people at once, one of them obviously lacking interest in anything to do with her, put her far outside the county line of her comfort zone.
Anna frowned.
"I think you and Kristoff should date." She declared.
"WHAT?!" Elsa and Kristoff said simultaneously, Elsa stiffening and Kristoff throwing his hands up in the air.
At least they were on the same page about this subject.
Anna shrugged, "I think it would work, you guys should try it!"
"I don't even know her, Anna! I can't date someone I've just met!" Kristoff said, throwing out his hand in Elsa's direction to reference who 'her' was.
"And I don't date." Elsa said, her response more reserved than her fellow blond.
"Well then we should all hang out then!" Anna said as if it were an obvious solution to the problem.
Kristoff stood, "Anna, I'm sorry but no."
"But K-"
"No, Anna. I've let you take it too far; I thought you were just kidding. I really don't want to date this lady." He turned to Elsa, "No offense." Then back to Anna, "I have a class in twenty minutes, I'll see you later." He stormed out of the café, slamming the door behind him, causing the little bell overhead to near explode as it overexerted its ringing abilities.
Bewildered, Anna turned to Elsa, obviously as surprised as she was over the man's overreaction, "I'm sorry." She looked like she was on the edge of tears. "I guess I'll let you get back to your life." She started to get up.
Elsa reached a hand out to take hold of Anna's wrist, but withdrew it at the last second.
I never touch people. Why do I want to comfort her?
"Anna." She said softly.
The younger paused.
"Maybe…maybe we can still…hang out sometime."
What the hell? Why are you saying that? What are you doing? She would never want to be your friend. She's sweet and friendly, no one like that would want to hang out with you.
Anna sat back down, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffing, "You mean it?"
Taking hold of her coffee cup, Elsa gave a tiny nod, "Yes."
They spent nearly an hour longer in the café together, Elsa's lack of verbal output was made up for by Anna, whose words tumbled from her mouth easily. Sometimes she would stop and apologize for "blabbing", but Elsa found herself leaning back and smiling, laughing at the silliness, her hand covering her mouth to try to restrain the giggling.
In only an hour Elsa already knew Anna's favorite color was green, her favorite food was sandwiches, where she went to high school, when she lost her first tooth, that she broke her arm from falling out of a tree that she had climbed when she was nine, that she liked horse riding, and that her favorite season was summer.
"Do you like the summer?" she asked, pausing in her ramble to take a sip of her coffee.
Elsa shook her head, "Not particularly. I prefer cold weather."
Once both of their beverages had been finished off, they got up and readied themselves for departure.
"I'm sorry to have dashed your expectations." Elsa said as they were walking out of the café.
"Huh?" she stared at Elsa, confused.
"About dating your friend." Elsa clarified.
Anna shrugged, "Oh well, at least I got to actually talk to you. And hey, no spills needed this time!" she grinned.
Elsa blinked in disbelief.
She can't possibly like me. Even if she does now, there would be no way if she got to know me…
Anna went in for a hug, giving Elsa a squeeze, but quickly backed off after the woman went rigid in her embrace.
The blonde pushed away the thought that she had felt Anna's breasts against her own. That was inappropriate, disgusting.
Checking her phone again, Anna's expression altered from chipper to frazzled in a second, "Shit, I'm going to be late for class! I'll see you later!" and just like that she was running off.
Elsa wrapped her arms around herself, trying to retain some of the warmth from Anna's hug. It almost felt like she had a friend.