It was freezing cold outside today. I was sitting behind a table outside Safeway with another fellow member of my Girl Scout troop. To hide from the wind I wore my big green overcoat on top of my white blouse and jeans. My feet were tucked into a pair of pale pink flats. I fingered the small silver star necklace I always wore. My wavy brown hair fluttered at the ends as the wind attempted to play with it.
“Do you want to buy some Girl Scout cookies?" the other girl with me named Tess asked a woman leaving the store. I breathed into my hands to try and warm them up enough to be able to bend my fingers again. I had forgotten my gloves at home this morning. The woman shook her head and continued with her cart toward her car. We had been out here for so long and only sold one box of cookies, and even those were to a girl who worked at the store and felt bad seeing us sit out here for nothing.
“Did you see that?” Tess asked me as I rubbed my hands together near my lap where the table blocked some of the wind.
“What?” I asked her, not really hearing what her question had been.
“Never mind, just a sudden rush of people entering the store.” We sat out there, taking turns every time someone came out of the grocery store to ask if they wanted to buy some cookies. Nobody did.
“Whose turn was it?” I asked.
“Yours,” Tess replied, texting something on her phone. I had gotten the last four people, but I didn’t complain or ask her to put away her phone. At least one of us could have something interesting to do.
“Do you want to buy some Girl Scout cookies?” I asked as I heard the automatic doors open to my right.
A boy walked over. He looked slightly older than me with messy brown hair and teal eyes. Despite the cold weather, he had on no jacket over his blue and white horizontal striped shirt. He did, however, have on brown suspenders over it to help hold up his tight, bright red pants. The pants stopped just above his navy toms enough to show a small sliver of his ankles. If I stood up next to him he would be taller than me, and although he was thin his arms looked strong.
“Sure,” he said in a voice that was slightly on the higher range for a boy. He walked over to the table and looked at all the boxes we had lined up on the table in turn. “What is your favorite kind?” he asked me, glancing up to meet my eyes. It took me a second to get past his English accent.
“Thin mints,” I finally sputtered out.
“Then I’ll have a box of those,” he said, pulling out his wallet and handing me the money. I passed him the box over the table. While still standing right in front of me he opened the box, fit an entire cookie into his mouth, then tipped the open box over to offer me one.
“Thanks,” I said with a perplexed look on my face, reaching for a cookie and taking a bite.
“I’m Louis,” he said, grabbing another thin mint.
“I’m Amelia,” I offered in response.
“How long have you been sitting out here?” he asked.
“Too long,” I replied, which got an adorable laugh out of him that made me smile.
“Have you sold many cookies?” he asked, offering me another chance at the container. I took out three thin mints and nibbled on them as we talked.
“Actually, you just bought the second box.” He looked confused. I think I saw a small look of distress on his face before he hurried off back into Safeway. I returned to asking everyone who came out if they wanted to make a purchase, but just as before, nobody took me up on the offer.
Louis returned out the door a few minutes later with a curly haired boy at his side. The curly walked out, saying loudly in exaggerated frustration, “Boy Lou, I sure am hungry! If only there was something to eat near this grocery store. Oh look! Girl Scout cookies.” Nothing to eat in a grocery store. I smiled as the two of them as they walked over. I rolled my eyes at the goofy looks plastered on both of their faces. Curly walked up to Tess’s side of the table and was very indecisive about which type of cookies he wanted. While he decided, Louis and I chatted.
“So, you’re English?” I asked considering that, like him, his friend also had a similar, very thick accent.
“Yeah, we’re on our way to Seattle and we just stopped to replenish our snack stash. What about you?”
“I live in this wonderful weather,” I said sarcastically, gesturing to the stormy sky above.
“It’s not so bad,” Louis offered. He reached out and caught a piece of my hair that the wind was blowing around. Then he noticed my eighth note earrings. “You like music?”
“I love music. I’ve been in band for several years now.”
“Clarinet,” I replied. He let my hair fall back into place for the wind to pick up again sometime soon.
“I’m quite the musician myself,” he said with a big smile. After this he proceeded to give me his best impression of a crazy opera singer. I clapped and laughed while he took a bow. Curly left during this performance, and Tess was starting to give Louis that weird look that said ‘you are scaring away everyone from our table’ even though there was nobody there anyway. Louis looked around the parking lot quickly.
“Niall!” he yelled. I saw a blonde boy stop on his way into the parking lot, turn around, and start to walk back toward us. “Niall loves food,” Louis whispered to me before he got within earshot.
Niall, guessing already what Louis wanted him over here for, came over to see what cookies were for sale. Louis and I continued to talk the entire time he was choosing boxes to buy. As our talk progressed I found Louis to be very nice and extremely funny.
So, do you have any other friends that might want cookies?” I asked jokingly as Niall walked away with as many boxes as he could carry without dropping any.
“Actually, I have two more in the car right now,” he said with a wink. I burst out laughing. My laughter quickly turned into giggling shrieks as ice cold rain started to fall down onto our heads.
“The table Tess, help me get the table,” I called as we attempted to move the massive table even an inch, not to mention we had all our boxes of Girl Scout cookies. A few of Louis’ friends could see us getting drenched and came to our rescue.
The blonde one from before, Niall, was yelling in an Irish accent at a boy in a varsity jacket named Zayn, trying to get him to hurry up and come help. Curly was behind them with an umbrella, walking casually toward us with an extra jacket that I assumed was for Louis. The first of the boys to reach us though was tall and strong.
“You guys start with the boxes,” Louis told me. “Liam and I will get the table.” We had struggled immensely with a table that the two boys moved in seconds with ease. We ducked our heads down against the rain as we grabbed boxes along with Niall and Zayn and brought them closer to the building to where the table has been set down.
“Thanks,” I said through chattering teeth, rubbing my hands together in hopes that the friction would produce any amount of heat.
“My mom is coming to pick me up,” Tess said, closing her phone. “I’m waiting inside where it is warm.”
“I’ll stay out here and have my mom help me pack up the table when she gets here then,” I said. Louis put on the jacket curly had given him, now deemed Harry judging from the thank you he had told him. I took out my phone. I tried to type a text to my mom, but my fingers were shaking so bad that none of the words were legible.
“Here,” Louis said, taking the phone and sending the message for me.
“Thanks,” I said through chattering teeth.
“You can see your breath in this weather,” Harry said as all the boys headed back to the car, leaving Louis and I alone.
“Listen, I’ve got to get going. We need to get to Seattle or we’ll be late for our concert. We’re a band.”
“Oh, okay,” I said sadly.
“Uh, umm.” He looked at the car, then at my shivering form, then the car again. “Here,” he said, sliding off his jacket and draping it over my shoulders. “You look really cold, and I have to go. There should be gloves in the pockets. I’m so sorry Amelia. Bye!” He gave me a quick hug and ran to the car, his hair plastered down to his face almost instantly by the rain. I hugged the jacket tighter around me as I watched the black car drive away.
I reached into the pockets to grab the gloves. Instead, I came away with a crumpled piece of paper. It read:
Lou would want you to have his number. Wink wink.
There was a cell phone number scrolled at the bottom of the page. My hair dripped down onto the paper as I smiled from the inside out. I put the paper carefully back into my pocket and hugged the jacket around me. The rain was a constant thrum hitting the asphalt as I waited for my mom, beating like the sound of my fluttering, racing heartbeat.
