The Worst He Can Do is Say No by ParisGreen

Every time she looked at him, she felt as if she was whisked away to dreamland. The way his dark hair curtained his eyes, the cool and collected expression he wore, the way he seemed to glide through the café as he carried his drink to his seat. Maybe it was the way he wore his jeans just ever so slightly tighter than the other guys. It was all this and infinitely more details that enraptured her.

She scrawled into countless pages torn from notebooks how she’d express herself to him: enthralled, enamored, mystified. She mused on countless pet names and honors, calling him her prince in denim, her knight in waiting, before crumpling the page and condemning it to her wastebasket.

But today was different. Today was the day she’d let him know how she really felt. She’d spent hours rehearsing in front of the bathroom mirror and days of writing and many more crumpled up pages just to find the right words. Sure, he may not know her name yet, but she could cross that bridge when she came to it.

Her stomach felt like it was full of a million, billion butterflies, but she tried to assure herself that’d be the worst of it. After all, the worst that can happen is he says no, right?

She clutched her notebook tight as he stood from his seat at the café. He had just tossed his napkin into the bin when she intercepted him at the door.

“H-hey!” She started, hugging her book of heartfelt feelings as if it’d keep all the anxious butterflies from exploding out of her, “I know you don’t know me, but I’ve… um i’ve been really, really wanting to let you know that I–“

Her sheepish voice and presence must have fallen beneath the boy’s notice, because he walked straight into her with his eyes on his phone, sending iced latte splashing onto both of them. The girl turned beet red,

“UH! UM! I- I- I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!,” he hadn’t even looked at her face, his eyes were still squarely on his ruined shirt and vans, “I didn’t mean- h-here, let me help!”

She grabbed a handful of napkins and pushed them against her crush’s milk and coffee laden shirt. She was in such a panic, it didn’t register that he was even swatting her away until his palm shoved into her shoulder.

“Tch, seriously?” He growled, his lip curled into a sneer. “ Are you fucking blind? Get out of the way!”

“N-no! Wait I lov-“ her haphazard confession was interrupted with another shove, this time sending all her half-soaked 2-ply napkins- and her notebook- to the floor. She bent down to pick them up, ready to take it and run off to find a hole to die in when she suddenly felt extremely lightheaded.

She stumbled and groaned but still reached for her notebook, terrified at the idea of fainting in the middle of the café. The moment she touched it, she noticed something was wrong. It was heavier than it should've been, which she would’ve assumed was from it being soaked with coffee if it wasn’t also bigger than before, twice as wide and tall, in fact.

“What happened to my book?” She stood, expecting to be looking eye-to-eye with the boy that she once hoped to ask out, but instead she found herself staring at his belt buckle. She looked backed down to make sure she wasn’t still on her knees. No. She was standing.

“What did you-“

“God! Are you deaf too?” The boy bellowed, his voice loud enough to make her wince.

His arm reached over her head to push open the door out of the café and he stepped forward before she had even a hope of getting out of the way. The crotch of those jeans she had longingly stared at so many times before slammed into her face, coarse blue fabric and soft intimates pressing flush against her mouth and nose with scents of sweat and detergent. On any other day, it might’ve made all the humiliation at least somewhat worth it before his leg knee barreled into her, sending her toppling over through the exit and onto the sidewalk.

That lightheaded feeling washed over her again and her vision blurred. A concussion? Her head didn’t hit the sidewalk and she was sure his groin couldn’t have hit her hard enough. No, it was something else, and as her vision cleared, that something else was looming over her like a skyscraper.

“Ughhhh, fucking idiot.” He rumbled. He looked at her as if an inch-tall girl at his feet was nothing new. An inconvenience more than anything.

The sound of the door to the cafe closing behind him was like the loudest thunder.

“Not even cute enough to keep. Complete waste of my time,” he spat.

The whole world trembled as his foot lifted from the ground. The girl was left in shadow as the dusty, peach-tone hexagonal treads of his vans eclipsed the sun.

His voice turned the air cold,

“Just fucking die.”

Her shriek of terror was abruptly and permanently cut short as his shoe slammed down on top of her. A cacophony of snaps and cracks followed as he twisted the ball of his foot with spiteful fervor, grinding away the last semblances of human life like a discarded cigarette.

Soon enough, the sound of his treads scraping against the rough concrete replaced that of bones now completely pulped. He lifted his shoe to confirm there was truly nothing left of her but a dark red stain among half a dozen other faded marks.

“At least you were good for something for a few seconds.”

He sighed and put his foot back down, rubbing dust into the smear on the sidewalk where a girl used to be until it looked a little less obvious, then left to get on with the rest of his day.