The bookstore felt different that day—warmer somehow, like it had held onto her presence since she last stepped through its door. The air carried the scent of ink and pinewood, mixed with something softer, something that made Eli's chest tighten.
She returned in the afternoon, when the sky outside had shifted to a dusky blue. Light rain ticked softly against the windows.
Alina walked in wearing a dark wool coat, damp from the mist, her cheeks brushed with cold. She smiled when she saw him—just slightly—and Eli felt the world fall away like a page turned gently in his chest.
She wandered toward the shelf where they'd first spoken. He didn't move right away. He watched her. Watched the way her fingers paused on each book's spine like she was touching old friends. The way her lips pressed together when she read the titles.
He approached with quiet steps.
"I thought you might not come back," he said, his voice low, steady.
Alina turned. "I thought about not coming back."
Eli tilted his head. "Why?"
She met his gaze for a moment, and he was gone again—lost, unanchored in those eyes.
"Because it felt too peaceful," she replied. "And I wasn't sure I deserved that right now."
He stood beside her, not too close.
"I think people who say things like that... usually need peace the most."
She gave him a small, grateful smile. "You always talk like that?"
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe only when I talk to you."
There was a moment of stillness. The kind that isn't awkward but delicate, like glass you don't want to shatter.
Alina broke it gently. "Do you always read what people are too quiet to say?"
"Only when it's written in their silence," he replied.
She looked away for a moment, blinking. He saw it—noticed it all—but said nothing. Instead, he walked toward the counter.
"Stay awhile?" he offered.
She nodded.
They sat by the small reading corner near the foggy window. Her chair angled slightly toward his, the space between them full of things unsaid.
She held a mug of warm coffee he'd made without asking. No sugar, just like she liked it.
He watched her while she spoke—watched the way her voice softened when she talked about her mother's old records, about how she used to believe Chopin was crying through the piano.
"You ever write music?" he asked.
"No. But I write little things sometimes. Not really poems. Just… thoughts."
"I think thoughts make the best poems."
"Even the messy ones?"
"Especially the messy ones."
She laughed, resting her cheek on her palm. "You make it sound like being a mess is something beautiful."
"Maybe it is," he said. "Maybe beauty isn't about what stays together. Maybe it's about the way light breaks through the cracks."
Alina looked at him for a long time.
"No one's ever said things like that to me."
Eli offered a small smile. "No one's ever made me want to."
She looked down at the steam rising from her mug.
"I don't know if I'm ready for anyone to see me clearly," she whispered.
Eli's fingers brushed the edge of his own cup.
"I'm not trying to see you," he said gently. "I'm just... here. And maybe that's enough for now."
The rain deepened outside. Thunder rumbled faintly in the distance.
She leaned back, watching the drops race down the glass.
"I love this kind of weather," she said.
"Me too," Eli replied. "It makes silence feel... honest."
Alina turned her eyes toward him again. "You really do listen to everything, don't you?"
He said nothing. Just smiled. And his gaze held hers longer than it should have.
In his journal that night...
She talked and I forgot how to speak.
Not because her voice was loud, but because it was full.
Full of softness, and storms, and every page I didn't know I needed.
She didn't ask to be understood, but I heard her anyway.
And the way she looked out at the rain,
Like it had a language only she could read—
I wanted to be the sentence she never wanted to forget.
Before she left, she lingered by the door.
"Thank you, Eli," she said.
"For what?"
"For making silence feel less lonely."
He watched her walk into the mist, her figure fading with the soft patter of rain.
And he stood there, unmoving, for a long, long time.