The next morning felt different. Even the rain had taken a break, as if nature itself paused to let something gentle unfold. Eli arrived early at the bookstore again, this time rearranging the display table for no reason other than the need to fill the space with motion. Waiting quietly felt too still, too loud.
He hadn't seen her yet.
But he thought of her. Every page he touched reminded him of the way she had looked at his writing. Like it wasn't just paper and ink—but the story of someone trying hard not to fall apart in public.
He opened the journal again, pen trembling slightly.
> I never believed in fate. But now I think fate isn't a lightning strike.
It's a slow gaze across a bookstore.
It's the way her fingers brushed mine when I handed her coffee.
And the way my heart stayed behind when she walked out the door.
The bell rang.
He didn't look up right away. He knew it was her.
Alina stepped in with a smile that carried the entire warmth of the sunless day. Her presence lit the room without needing light. Her eyes found his and lingered.
"Morning," she said softly.
"Been waiting for the sky to bring you in again."
She laughed. Not loud, but real. The kind that felt like rain on dry soil.
"That was a poetic welcome," she teased.
He tilted his head. "Maybe I've been around too many stories."
"Or maybe," she said, walking toward the window seat, "you just have one inside you."
Their comfort grew like ivy—quiet, climbing, natural. Today, she didn't just sip coffee. She sat beside him. Close enough that their arms brushed when he turned the pages of the book she picked.
She chose a poetry collection. Read some aloud. Her voice was slow and uneven, like she was discovering it all for the first time.
"Do you believe poems can save people?" she asked.
Eli nodded. "Sometimes they're the only thing that does."
"I think that's why I like yours," she said, her eyes on the journal resting on the table.
He opened it for her. This time, he read.
> I saw the color of her soul today.
It wasn't blue or gray or gold.
It was the silence in her laughter.
The echo of someone trying to stay whole.
Her breath caught.
"Do you always write about people this way?"
"No," Eli replied, "only once."
She didn't look away.
"I used to think I was hard to read," she said.
"You are. But I don't mind turning pages."
Alina bit her lip, and for a moment, Eli forgot the world outside the glass. He forgot the hours. The reason he first picked up a pen.
All he saw was her.
"Do you ever write about joy?" she asked.
"I used to think I couldn't," he admitted. "But then you walked in and I realized joy doesn't need loud declarations."
"What does it need then?"
"Just a reason to stay."
Alina stared at him, stunned into silence. Then—quietly, she smiled.
"I think I like bookstores even more now."
They sat in stillness again, but not the same as before. Now it hummed. Warm. Close. Like the chapter of a book you want to re-read.
And as she reached for a book, her fingers brushed his again.
Neither moved away.
He wrote that night:
> She reads poems like she's opening wounds gently.
She sits beside me like she belongs there.
And when she laughs, I hear a language I never learned but always understood.