The weather returned to overcast, casting the streets in a misty blue. The city buzzed like always, but within the quiet walls of the bookstore, the world moved slowly, like a song on repeat.
Eli arrived earlier than usual. He didn't admit to himself that he was hoping she'd come again. He simply told himself he liked the sound of books being arranged, the ritual of the coffee brewing, the space it gave his mind to wander.
But his mind always wandered to one place now.
To her.
To Alina.
> There's a rhythm to her presence,
Like a whisper between heartbeats.
A silence too beautiful to disturb.
He didn't look at the door when it opened. But his chest tightened just the same.
He felt her before he saw her.
She walked in without hesitation this time. No glances. No lingering at the window. She knew he'd be there. Somehow, he did too.
"Hey," she said, casual, like they hadn't left thoughts unspoken between the pages they shared last time.
"Hey," Eli replied, a soft smile in his voice.
She set her bag on the chair across from him and sat, folding her arms on the table. "I think I'm addicted to this place now."
"Same," he said, his eyes lifting slowly to meet hers. "Might be something in the coffee."
Alina grinned. "Or something in the company."
Their words fell easily now, as if they'd spoken like this for years. But it wasn't in what they said—it was how they looked at each other after. How Eli waited a beat longer when she glanced away. How Alina played with the edge of her sleeve when he stared too long.
Today, she wore a green cardigan, soft and oversized. Her hair was loosely tied, a few strands falling across her cheek. Eli watched one of them dance in the breeze from the ceiling fan.
He didn't say anything about it.
But he couldn't look away.
She picked up a book from the poetry shelf. "Want to read with me?"
He nodded.
They took turns—her voice melodic and unsure, his deep and steady. Some poems made them laugh, others made them pause. But one lingered. A piece about longing—about knowing someone too late and falling anyway.
Alina read the last line, then looked up slowly. "You ever feel like you meet someone... and it's already too late?"
Eli's heart stumbled.
"I think," he said gently, "some people arrive when we need them most, not when we expect them."
She stared at him, her expression unreadable. Then she looked away and said quietly, "You write like that."
He didn't ask what she meant.
He didn't need to.
> I watch her when she speaks—not because I don't know what she's saying,
but because her voice paints pictures on the walls of my mind.
And every blink feels like a missed frame of something I want to remember forever.
"I always feel like I'm too much or not enough," she admitted.
"You're the right amount of quiet and fire," he replied.
She blinked. "That's oddly specific."
"I notice things," he said with a shrug.
Her lips curled slightly. "Only things that matter, right?"
"Exactly."
They stayed like that—reading, laughing, teasing. She stole glances at him when he wasn't looking. Or maybe she thought he wasn't. But he saw every shift in her mood, every sigh, every sparkle of amusement in her eyes.
She told him she liked the scent of old paper. He said he liked rain.
She told him she used to draw, but never showed anyone. He told her he used to be scared of writing, but now he wasn't.
"Why now?" she asked.
Eli looked at her like the answer was obvious.
"Because now there's someone worth writing for."
She looked away, biting her lip. Then—almost as a reflex—reached across the table and fixed the collar of his sweater.
Their fingers brushed again.
This time, neither pretended it was nothing.
> She doesn't realize the small things she does—
Like fixing my collar or reading my silence—
Are the exact moments I fall.
Before she left that evening, she asked softly, "Will you be here tomorrow?"
"I don't know any other place I'd rather be."
She smiled, nodded, and walked out into the dusk.
Eli watched her from the glass. The city swallowed her into its slow hum. But the warmth she left behind stayed. Like her voice in his ears. Like her name across a page.
He wrote that night more than ever:
> We haven't touched hearts yet.
But I think she's already living in mine.
She doesn't know what she's doing to me,
And maybe that's the most dangerous kind of love.
> The kind that begins before either of you notice.