Rain tapped against the glass windows of the bookstore that evening, soft like fingertips brushing skin. Eli had been at the counter, sleeves rolled, sorting through the freshly arrived books—titles he'd memorized not for their stories, but for how her fingers once brushed their spines while browsing. He hadn't seen her in three days. That wasn't a long time. Not really. But something in him shifted every hour he didn't.
She always came around just after lunch. She never said much. He offered her coffee—black with a touch of almond milk—and she would take it with a small nod, sometimes a polite thank you. She never stayed long, but long enough for him to remember every detail of her silence.
But today she came in differently. No umbrella. Hair slightly damp. Eyes searching for something unknown. And she smiled—barely, but it reached her eyes. And it hit him all over again. The way her eyes seemed to hold storms and still shine.
She lingered near the fiction aisle. He didn't approach. He never did too soon. Instead, he glanced through his journal beneath the counter, where words had turned to poetry and poetry to a quiet devotion.
---
I don't write poems. I write the way she looks at the rain— Like it's telling her secrets. And I try to read her like that. But she's always two pages ahead of me.
---
When she turned to leave, he walked over, holding the usual cup of coffee.
"You always make it before I ask," she said, taking it gently. Her voice was calm, like dusk.
"You always arrive before I'm ready," Eli replied, his smile subtle, steady.
Alina stared at the cup, but her thoughts weren't on the drink. She was watching him. The way he spoke with patience, how he never demanded space in her world but was somehow always in it. For someone so quiet, he left a loud echo inside her.
"Why are you always so kind?" she asked, almost to herself.
He tilted his head. "Because you always seem like you could use some."
Her chest felt too small for the air she needed.
---
That night, Alina sat on her apartment floor, the city lights bleeding through her window. Her thoughts were unusually full.
He always notices… she thought. Not just the way I walk, but how my mood shifts when I'm pretending I'm okay.
She wasn't sure when her walls had started to lower. Maybe it was the coffee. Maybe it was how he said things without wanting anything in return. Maybe it was his eyes—calm and dark, like he lived where the clouds did.
She picked up her phone but didn't text. She almost did. Instead, she whispered to herself:
"I think I'm falling for him."
And then, with a shaking heart and a stubborn mind, she added:
"But I shouldn't."
She promised herself she wouldn't go to the bookstore tomorrow. Or the day after that. She needed space to remember who she was before her heart started beating differently.
---
Eli waited the next day. And the day after. But she didn't come. He served customers, smiled, recommended books, handed out coffee—none to her.
He sat in the break room that evening, flipping through his journal.
---
How do you miss someone You never really had? How do you wake up and wonder If you said too much, or too little?
I remember her laugh—barely there, But mine still echoes back to it.
---
He looked up, quiet and aching. That ache had a name now—Alina.
And in that silence, he knew something.
Next time he saw her, he wouldn't wait.
He wouldn't offer her coffee.
He'd offer her a moment.
"I miss you," he would say, maybe. "Would you go out with me?"
Not because he was brave. But because not asking felt heavier than the risk of rejection.
He closed the journal and exhaled slowly.
"Next time," he whispered to no one. "I'll ask her."