When eyes first met
1025 Words
Mind if I join you?” Alex asked, his voice steadier than he felt.
She looked up from her book again, her eyes widening slightly in surprise. Then, to his relief, she smiled and nodded.
“Sure,” she said. Her voice was soft, melodic.
Alex sat across from her, setting down his dripping notebook. He gave an awkward chuckle. “Sorry—I didn’t realize it was going to pour.”
“It always does in this city,” she replied, amused. “The weather has a flair for the dramatic.”
He laughed, and some of his nervousness melted. “I’m Alex, by the way.”
“Emma.”
Emma. He repeated it silently, filing it away with the few things he now knew about her.
“I think I saw you at Maple & Ink a couple weeks ago,” he said cautiously.
She tilted her head. “The poetry aisle?”
“Yeah. You were by the window, reading. I… kind of haven’t stopped thinking about that moment.”
Emma blinked, then let out a quiet laugh. “That’s oddly romantic.”
“I’m a writer,” he confessed. “Comes with the territory.”
She raised an eyebrow. “A real writer, or the kind who drinks too much coffee and never finishes a draft?”
Alex grinned. “The second kind… aspiring to be the first.”
She laughed again, and it was the kind of sound that made him want to say things just to hear it one more time.
They talked for an hour. Then two. The storm raged outside, but in the corner of that café, a world formed—built of shared stories, confessions, casual jokes, and pauses that didn’t feel awkward.
He learned that Emma was an illustrator, working freelance from home. She had grown up in the city, left for college, then returned after a breakup and a soul-searching road trip across the Pacific Northwest. She loved old movies, collected pressed flowers, and had once impulsively dyed her hair pink during an art residency in Florence.
Emma, in turn, learned that Alex had abandoned a stable tech job to chase a feeling he couldn’t explain. That he feared regret more than failure. That he had no idea how to cook but could write a mean metaphor about soufflés.
It wasn’t love yet. But it was something real. Something crackling and undeniable.
When the rain finally let up and they walked out together, Alex took a deep breath and said, “Would you want to… maybe get coffee again sometime?”
Emma looked at him, the wind teasing a strand of hair across her cheek. “I’d like that.”
Their second date wasn’t really a date at all. Emma invited him to an art exhibit, saying she had extra tickets. It was held in a small converted warehouse downtown, filled with abstract sculptures, string-light ceilings, and music that sounded like rainfall on tin roofs.
They wandered through the space together, trading thoughts on the pieces—some insightful, others ridiculous.
“This one looks like a traffic accident made of forks,” Alex said.
Emma snorted. “I think it’s called Entropy of Desire.”
“Oh. That’s what I said.”
By the third outing, they no longer needed excuses to see each other. They walked the city streets late at night, hands brushing, laughter echoing off the brick buildings. They discovered hole-in-the-wall bakeries, read books in the park, watched bad reality shows on her couch. Nothing was rushed. Nothing forced.
And yet, it bloomed.
Alex found his writing shifting again. It became lighter, more open. Where once his characters guarded their hearts like fortresses, now they reached out with trembling hands. Emma had a way of making vulnerability feel like strength.
One night, a month into their slow-burning romance, she invited him to her studio—a sunlit loft filled with art supplies, unfinished canvases, and a giant chalkboard wall covered in sketches. She showed him her work-in-progress: a children’s book about a curious fox who wanted to fly.
“It’s about hope,” she said, watching his face as he flipped through the pages.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, and meant it. “Like you gave part of yourself to the pages.”
She smiled, but there was something else there too—something uncertain.
Later, as they sat cross-legged on the floor, sharing a bottle of red wine and talking about the first stories they ever wrote or drew, Emma grew quiet.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Of course.”
“That day at the bookstore… why did you remember me?”
Alex paused, caught off guard by the question.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It was like—my mind had no reason, but my heart did. You looked at me like you already knew me.”
Emma’s eyes searched his. “I felt it too.”
There was a silence then, heavy with meaning. And when Alex leaned in to kiss her for the first time, she met him halfway.
Days became weeks, and their relationship deepened.
They didn’t just learn each other’s habits—they became part of each other’s rhythms. Emma knew Alex couldn’t function before his second cup of coffee. Alex knew Emma talked in her sleep—usually about foxes or grocery lists. They argued once, over something small and stupid, and spent an hour in silence before collapsing into laughter on the kitchen floor.
It was real. Messy. Whole.
One rainy afternoon—because there was always rain—Alex sat at his desk, watching the clouds thicken over the city. Emma was across from him, curled up with her sketchpad, humming faintly.
He closed his notebook and said, “I think I’ve found my story.”
She looked up. “Yeah?”
“It starts with a man who’s been wandering through life half-awake. And then he sees her.”
Emma smiled. “In a bookstore?”
“In a bookstore.”
“And?”
“And the rest is everything.”
- Writer
