every page matters (chaelisa)

Familiar and Yours

Lisa sees her every Wednesday and Sunday.

Same seat, same hot chocolate. Same beautiful brown eyes.

Today she's wearing jeans and an oversized knitted sweater, looking a lot more everyday than the scrubs she typically dons, attractive either way.

Despite the casual and relaxed air about her, the circles around her eyes remain, a little darker perhaps. Maybe she had a rough night at the hospital. Lisa can only surmise, never having had an actual conversation with the presumed nurse or doctor.

The blonde is curled in on an armchair, her knees tucked to her chest, arms wrapped around legs, and holding up a heavy-looking book with both hands. Her mug sits momentarily untouched on a side table. She's absorbed in her reading, oblivious to the hubbub of Sunday activity around them. The flag football game across the street had just ended, bringing excited chatter from the park into the tiny corner café that struggles to accommodate their mirth.

Hearty laughs and congratulatory pats on the back mix with the sounds of espresso brewing and plates setting. The bell above the door dings constantly as customers rush in and out with their lattes or mochas or double doubles.

The quiet reader doesn't pay any of it or them attention, least of all her admirer three tables over.

They've never met before. But it feels like they have. There is something so familiar about her. Lisa can't quite place a finger on it.

She wouldn't put reincarnation off the table. Having taken a college intro course on world religions and different faith systems, she knows the world can work in mysterious ways. It was a surprisingly enjoyable elective to complement her comparative English Lit major—and opened her up to the multitudes of the universe and how some phenomenon are simply beyond human understanding.

But it's not that. At least she doesn't think it is. It feels more immediate than reincarnation, the sense of familiarity too current, recent, for it to be another lifetime.

She doesn't think it's soulmates either, though the romantic in her would like it to be. Had they been soulmates, it wouldn't have taken Lisa a month to brave a hi.

It's been a year and a half since she can remember being with anyone. The length of time out of the dating game was likely the cause of nerves preventing her from approaching the pretty girl. The pretty girl who had stopped her dead in her tracks when she entered the café for the first time on a Wednesday.

Literally stopped.

Lisa had nearly bumped into her but swerved at the last second to avoid the head-on collision. Swift apologies were exchanged followed by an extended period of eye contact. For those stretched out minutes, the girl peered deeply into Lisa's eyes, and she felt something click. She didn't know about reincarnation or soulmates but for a split second, she felt the breath of the universe expand in her lungs—as if the universe had just been made to be seen through those eyes.

Things had been foggy for Lisa lately and bumping into the blonde felt like her world crystallized for one brief moment, waking her up from a dream and an endless spinning.

But then the blonde had left in a rush before Lisa had time to consider dreams and supernovas bursting into life, or more practically, before she could think of introducing herself. As the runaway hurried past her out the door, Lisa noticed a slight sheen to her gaze.

She wondered what could have made such beautiful eyes look so sad.

The brief encounter stayed with her, and the reason she returned every few days to the café.

It took another two weeks before she saw the girl again. The second time it happened was when the scrubs first appeared, along with several books and concentrated furrow brows, that would later become permanent fixtures. Lisa hadn't wanted to disrupt the studious scene.