The ambience of the dimmed light posts along the narrowing path, and the distant (yet irritatingly audible) voices of kids drinking by the bridge, had made me feel as though I were a ghost passing through a night stricken with an eerie sense of life. It was odd. And lonely. And it made me painfully aware of the empty space by my side where the feeling of her grasp on my arm still lingered...especially for nights like this. Wafting the thought away as I entered through the uncomfortably slow automatic doors, the wide space of the theatre seemed smaller than what it'd always looked like in my head...Had it seriously been that long? Despite my haze, I hurried to join the two-person queue behind the booth that separated the front of the cinema and the auditoriums, and I peered between them to see who would be behind it this time.
Usually on this day - a Saturday - Old Dave would take his place on a stool, and (quite adorably) happily scan each ticket with the handheld machine. Only there was no bald, sweetly-smiling elderly man behind the tall table ahead. And there was no Young Dave, the engineering student who'd take over every couple of days either (who was also called Dave, only less wrinkly).
The guy was seemingly younger...and notably more charming. I could see 'New' Dave's tuft of black (or was it more brown...?) grown out hair above the couple in front of me as he scanned their phones for the ticket. He was tall enough (to my judgement), and I could just about notice the freckles contouring his nose. However, that had been about the only part of him that alluded to warmth and sweetness of any kind. Everything else he gave off was icy: he stood high, despite his already impressive towering abilities over the people ahead of me, and his hands tightened into fists that clasped together in front of him. The lights above formed shadows under his eyes...which were no doubt captivating. But I'd also made out the 'tenseness' in his features that made him oddly yet so agreeably attractive. My expression said it all: I'd been looking for too long.
Though I couldn't help but stare. Because I had more than anything, more than I had a couple seconds prior, hoped it was a Dave looking me in the eyes. But it wasn't. It was a face I could only recognise if I was as close as I was now, shuffling behind the booth that was luckily between us.
My old schoolmate had found himself in an old, unfortunately stained Cinema uniform. And I had found myself unable to recall what he had just said to me.
".......................?" it was a muffle of words, probably a question I should've answered if I hadn't made such a gut wrenching realisation.
"Ma'am...?" he seemed to repeat, "Your...ticket?"
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RomanceWhat happens when the studious main character on her way to a medicine degree at Cambridge University suddenly drops everything for a low ranked Film Studies course in her hometown? And what happens when she meets an old classmate (with a questionab...
