Tempestuous

1.

He mindlessly scrolled through his phone. Nothing interesting, per usual. Then the phone vibrated, alerting him that he'd received a new text.

Angel: Hey, Leo. I'll be in front of the apartment in about an hour. Just thought I'd let you know.

Leo had never met this Angel person. Hell, he didn't even know whether or not he was a dude. They had talked on the phone once or twice, but the voice was too plain to be defined as male or female.

Angel was moving in from Spain and needed a house in California. Leo was looking for a roommate, and decided why not? Through fax and email, they sent each other information and papers to get everything in order.

Because all of their previous "confrontations" had been completely professional and formal, they barely knew anything about each other. So, today was the big day. They were both taking a tremendous risk by living together, but it was just mutual trust. If Angel desired, he could leave in a heartbeat. And Leo could kick him out or sue him at any moment. He hoped that wouldn't be necessary.

So he had one hour to kill. He should clean up the apartment, maybe get some food ready, make sure everything was presentable, but he didn't. Not that he was lazy, he just didn't care for first impressions. It's better for a person to directly see him as he was than to wait and have them figure it out in a more negative manner.

Instead, he stared out his window. It might've seemed dramatic or cliche, but it was really quite peaceful. He had a chair arranged perfectly so that the sun would hit him but would never touch his eyes at any given time of the day. And he could just sit there with a cup of tea and his thoughts, wasting his life away.

The droplets gathered up on his window, and streamed down. Everything was so grey. It wasn't because of the rainy weather, though. It could be a perfectly sunny day and all he could see out the window was colorless and dull.

He looked down at the gray leaves, rustling in the wind and being tattered by the rain. Couples walking with black umbrellas, holding hands. They could see the color. He had heard people describing the vibrant and intense rays of color, but his mind was only grey.

He wasn't the only person who lacked color. There were many. Thousands, millions. But they were all so young. Usually by their early twenties they were opened up to "reds" and "blues" and "greens" and a whole "rainbow" of color full of different hues and variations of the same seven basic colors. But Leo was almost thirty now.

And the only reason why was not due to some scientific explanation, nor some coming-of-age thing.

It was simply because he had never found his soulmate, and he doubted he ever would.