THE COFFEE HAS YOUR SMELL

CHAPTER 9: KATE

Alex felt so good walking side by side with her. He felt as though the world had stopped and they were the only ones on that narrow, barely illuminated street. Only he and her were in a parallel world to the one where he'd lived alone by then, a world where his heart and soul were alive, and where he wasn't living anymore only through the eyes of others. And, eager to be with the one that made him dream of her so many times before and melancholic, Alex told himself that it wouldn't be anything wrong if the way to the hotel would have been thousands or maybe more times longer than it really was. He wanted that, to be able to feel for longer the scent of the ripe chestnuts that was felt from her... so pleasant that he often caught himself smiling.

He winced eventually when he heard her asking, „Something happened?"

„Like?" The man answered with another question, shy.

„I don't know. I just feel something strange." Then, Kate kept silent, realizing that she was talking without thinking and somehow recklessly. She said that when she saw him smiling, and she didn't understand why he was doing this. Since they started to walk together, none of them said anything funny. They only set up their footsteps to have the same rhythm, just as their hearts seemed to have the same beats. „Like the sound of the piano keys in an empty room," Kate caught herself thinking. Then, she smiled, feeling weird, as she hadn't ever felt before, not while walking side by side with another man.

Yes, he was a stranger and not her man. A stranger who was with her at that moment, advancing on that narrow and dark street just to make sure she'd get safely to the hotel that night. Her soul instead, the one named Jonathan Ward, didn't even bother to text her that day and ask her if she ate something or if she missed him or be together. No, Jonathan hadn't probably ever asked her such things and seemed so cold with her, especially lately.

„Others instead can be so warm even with the strangers," Kate thought, suddenly feeling her heart strangely pouncing in her chest. She felt that when she understood that cruel truth about her relationship, for the umpteenth time. „One that seemed so durable to me, but which might be ephemeral." Then, Kate sighed. She closed her eyes for a few moments, focusing her mind only on the sound of his footsteps... those footsteps that were secretly having the same rhythm as hers. At the same time, Kate had the feeling that those footsteps were whispering a secret to her, like „We are here! With you! So... don't ever fear the world, your secrets, or us!"

All this was strange. Kate didn't fear anything at that moment, although she was with a man who was a stranger to her, a man whom she had met by chance in a coffee shop and then on the street. Nevertheless, she felt so good with him. She felt safe and a real woman, a feeling she hadn't ever had with another man. She hadn't felt all this even when she was with Jonathan, for whom she fell so hard and whom she declared the eternal king of the castle of her soul eventually.

Yet, maybe she'd rushed a little to do that. Maybe she'd been wrong in falling in love as she did, thinking that fate would eventually find its own rhythm and make their heart beat in the same rhythm. Yet, this didn't happen, not even after three years of relationship, and this really hurt. Yes, all this hurt like hell because, you see... the one she loved and to whom she gifted herself completely, hadn't ever been able to set his steps in the rhythm of her footsteps. The stranger instead, whom she knew for a few days only, managed to do that in a single evening. He managed not only to set the rhythm of his steps to have the same speed, but he had also held her hand and so kindly told her „Sweetheart," something Jonathan hadn't done for a long time, or maybe „Never!"

All this made Kate smile again. She bitterly smiled, looking to her left this time, trying not to let the stranger understand that she felt so weird next to him. Kate felt so strange that she got to compare him with her boyfriend, finding so many differences but no similitude. At the same time, Kate didn't want to accept a tough truth that night - that the stranger had strengths that she hadn't ever found in Jonathan, and one of these was the care for her. „A care I missed so much, just as I missed not feeling myself a stranger in a world full of people."