Imaginarium

Talking to Strangers

Who would have guessed it would be so cold. The sun was shining, there was no wind and it was in the middle of July. Then again, it was San Francisco so it should have been expected. Diana stood on the street corner in a t-shirt and jeans, hunched over with the cold, goose bumps covering her body.

To anyone watching, it would have seemed as though she was busy playing on her iPhone. Every few seconds, she jumped a bit and hit her phone. But she was hitting the menu button to make the phone jump back to life, checking the time. He was late – 23 minutes late, to be exact. And there was nothing she could do about it. There was no one that she could call, nowhere that she could go – all she could do was have faith that Bacchus would show.

Diana paced back and forth, trying to keep herself warm. It was helping, she realized, and quickened her pace. Suddenly, her foot caught on a jutting rock and she stumbled. She stopped pacing at once; she was the ‘safety first’ kind. Diana had always been like that; if there was a possibility of her of even getting a bruise, she got out of the way. She remembered how she always used to cry even when she got a really small, cannot-even-be-seen scrape. Diana smiled. It was hard to imagine how a ‘safety first’ girl like had ended up on a deserted street like this one.

Diana had met Bacchus two days ago at the Potions Grill – the best place in her neighbourhood to grab a bite.

TWO DAYS AGO – EVENING:

 Her mom was late – as usual – and so had asked Diana to eat at the Grill. She had done so – as is tradition for her – alone. It was quite crowded though, so she had had to share her table with a stranger – a totally dazzling guy. It had gone like this:

There Diana was, eating her pasta while reading a book, one of Anthony Horowitz’s horror novels. The Grill was also crammed due to the crowd, so most people were sharing tables, but she was lucky – or so, she thought.

“Is this seat taken?” a masculine voice asked her, startling Diana out of her novel.

Diana looked up, “Um… no, actually.” The boy who had talked to her was tall and looked a year or two older than her. He had dark brown hair that wasn’t too long or too short and bottomless brown eyes that reminded Diana of unbearably dark nights – something she was awfully afraid of.

“Would you mind if I sit here? I can always go sit somewhere else if you don’t wanna be disturbed,” the mysteriously dark guy said, glancing meaningfully at her book.

Diana looked around; there were no empty seats anywhere else. “Where exactly were you planning on seating if I didn’t wanna be disturbed?”

The guy glanced around, and then grinned, “Outside?”

“Where it is awfully cold even though it’s in the middle of July?” Diana enquired, “I don’t think so.” Diana couldn’t help noticing how grinning lightened his dark, dark eyes a bit.

“I’ll take that as an invitation then,” he said and sat down with a glass filled with something Diana didn’t know of. She wasn’t the drinking type; she only consumed a bit of wine. “I haven’t seen you around before. Are you new?”

“I am the ant-social type, so I don’t go out a lot, but other than that I’ve lived in San Francisco all my life,” Diana answered, strangely talkative even for herself, “I think this is the first time I’ve talked more than two sentences with a person since I started coming here. And that was around five years ago.”

The guy grinned a second time, “Something tells me this is conversation is out of character even for you.” He seemed highly amused by her, too. “You sure you’re not drunk?”