A Collection of Short Works

Overcasted

Originally published as a solo work on March 18, 2014.
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She always felt lonely in this weather. Her best friends a day away from meeting again in the weekly dose of happiness, but in this weather, no matter what, her heart became heavy with depression, soaked into the cold wetness like a sponge of emotion. In her mind she called it being "overcasted," although her grammatically correct self was sure it wasn't a word. She never cared, because the grainy grey of the skies reflected upon her a mirror of her feelings.

She felt old for her relatively young age whenever she felt like this.

Sitting on the curb outside a coffee shop in her little town, the roads weren't too busy when people were lounging inside or chattering avidly with friends at a cloudy-day golf outing or over a latte at a café table. Occasionally a burst of sun would spout out from the clouds, making her smile a little bit. A slightly nippy breeze rippled the hood of her blue hoodie, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, giving her forearms goosebumps. She listened to music casually with one earbud inside her ear, a relaxing tune flowing peacefully to the pleasure of her auditory sense. She normally listened to electronic or rock music, but when in the "overcasted" mood, she favored songs that were slow or acoustic, or both. One particularly pretty song was on repeat.

It wasn't after ten minutes sitting there that she decided to pull a notebook and pencil out of her bag and draw. Drawing was almost a form of therapy to her. She began sketching the first thing that came to mind, which turned into absent-mindedly drawing cats. In boredom, she sighed and put away her supplies and took a book out of her bag instead. She opened the book, hitherto realizing she had finished it yesterday. Now somewhat frustrated, she put it back and emptily looked out across the street. How she wished she could have someone close to her right now!

Not a moment later, there were footsteps on the concrete approaching her. She looked to her right, and saw a pair of brown shoes and jeans faded to a light color facing her. She looked upwards to find that it was a masculine figure, adorned in a button-down, muted light-grey-and-blue checkered shirt. His face was slender, and he had short brown hair. She became wary of him, as, to her, it was a real-life nightmare of being kidnapped by somebody in the middle of a city. Regardless, he sat down on the curb beside her, a little space dividing the two. She couldn't look at him without feeling anxious, and he twiddled his thumbs whilst he stared off at a red brick building. He was more confident in his approach, but still felt apprehensive in speaking to this girl who was obviously frightened of his sudden appearance. He turned his head to her.

"Hey," he said, making her jump and look at him, first a flicker of fear, then relaxing her tensions as to not appear crazily scared. She let out a breathy laugh, shyly averting her eyes from his face then looking back up. His brown hair was slicked back, a longer flyaway strand hanging carelessly aside his face, the lower part around his mouth and chin darkened with stubble. The lank man had no notable oddities about him- but his eyes. They weren't some odd color, just a simple, dark brown, darker than his hair, but they were animated as they glaringly looked out from his thin face. This quality mesmerized her for a moment.

"Hello," she answered. She felt awkward, sitting on a curb, speaking to a man she had never seen before. Or had she seen him before? She couldn't even name him from his looks alone.

"What're you listening to?" he asked, pointing to the iPod resting beside her between the two with a long finger. It was at this gesture she noticed a couple small black bands spanning over the lower portions of his middle and ring fingers. Were those tattoos? She decided not to ask.

"A band called Panic at the Disco. They're really good," she said, "they're one of my favorite bands."

"Cool," he replied, blinking his eyes, still ever so intense. She began to wonder, is it possible for brown eyes to be piercing? To her, icy blue eyes were usually the attribute to use the adjective "piercing" for, but this man defied her logic.

"I guess so. I don't know, I really like bands. And music."

"Liking music is great. I have a bit of a passion for it, in fact."

It was then when she finally paid attention to how his voice sounds. His voice was clear and moderately deep. The tone was smoother than she had expected, and he spoke so informally that she was taken aback a little. There was a hint of some sort of country accent as well, but it didn't show too much. He didn't look like he was from the South, anyways.

"That's... pretty cool," she said, embarrassed at her plain word choice.

A moment of silence passed as they both glanced off into opposite directions. A bit of sunlight shone through the clouds. She fiddled with her long hair a little before curiosity overcame her slight fear of him.

"Are you from around here?" she asked innocently. His gaze came back to her, turning his head and squinting in the bit of light that poured from the sky.

"No, I'm not," he put out bluntly, "I... do some traveling though. I have a passion for music, remember?"

"You're in a band? Or are you solo?"

"Yes."

She giggled a little at the absent-minded response.

"I asked if you were in a band or solo," she said. He gave a look of realization and mouthed an "Ohh." as he turned his head toward the street. He chuckled a little, smiling meekly as he looked back at her, eyes sheepishly glancing into hers. Her heart fluttered a little and she almost gave a physical start. She felt odd, admiring a man who she was certain was much older than herself. She grinned back, then quickly looked back at her lap, feeling conflicted.

"I'm in a band, to answer your question," he said.

"Ooh, what's it called?" she asked, right as he whipped his head around to some other male voice calling his name. 'Nate' she heard? She turned her head around to see a blond man waving at the Nate person beside her.

"I'll write it down for you, do you have paper and a pencil?"

"Yeah," She got her notebook and pencil out from her bag on the opposite side of her. She accidentally opened it to where she had drawn cats earlier, which made the man chuckle before he flipped to a clean page. He quickly wrote a couple short things on the page before handing the book and pencil back, then walked over to his friend.

"Can't you wait a second?" she heard him say with a hint of sarcasm, to which the blond laughed at.

She looked at the page. 'Family Force 5' was written in small print to the left side of the page, 'Nathan C.' written beneath it with a fancier-looking signature beside it.

She would be certain to look the band up once she got home. For now, she was content with sitting on the curb listening to one of her favorite songs.

Regardless, she felt better having talked to somebody. Some loneliness still nagged at her, but the brief conversation kept the darkness tamed.

She wondered if she would see Nathan and whoever else was in this band again. She hoped so, and the thought made her smile.