Chasing Autumn

Chapter | One

I remember the first time I met Autumn and what delightful day it was. It was February the 29th 1991 to be exact and what a perfect last day of summer it was. It was a normal day like any other and I was doing my normal routine before I went to work. I was sitting in a window seat of the Three Little Birds Café downtown. I was reading Wednesdays paper and drinking a hot chocolate with two sugars, since I've never come to liking coffee its just distasteful to me. I was enhanced so much by the paper and humming away a tune by The Smiths that I was as completely oblivious to the fact that I was about to meet the One.

See Charlie never believed in love and he thought it was all a big lie and a myth. He never believed in the fireworks and the warm fuzzy feeling deep down that you feel when you see them or the butterflies that get let out of their cage in your stomach. No he believed in none of these. I guess you could understand why he did this. It was because he had watched both his mother and sister get broken every time by a guy they 'fell' for, he had watched this happen to them numerous times that you wouldn't be able to count with both hands. To be exact it had happened since Charlie was 10, when his father John left his mother for another woman. Which had a decent affect on both his mother and older sister who was 13 at the time. And now Charlie is 19 so that was 9 years of having to put up with this bizarreness. That's when they started the crazy madness of dating just after their dad left  and they would come into Charlie's room and tell stories of falling in love and all these amazing stories, that one day he was going to find his soulmate and it was be sensational. Which is hard to believe since both his mother Leanne and sister Avery had never once fallen in love so they were amateurs so Charlie never thought once about it. When they dated men and they broke up with them they would go through phases where they would cry hysterically for one night and for one night I mean the whole god dam night and then the next day they would eat chocolate and ice cream and stuff there faces and then they would cry again that night and it was a never ending cycle. And Charlie just didn't want to be apart of any of that. Which is how it gets to this part of the story because he really just never knew what hit him till it did.

I read the last sentence of the Wednesday paper. Folded it in half. Threw my bag over my shoulder. Fixed my hair and grabbed my hot chocolate with two sugars from the table and stood up and looked at the time. I was late for work. My boss is going to murder me. I turn around sharply and run into a small girl about 5 and a half or more feet with auburn hair who just happened to be holding a coffee which by now I was wearing. Great just great now my favourite shirt is wrecked. She kept repeating the words "oh my god" over and over again while I just watched her with a smile as she moved frantically to get paper towel and helplessly tried to rub the coffee stain off my shirt. She was kinda cute.

"I'm so sorry I should have been looking ahead of me instead of" she cuts short of what she was saying when she looks at me in the eyes. That's strange. It turns silent which I hate.

"No no it's all good anyway this shirt was getting old" I lie and smile trying to convince her that it was alright when really I was pissed off. She just stares at me and blushes deeply. Well this is getting a tad awkward if I don't say so myself so i need an escape route fast to get to work. I seriously hate encounters like these.

"Well I best be on my way" I smile at her and walk past her. I open the door and the bell chimes through the busy café.

"Wait" she yells quickly trying to get my attention before it's too late. I stop abruptly in my tracks still holding the door open.

"Yes?" I say uncertain. I look out the door to the street and think of how I could escape so easily right now which I normally would of done but my feet seemed glued to the polished grey tiles. Well that's weird. She walks up to me with an apologetic smile.