He stood about 6 feet tall, gawky and as graceful as a baby giraffe. With broken legs. His haircut had probably been a careful imitation of a poster or a photo, but it stuck out in all the wrong places, with strands sticking to his thin face. He listened to all the bands no one had even heard of and tripped in thin air. He wrote songs about the sky and about beaches and about freshly mown grass and smiles and sadness and rain. He wore clothes to be found in attics and op shops, and was overlooked in any social situation. He had the beginnings of facial hair sprinkled across his face fair and blonde, like he had shaved yesterday when in truth, he never had to shave at all. And now he was in love.
She was petite, with hair almost as long as she was tall. He supposed it was very heavy to carry, considering she was so very small. Every piece of clothing she owned had a name, strange names like Cuthbert or Elspeth. She wore summer dresses and checkered shirts and overalls with sneakers and ribbons tied around her hair to keep it out of her eyes, but still keeping it hanging loose around her face. She smiled like the sun with a face freckled and honest and eyes as blue as a summers sky. She was as timid as a doe, as sweet as chocolate and as lovely as an autumn sunset.
He saw her in a coffee shop, one of those kitsch little ones shoved in a hidden nook that sells books. She was poring over a thick old novel, wearing a knee-length pale blue dress, patterned with Japanese styled koi, and sipping what looked to be a chai latte. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He sat and watched her for a while, trying to garner the courage to speak to her, attempting to build up his fragile ego for the inevitable rejection, but before he could do so, she walked out the door.
She had taken his thoughts with her.
Everyday at the same time from then on, he went to the same coffee store, waiting go her to come. He discovered that she came in there every Tuesday, and so every Tuesday he was there, searching for the words to say. The ridiculous thing was, he didn't even know the girl, he just was enchanted by the idea of her. She was, he supposed, the girl of his dreams. She inhabited his waking thoughts, hid in the darker crevices of his mind, a daydream that he wouldn't, couldn't, share. No one else knew of his infatuation. He lived for Tuesday, the self-torture of not being able to translate his thoughts into comprehensible words, except in his music.
And on one glorious Tuesday afternoon, rain spattering the window, she walked over and spoke to him.
She sat down at his table instead of her usual seat by the main window and she spoke to him, of books, of music and of how she had noticed him coming in every week. She said she had been waiting for him to ask her out and thought she'd just take the plunge and talk to him first. He said he didn't mind, he wasn't much of a traditionalist anyway. Then he surprised himself, and her as well probably, by asking her to go to the art gallery with him that weekend. She accepted and they arranged to meet there on Sunday at 11.
