Waterfront (a short story)

1

Black and white. Everything was black and white. Everything always had been for him. Well, black, white, and various shades of grey. Either way, he had only heard rumours about soulmates and seeing in colour when you make physical contact. Of course, he didn't believe it. Soulmates don't exist. Obviously.

And Lynx was fine being able to only see in greyscale. He had never cared about love, so in turn, love didn't impact his life in any way. And of course, he was fine with that too.

He plugged in his earbuds and tuned out the world as he walked along the path. Light grey murky drops of rain began to gently fall. The dark-haired boy's eyes fell back to the path. He drew back his sneaker-clad foot to kick a stone along the ground. As he began to look back up, his eyes widened as he was suddenly knocked over. Lynx fell backwards, his palms grazing on the pavement of the footpath.

"Oh, I didn't see you there! My apologies". Lynx looked up slightly to see a boy who looked around his age with light-coloured hair, perfect white teeth, and thin eyes that seemed to sparkle despite his vision being limited to dull and mere shades squatting down next to him.

Lynx swiftly shifted his gaze down to his own black and white shoes as he could feel colour creeping into his cheeks. In all honesty, this boy was attractive. But anyone could see that. The embarrassed boy's eyes widened once more as he had to stop his mind from wondering too far.

"Hey? You ok there?"

Lynx looked back up to see the boy still looking at him, before he stood up. The boy with the perfect teeth was offering a hand to help him up.

Lynx quickly stood up, rejecting the attractive asian boy's no-longer outstretched hand.

"Are you ok?"

Lynx looked at he other boy, his mouth a thin line of worry, before responding;

"Y-yeah."

The other smiled again with his stupid perfect teeth and raked his hand lightly through his stupid perfect hair.

"Ah, ok, good. I'm Taka, and you?"

"Lynx. My name's Lynx".

Taka's smile only seemed to widen. Lynx decided he should leave as quickly as possible.

"Oh, I should be going now- I'll be late. My shift starts in five minutes," Lynx hurriedly said as he tried to leave.

"Oh hey- where do you work? I work down at the pet shop".

Of course, Lynx sighed.

"I work there as well," he edged through clenched teeth.

"Oh cool- we must be working the same shift."

They both walked through the crowd to the pet store on the corner, 'Your Average Pet Store'. Lynx walked through the door with Taka walking behind him a short distance away. A bell went off, resonating throughout the store, signalling someone had entered the building.

It was nine am when they started their shift. Much to Lynx's dismay, Taka wanted to know more about him.

"So, Lynx... where are you from?"

"I was born in Melbourne, but I decided to move out here to Adelaide because it's a lot quieter than the busy city."
"Nice," Taka stretched his arms out over his head, and Lynx couldn't help but notice the bold muscle definition throughout his arms.

Even though they were only a darker shade of grey compared to the rest of Taka's presumably tanned skin, they stuck out, and Lynx wondered why he hadn't noticed that before. Before Lynx could comprehend that he must have been staring at the asian boy's toned arms for too long, he heard the owner of said 'toned arms' chuckle.