Lindy Casper

      "Ummm, excuse me?" The way his top gathered at the sides casting faded, river-like shadows across the ridges mesmerized me as I waited for the delayed response. The hazy traces of sweat and other bodies clung to him like a misty aura of the night before. Turning his head idly to the left and peering out in that, 'Huh? What now?' kind of way... he... just... Nick Wheeler!? No!...

Brown hair overlapped his face, smoothly falling out of place. Our eyes caught in each others. This just, couldn't be... Trying hopelessly to hold back the look of shock that was spreading over my features I attempted to mouth my question.

      So much for that! The smile was widening so bad that... I just had to hide it. Closing my eyes fractionally I let it take control of me; until it broke. I took a breath.

"I— Feel..." I lifted my stare upwards and hardly moved my head. What I really felt was something indescribable, followed by the pounding of an unsettled heart. I prepared myself for the lie. Our eyes met and suddenly the words got tangled up in my mouth "really... bad." Another breath, as I flashed a glance down past the edge of my skirt at the too-white trainers with flashing pink lights passing by, "'Cos, I know who you are, and..." No matter how much safer it was to keep my eyes averted, I just had to see his reaction to this; "You don't know me, at all." Smiling sweetly, to finish this off? To seem polite? Or maybe just to hide the real face he should be seeing.

      Contagious, is an understatement of the smile we managed to share in that moment, as he offered me his hand in a loose friendly gesture. Just so, relaxed?! Hesitantly, I placed my palm into his, and it soon became lost in his warm encasing grip.

"Nice to meet you."

We'd hardly met, and yet it bugged me that I was still assuming everything. And, the original question I was supposed to be asking the 'stranger' just hung there now, lost and pointless in the stuffy atmosphere around us. Probably now being processed by the cheap, pathetically small air-conditioner whirring, noisily in the corner of the room. What was I thinking? This chance was slipping by, this was it. The conventional here you go, you've 'met' me now, go brag about it to all your friends, you can say you even touched me: it's over. Enough. That wasn't what I wanted, not at all.

Quickly I tried to conjure up some conversation, "Oh- I, I've met you before, y'know, well kind of..." Annoyed at myself, for stumbling over my line that didn't even make sense, I forced my self to carry on. He gave me an expression of smug surprise, and disbelief.

"Oh yeah..." This just made it even worse. I was almost annoyed at him now!

            "Yeah, at your show at Shepherds Bush. I was there." In a very matter of fact manner- I threw my first full line out at him.

"You spoke to me?" Prompting, he tilted his head slightly and gestured with his eyebrows. Why was this feeling of disappointment surging over me? Just because I'd built myself a false reputation, didn't mean that I couldn't make it true now.

"No... I... didn't speak to you, but... Umm, do you remember..."
He took a subtle step backwards to let a woman with a tight pony tail and black heels clatter past. His expression relaxed slightly. Still looking at me intensively though, his hand now hitched up against the fake-marble, grainy counter behind him.
"There was, this letter that w-" Fate was seriously holding up against me. Three tone, boo-der-boo broke out. Abrupt and crackling, a voice trying hard to be polite went on, 'Please remember that any luggage left unattended may be removed and will be destroyed. Thank you.' The crackling peaked and split.

Almost as if he was finding it funny, he cast a delayed wincing expression across his silently smiling face. I giggled breathily and cut myself short. "Well, do you remember a letter was thrown on stage during 'Top of The World?'"
Nick looked like he was trying hard to recall something so stupidly insignificant to him. It was. It was stupid; even trying... "The one that Tyson read out?"