Devils and Angels

∞. coffee shop encounters

m a r i c o l o u s

to live in the sea

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OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, Katya had learned a lot of new things. She learned to do things like keep smiling and move on, like one of those house-decorating plaques you found gathering dust on the top shelf at a B&M or an ASDA.

She also learned how to procrastinate her essays, and this one in particular set the tone for her second year of college.

Christ. She dropped her chin into the palm of her hand, staring at the door. He was always a little late to their meetings, but this was getting out of hand.

Luckily for him, the coffee shop had floor-to-ceiling windows, so she could see him coming.

The bell chimed above Henry's head as he strode in. His blue-grey eyes swivelled the room until they fell upon her, and he smiled, wasting no time in pulling out the chair opposite her and taking a seat. His ankle brushed hers; she pulled away.

The holiday had done him good, Katya mused briefly, staring at him. A month beneath the pulsing Spanish sun, and his skin had taken on a soft, golden glow, illuminating constellations of freckles she'd never noticed before.

She couldn't deny his time away had been good for her as well. After they split—a mutual, unspoken decision from a mutual, unspoken relationship—seeing him was strange, like the ever-changing pieces of themselves didn't quite fit together as well as they once did.

Still, when he asked to meet, she didn't even consider refusing. That had to be a step towards a better future.

(The essay she was procrastinating was only a small factor).

Pulling her lips into a grin, she pushed the tea she'd ordered for him across the table. The ceramics scorched the tips of her fingers and steam rose from the cup, dissipating into the air. He took it from her, fingers brushing against hers, and tilted it to his lips.

She breathed a sigh of relief. There's no spark.

"You're unusually silent," he observed, setting the cup down. His eyes searched hers, eyebrows dipped in the centre for the look of concern he reserved only for her. "Feeling okay?"

"Just thinking." She sucked the dregs from her coffee cup.

"Uh-oh," he teased, his mouth tugging into a slight grin. It dropped from his face when she shot him a sharp look, and he threw two hands up in immediate surrender. "There's that smile."

She touched a hand to her mouth. She was smiling. "Dammit. What's that about anyway?"

"I gotta make sure I haven't lost the ability to make you smile." Hen shrugged, head cocked to one side. "Otherwise we might as well not be friends at all."

"God, can you imagine? Paradise," she retorted, glancing at their blurred reflections in the full-length windows.

The light spilled in, full and bright; rainbow prisms against the crystalline glass and a baby-blue sky, pitched with pulled cotton-pleat clouds and a grey skyline of low buildings. People walked past amidst their own worlds, half-sunshine and half-shadow, staring down at their phones or glimpsing up at the world above.

One of them stopped, a flicker of an apparition. If she squinted in the sunlight, it looked like Caspian Lucas, but then she blinked and he was gone, as though he'd never been there at all.

Henry noticed where she'd been looking and seemed to have been thinking the same thing. "I wish we could hear from him again. I miss him."

"Me too," Katya said, but it was different to the way it used to be. No storm clouds, and no turbulence. She missed him—that was fact. The rest, however, was merely history. "I get it. I just hope he's okay, you know? Two years is a long time, or maybe it isn't. To be in his position...I just hope he's okay."