Constant-Alec Benjamin

Remembrance

It was only 2 months later, when Alec, laying in his bed with a luminescent lamp at his bedside table and an arm carelessly thrown over his eyes, remembered. And everything made much more sense now that he did. The girl at the concert was  no other than the girl from the deli all those years ago. 

He shot up from bed. How could he have been so blind?

It was so obvious from the way she looked at him. Not to mention her hair, it was the exact same as he remembered, but the most memorable was the curve of her lips and glint in her eyes. He remembered wanting to write a song about her, but it was so hard to put words to this mystery woman. 

He spent the next hour of the early morning trying to fall asleep, and to evade this girl as thoughts of her haunted his brain. She was infuriating to him. The longer he thought about her, the more his disdain grew. It was annoying how she was so sure of herself at such a young age while he bumbled about trying to find purpose to his life, his music, and his dream.

The annoyance turned to envy, and the envy rebounded to plain old curiosity. He finally went to sleep, with the promise that he'd never be able to find her no matter what. Because coincidences just don't happen in threes.

He was wrong. Their lives were intertwined and sometimes the best way to deal with fate is to pass it off as a coincidence until it catches up to you, stares you in your eyes, and asks for its name. 

//

Reyhan wants to disappear sometimes. She dreams of much, and none of it fulfills her. She dreams she is a general in an army of a land far from reality, or perhaps the leader of a rebellion against an unfit king. Sometimes, her dream is to stop running, and to just sit down and breathe.

It had been a little over a week at her new job in LAPD. She hadn't expected to be so far from home, but have a job so close to her obtaining her master's degree. This is where I can stop and breathe for a while she thought when she accepted the position of a forensic scientist. This was her longtime goal, her dream. Then why did she feel so empty inside? 

In the 2 weeks she'd been in California, she had yet to experience the wonders of being outside in beautiful weather. She was desperate to unpack and to finally put some sort of order in her life. And it was particularly annoying that the day her furniture was supposed to arrive was also the day she had her first crime scene investigation. 

She furiously dialed her mover's number as she walked down the stairs, anxious to get to the crime scene and begin her work, but nauseous at what she was hearing about. She grew even more irritated when loud commotion made it harder for her to get the message across that the furniture had to come in another day. She finally was able to alert the mover, when her eyes caught someone else's. 

"You have got to be kidding me!" She groaned. There stood Alec Benjamin, animatedly trying to explain the circumstances of how he was robbed in the middle of a busy street to a bored police officer who seemed to be jotting down notes but was actually sketching pictures of dogs. 

His head turned to the direction of her voice and his mouth fell open. "What the hell?"

"Do you guys know each other?" The police officer, whose name was Bill, suddenly looked up in interest. He was all for the gossip.

Reyhan and Alec tried to figure out what to say and blurted out their answers simultaneously. 

"Kind of?"

"I mean, not really!"

The latter was Alec, grumbly from the events of his day and angry with her for the night she'd kept him awake till 3 A.M. 

She raised an eyebrow at him. "What do you mean, not really?"

"You and I need to have a long chat on respecting space and not following someone around."

"I work here you dolt."

Alec's cheeks reddened. She threw her head back and laughed as she noticed this.

"You're right about one thing, bud. You and I do indeed need to have a long chat." She walked to a nearby counter and retrieved a piece of note paper and a pen. She scribbled something down as Alec waited in embarrassment.

"I'm really sorry about that, I've had a tough day." He apologized profusely as she handed him the slip of paper.

"It's OK, we all have our moments. This is my number, I'm hoping we can have that chat sometime, Alec" She spoke his name with a comical glint in her eyes, a full on smile playing at her lips. He mirrored her face with a smile of his own.

"You know my name, but I might want to know yours if I'm going to keep bumping into you like this."

She smiled again and began to walk away. "It's Reyhan!" She called over her shoulder with a little wave.

Reyhan? That was a new one.

However, he couldn't help the grin on his face for the rest of the day, even with the loss of a credit card and 200 bucks.