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“Did they find any clues yet? How could just one person be responsible for—”
“Cas?” Kat’s voice made me realize I’d stopped and was staring at the posters. The faces of so many men and women stared back at me. No remains had been found and the police seemed to be at a loss as to leads or information regarding their disappearances. That there were that many people held against their will or dead somewhere left me too scared to go out at night.
“Sorry, I’m coming.” I hurried after her. “I’m gonna get a chai from Starbucks; do you want anything?”
“Sure!” Her eyes drifted across the open concourse, and her tone changed. “Actually, I need to go to the bathroom. Can you get me a caramel macchiato and I’ll catch up with you?”
“Sounds good.” As she waltzed away, I turned to head to Starbucks to order our drinks. It didn’t take them long to make them and I sipped my chai latte, feeling the warm delight of it slip down my throat. If there was one thing I loved in the mornings, it was tea.
I rounded the corner of the Starbucks booth and crashed into someone. The drinks fell from my hands, spilling all over the floor as I collided with the tile. I hissed as a splash of hot liquid burned my palm.
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” he apologized, and someone knelt beside me. “Are you ok?”
“Oh… I’m ok. It was an accident,” I groaned, as I pushed myself to my knees, shaking the drink from my hands. “I wasn’t paying attention.” The burning sting was already beginning to fade from my palms, and I’d somehow managed to not get any on my clothes. The drinks lay in a spilled mess on the tile and I sighed.
“I’m sor—” My apology caught in my throat the moment I lifted my eyes to him.
His long dark hair spilled in gentle waves over his shoulders as he reached down, hand hovering as he moved to help me up. He had the most dazzling eyes I’d ever seen, gray with flecks of rich amber in the center that popped against his deep olive skin. I could imagine myself drawing the lines of his face, his jawline, the dark stubble that dusted his skin, bridging over his lips. It was difficult not to stare.
He sat frozen for a moment as our eyes met, a subtle look of shock on his face. “How—” He cleared his throat before he blinked and attempted to composed himself. “I’m so sorry, let me… Let me buy you new drinks.”
There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t place it. Before I could further think of where I might have seen him before, I realized he was waiting for me to respond. “Oh, n–no, you don’t have to do that. It’s ok, really. I’m… I’m a klutz. It was my fault. I should’ve been paying better attention.” Oh my God, why had my tongue and mouth suddenly forgotten how to work?
The moment his hand touched mine to pull me to my feet, an electric shock shot through me. "Ouch! Sorry. Static."
Our eyes met again, and some strange sensation passed through me, one I couldn’t describe, and my heart fluttered in my chest. It scared me at first, thinking it was an arrhythmia or a possible attack, but no pain came. It was so foreign, this rush of emotions and feelings I’d never felt before.
A crooked grin tugged at his lips, amusement gleaming in those beautiful eyes as he looked down at me. “Please. It’s the least I could do to make it up to you.”
I hesitated but smiled. “Ok, if you insist.”
His friends grabbed a bunch of napkins, and I got to work helping them clean the mess off the floor. A dark, tan hand swept in from the corner of my eye, wiping up some of tea that coated the floor. I didn’t look up but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him tilt his head to steal a glance at me. He briefly scanned me, as if he were trying to figure out if he knew me, but I knew I’d never seen him before.
His onyx brows furrowed, pale green eyes flickering when I lifted my face to look at him. I cracked an awkward half smile before my eyes fell to the damp napkin in my hand.
He lifted his head to the guy I’d bumped into. “Go ahead and get her a drink. We’ll get the rest,” he said.
“Thanks, Zephyr,” he responded, and walked me back over to the coffee shop.
Minutes ticked by in uncomfortable silence as we waited for my drinks to be remade, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. My heart raced a mile a minute, and I was terrified that letting it get farther out of hand would cause problems.
He smiled down at me. “I hope you can forgive me.”
I smiled sheepishly, barely able to meet his gaze. “I think I can forgive you this once.”
“Come on, man, we gotta go!” one of his friends called out to him, interrupting what I’d hoped would spark into a conversation.
“Thank you,” I said as he started off.
He glanced back at me, flashing a handsome smile. “You’re very welcome. Maybe next time I buy you a tea, it’ll be for us to enjoy together.” Then he was gone.
I watched from a distance as he walked away with his friends, shoving each other and laughing. It almost seemed as if they were teasing him about what happened.
The echoes of conversation were lost in the hum as I stood watching, lost in thought. That had been my first real interaction with a guy outside of just passing glances or school projects. I hadn’t even thought to ask him his name.
The image of him firmly planted itself in my brain the rest of the day. I couldn’t shake the odd feeling of familiarity, but I knew I’d never seen him before.
Was I crushing? No, of course not.
