The Dream Before the Dark ✓

04 | Mortal Sins

SATURDAY MORNING OF THE FOLLOWING WEEK, Jen could be found nestled in her usual corner of Spill the Beans, absorbed in a poetry book. A tiny, white porcelain cup sat on the otherwise empty table in front of her. She had diverged from her usual order of regular coffee in favor of an espresso macchiato today.

It was a gloomy day out. The sky had a ghostly pallor and rain streaked the front windows of the tiny shop like tears, but the sound of its pattering on the roof was peaceful background noise. It was the perfect day to stay indoors with the company of a good book and decompress from her second week of work.

The little bell that signaled the opening of the front door jingled at least once every few minutes, but she had managed to tune it out. It could barely be heard over the rain and the noise of the espresso machines, anyhow, and since she wasn't here to people watch, Jen didn't bother lifting her eyes from the pages in front of her each time she heard the quiet tinkling of the bell.

Shortly after one such occurrence, however, she reached the end of a poem and felt the need to give her eyes a brief reprieve from the tiny print. She placed her bookmark in her current spot – she could never bring herself to dog-ear her pages, no matter how convenient it might be – before carefully closing the book and felt a startled jolt run through her when she looked up from it.

Standing near the counter was none other than Robert Caruso, who must have noticed her sitting there mere seconds before she saw him, for he was looking at her and the expression on his face was one of fresh surprise. In one of his hands was an umbrella; in the other, a cup of coffee. The same messenger-style bag that he usually carried at work was slung over his shoulder.

Unless her eyes were playing tricks on her, she detected a slight hesitancy to the way he walked as he came over to her table, like he wasn't entirely sure if she would prefer to be left unbothered. It was, after all, a weekend, and she herself certainly hadn't thought about how she might behave around him if they happened to run into each other outside of work.

But she set her book down and offered him a small smile. "I don't bite," she assured him once he was nearly to her, well within earshot.

The corners of his mouth tugged into a smile to match hers as he pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. Now that he was close, she could see the way his hair was slightly damp from the rain, how it clung closer to his skin around his temples and forehead than it normally would. For a fraction of a second, she felt the bizarre impulse to reach over and brush it away for him, but then he lifted his hand to do just that and the thought fled from her mind as abruptly as it had arrived.

"I've never seen you here before," was all she could think to say at that moment.

But if he found the comment to be silly or rude, he didn't let it on. "I come fairly often," he said with a shrug. "I don't live too far from here. It's much easier to walk to work than deal with the L."

She nodded. "Me, too."

When she regarded him now, she thought first of the words he had written to her, which was surprisingly many for how briefly they had known each other. Their correspondence of letters had been going on for nearly two weeks. Some were longer; some were quite short. Some were mostly small talk; others provided her with a more substantial glimpse into his mind.

The cup of black coffee that he carefully set onto the table brought to mind something he'd told her in one of his letters – that despite coming from a country known for its espresso, he had an embarrassing affinity for the cheap convenience store stuff.

Jen had been scribbling down the Italian terms he shared with her into a tiny, unused, leatherbound journal she found hiding in her drawers at home so that she could attempt to dedicate them to memory. She didn't entirely know why the two of them had even continued to write to each other after the initial pair of letters, but there was something pleasant about having conversations that way. It gave her the ability to think for hours about what she might like to say to him rather than having to conjure something up on the spot. He seemed much more of a natural at carrying conversation than she was, much more charismatic, and she didn't want to make a fool of herself.