The love I thought I'd never have

Chapter two - The meeting of a strange man

I got home from the mission later than expected last night, roughly midnight to early morning.

Annoyingly I got woken up this morning at about 9am by noise coming from the flat above. "What idiots i thought to myself, no common sense whatsoever!" As annoyed as I was, I got out of bed as I had to go to the music store in town to pick up some new guitar strings. Jake broke one of mine when he was last here. I'm not too mad about it as I needed new strings anyway but I'm kind of pissed off as he did break something very close to me, my guitar is the last thing my dad gave to me before some bastard killed him on a mission. "I'll never forget that day, the day I got the call saying he was dead..." but moving on from that as I pushed the thought from my head, I had a day to get on with.

I got dressed into my usual outfit. Black cargo trousers, whatever t-shirt I can find, along with my hoodie tied around my waist and finally to tie it all together my combat boots with a knife tucked away (you never can be too careful with my job, anyone can be lurking in the shadows). I locked my door and walked down to the bus stop, it's usually the safest option of travel and the fastest.

I got to the music shop just after 10am, I walked in to be greeted by this odd man at the till. He was smiling at me with one of the biggest smiles I've ever seen. I'm not a smiler you see so it was a very awkward situation. I walked up to him and asked in a slightly deep tone "Where are your guitar strings?" He pointed me in the direction of the left wall with a rack of guitar strings ranging from plain silver to neon colours!

I gave him a nod, but just as I turned away he said in an extremely happy voice for some reason "Would you like any help with it?"

These thoughts popped into my head at that moment. "Why is he smiling so much? If I want help I would ask, can you just let me get on with what I'm doing?" With a slow turn I face him once again and give him a cold look and say "No." and with that i turn away again to go to the direction he pointed me in.

There were so many colours of guitar strings but I went with the red-silver combo as it was always my dad's favourite, how I wish I could be here doing this with him. If I'm honest there isn't a day that goes by where i don't stop thinking about him still being here.

With a turn of my head I look to see if the odd man is still by the till, just to my luck he is. There and then a thought popped into my head "His smile kind of reminds me of a man my dad worked with before he was killed, now that I think about it the very same man hasn't been seen or heard from since that day... no, I'm sure he just has one of those faces with a similar smile."

When I got to the till he scanned my strings through and said more calmly now "That'll be 10 NZ$ please." He took my money, gave me the strings in a small bag and I went on my way.

A/N: The book will get more interesting as this is just chapter 2!