Waiting for Sunday

chapter 5 - what could be (and what is)

The world has shifted around her, the blossoming autumn colors bleeding and bright too-bright, the crunch of leaves like the crunch of bones. Lillie stares at a blank page of her journal, but can't even hold the pen. It drops to the floor, splits open, spreading a pool of blue-black ink on her rug. Horror bleeds into peace. Soon the whole thing will be stained.

With a shaky exhale Lillie folds the journal closed again, moving to the mirror, where she fixes her hair, swipes sticky lip gloss across her lips. Her life doesn't end here, beneath the sepia glare of lined paper. She won't let it.

Like they arranged, Lillie meets Felix at a small coffee shop tucked away in the greenery off the Beltline, not far from the park. Lillie steps inside, a bell dinging above her head, and has the thought that it's more like an ice cream parlor, with its baby pink walls and white granite, preppy neon signage that implores them to sip away, y'all. There are more plants than people inside, and syrupy pop music plays over the speakers.

The baristas, all inexplicably dressed in the sort of jumpsuit a mechanic would wear, give her rehearsed smiles and wave their hands, but Lillie's eyes set on Felix first. He's not hard to find, whether it's because of the eyepatch or something else about his presence Lillie is not yet ready to admit—in a mauve sweater rolled to his elbows, silver bands on his fingers glinting as he taps away at something on his phone. Whatever it is, he's considering it seriously, dark eyebrow pulled low over his eye.

Lillie clears her throat until all trace of uncertainty is gone from it. "Felix?"

He looks up, and the tense expression clears. His chair squeals across the tooth-white tiles as he stands. "Lillie! Hey."

"Sorry; it took me a while to find this place. I hope you weren't waiting long?"

"No, I—I just got here, really," he says, and pauses, clearing his throat. He's tall, Lillie notices, not that it is all that difficult to be taller than her. But he's not imposing. He's...soft, blurring the edges of the world around him, a part of things and outside of them at the same time. "I have a suggestion. Stop me if you think it's dumb."

"Sure."

"I'll order something for you, and you order something for me. It's something my best friend and I do all the time, whenever we go somewhere we've never been before," Felix says, and he's already looking apologetic, like he's just waiting for Lillie to shut him down. "Sometimes it goes very well. Other times we get food poisoning."

"I figure that works because you know your best friend well," Lillie says, draping her purse over her seat. She raises an eyebrow at him. "What do we know about each other besides that we both like to commune with the dead?"

Felix smiles gently. More of a smirk. The eyelashes on his visible eye are long, curled up towards the sun. "That's more than enough of a starting point, don't you think?"

Lillie shrugs. She's enticed by the challenge of it. "As long as this isn't just a way for you to get the cheapest option."

He feigns offense, so dramatically it makes Lillie laugh before she realizes she has. "Of course not," he says. "You first. My only request is no hazelnut. I'm allergic."

She orders him a latte with lavender and cinnamon, two things she's not sure go together, but two spices that make sense in her brain when she thinks of him. Then she returns to her seat, nodding at Felix as if to silently pass the baton. While he's gone she tries to discover him. She sneaks glances at the canvas bag sagged up against his chair leg, a simple beige with a lot of criss-crossing zippers. A fat, semi-waterlogged journal sticks out from one of the pockets, the other one bursting with black micro pens and markers.