Human // Josh dun

Six.

"Soooo." She grabs a record with the same meticulous smile as before and hands it to me.

"What's your name, red?"

"Josh, Josh dun."

I see the spark in her eyes, as if she had heard the name, yet it was pushed aside in her brain. Labled 'unimportant'.

"What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a musician, my band isn't very well known though." I lie.

"I'll have to hear you sometime." She looks up to my hair.

I grin and she hands me another record.

"Cats or dogs?"

"Both."

"You have to choose!" She smiles and hits my arm playfully.

"Both."

She pulls a gum wrapper out of her pocket and launches straight at my forehead. It hits the target.

"Hey!" I grin.

"I guess I'll take that as cat."

Without another word she picks up a stack of records and hands them to me.

Wow, all correct.

"It took me five seconds, can I take a break?"

"Yeah, I know this awesome restaurant!"

She glares at me and nods her head.

I'll take that as a yes.

We start our walk since its only one street down.

"Why did you come to Columbus?"

"My mom and her work. She didn't want me to spend Christmas alone." She said with a glint of sadness that seemed to stay in her eyes all the time.

"Oh, do you like it here?"

"Yeah the record store is the only reason I agreed to come. I mean I would rather be here than alone by myself in California."

We come up on the little diner and I open the door for her.

"In my lady" I bowed.

She laughed and walked into the warm building.

"Soooo." I say as I walk up to the counter next to Alice. I watch her as she explores the menu. Her cheeks were flushed red from the cold winter air. She looks over to me almost as if she saw me watching her this hole time.

I quickly turn my head to the menu and start ordering.

"Umm, I would like a order of french fries and a hot coco to go." She speaks to the man behind the counter.

"I'll have the same."

I hand her a twenty and the woman hands me seven dollars and sixty cents. Alice looks over to me with a hurt expression.

"I'll pay you back, I could have payed for that."

We begin to walk over to the booths, She chooses the small red one in the far corner of the restaurant.

"No, I wanted to pay. If you feel so bad, you can pay next time." I laugh.

Her face turns into a cross between sad and confused in a matter of seconds.

"What?" She asks.

"I wanted to pay." I say confused

"No, after that?" She says softly, almost a whisper.

"You can pay next time?" I say even more confused.

Her face goes as blank a clean slate.

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah, I'll pay next time." She says as she looks down at her lap.

"You two are a lovely couple." A waiter that looks to be in her late sixties early seventies.

"We're not a co-"

Alice gets up and runs out the front door. Not a single word said. After saying excuse me to the waiter a run out after her.

"Wait!" I scream at her.

She begins to run across the street.

Without thinking I run and jump in front of her sending both of us shooting across to the side walk on the other side.

A car wooshes by milliseconds after we get to the other side.

I help her up and dust myself off.

"Oh god. Are you ok?" I ask.

She just stares into my eyes with the same confused look she had when she ran out of the diner.

"I'm so sorry." She whispered