Melbourne Weather.

A Fateful Encounter

"You never called." It wasn't an accusation, but I could feel one behind it when he spoke.
"I know. I-"
"You never called, you never texted, nothing."
I looked down at my hands in my lap and tried to fight the wave of sadness that started sweeping its way across the room.
"I was worried, Grace." The way he said my name made my gaze snap back up to meet his, and for a moment I couldn't do anything but focus on his eyes.

Oh god. Those eyes. When I was eighteen, Aleks had come to rescue me from a house party when my friends had left me there to go with some guys they had just met and some random dude kept trying to make me drink something. I broke down in his car in an abandoned supermarket carpark under the halo of a streetlamp, and when I was done, I realized for the first time that his green eyes had flecks of blue and gold in them that made my heart race. That was the last time I had heard him say my name with the same intensity.

He rested his hand on the outside of my arm for a moment, before tracing his way down to my knee, a trail of electricity following in his wake. I looked back down to the spot on my leg where his hand rested, radiating warmth, and I felt butterflies stir in the pit of my stomach with the intensity of his gaze still burning into me. I couldn't move, I couldn't think. The entire world was fading away and suddenly I felt myself wanting to cry, wanting – no needing – to be close to him, wanting something, anything.

Suddenly he swore and sprung to his feet and it was like being the bottom end of a bungee jump. I felt myself being violently tugged backwards into reality. "I have to go." My words fell out of me with a robotic abruptness that would probably have been funny to an onlooker, but felt like broken glass to me. I could barely hear the sound of Aleks protesting and insisting that we should talk about it over the sound of my heartbeat in my ears.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed the number of the only person I wanted to see right now. It barely had a chance to ring before the call was connected.
"Hey." I tried to level my breathing, but the intensity of every single thing I was feeling was overriding my ability to control much of myself. "Are you busy?.... Let's catch up. I'm around the corner from the café." I disconnected the call without saying goodbye and started walking down the cobblestone alley that houses some of the best hole-in-the-wall cafes and restaurants the city has to offer. If anybody was going to be able to tell me what the hell almost just happened it was going to be my best friend, Clair.

The alley was cut up into segments by a series of service roads that mostly got used as smoking areas and for trucks to unload deliveries to the businesses along the cobblestone path, and the sound of idling diesel engines, the ambient city noises, and the chorus of conversations people were having as the went about their days faded into background noise as I tried to navigate around an elderly couple who had clearly just come from a seniors day at one of the more upscale restaurants to the right. More and more people seemed to be materializing as the minutes ticked by, which caused the couple in front of me, who were quickly proving themselves to be quite rude, if their loud judgment of passers by was any indication, to slow down even more.

It took a lot of restraint to not audibly thank God as a gap appeared just big enough for me to try to overtake them. I stepped out around them at a pace that surprised even me, and out of nowhere I felt my body collide with something. Someone. I was torn between cussing the elderly couple out for shooting me a condescending "That's what you get." and snapping at whoever I collided with to watch where they were walking when their voice cut into my thoughts with the most unexpected statement after a collision.

"Nice jumper." I was puzzled, and then I immediately wasn't. Standing in front of me holding out my phone that had dropped out of my pocket when we collided, surprisingly taller than I expected was Eddy Chen. I felt my mouth dry up as my grasp of the English language evaded me. Looking down at myself I realized that I had thrown on my white hoodie emblazoned with the word practice when I had left the house, thinking Aleks would get a kick out of it. Sadness struck me again for a moment. It must have showed on my face because Eddy reached a hand out to my shoulder. "Are you okay? You hit me pretty hard." I laughed through my nose and nodded, forgetting the irritation I felt at the collision at all.
"I'm fine. Thank you. Are you?" It was Eddy's turn to almost scoff at the question.
"Am I okay? Please. I'm tough." As he spoke he waved his hand in the air and I turned to see Brett Yang jog across the street in our direction.
"This is weird." I laughed, embarrassment pricking at the tips of my ears.
"Weird, why?" They asked in uncanny unison. I realized I had no idea, it just was.
"Hey uh, dude, we gotta go." Brett shot me an apologetic glance as he spoke to Eddy. "It was nice meeting you though." He added, smiling politely.
"Alright. Let's get a picture first though." Eddy held out his hand gesturing to my phone, and without talking they arranged themselves on either side of me.
"Say Practice." I sung, feeling significantly cooler than I deserved to in that moment.

I watched them as they waved and headed in the opposite direction towards a row of restaurants and karaoke bars that were popular with important people largely because of their private rooms and insane fusion food. It didn't take long though until I lost sight of them in the quickly fading light and growing crowd. This part of the city really came alive around meal times, and I usually tried to avoid it.

A few short minutes later, I slid into the usual booth in the small café Clair and I had stumbled into one afternoon in search of the perfect latte during a school trip to the city. Since then it had pretty much been our go-to meet up spot in the city. I scanned the small room, making sure I hadn't somehow missed her in the sea of mismatched furniture and architectural salvage. My eyes stopped involuntarily on the face of an older woman, probably in her mid sixties. She was wearing a lime green sequin beret that seemed like it was trying to swallow her up. Her big eyes and wide mouth seemed to be smiling at nothing in particular. The beret was paired with a beige cardigan I wouldn't have been shocked if she had made herself, that was covered in various badges, patches, and broaches that all featured King Charles Cavalier Spaniels. I didn't know anything about her except that in the exact moment I noticed her, I loved her like my own grandmother.

Clair arrived looking effortlessly put together in an impossibly flattering fuchsia dress and teal belt cinched at her waist, with clear strappy heals and a tight, slicked back ponytail that lifted her waist length dead straight hair to around the middle of her back. She worked in the city as a handler for international clients when they came into town, and she lived the kind of glamourous life every person thinks they want until they actually have it. I'm by no means an insecure person, but sitting next to her really personified the notion of two people looking like they come from completely different worlds.
"Hey Space." She didn't look up from her phone as she dropped her designer bag onto the seat beside her and sat down.
I nodded a silent greeting and flipped a packet of sugar around between my fingers. The adrenaline that came from the afternoons events was beginning to wear off and I could feel the familiar tiredness that accompanied such a crash settling in. She threw her phone into the bottom of her bag in a huff and fixed her attention on me.
"Oh god. You're a mess." If those words had come out of anybody elses mouth I probably would have been offended, but under all of the layers of well practiced detachment that she carried around with her, I could hear the genuine concern in her tone.
I nodded and ran her through everything that had happened, while her face morphed into varied shades of excitement, confusion, and sadness. We had been so close for so long that I didn't need to tell her what I was thinking or how I was feeling, because she already knew. Looking at her I could see all of my own feelings reflected in her face with her eyes the size of dinner plates under a furrowed brow, and the gentle gnawing at her lip.
"What do you need?" She asked, reaching her hand across the table and linking it with mine.
I shrugged wordlessly. Going over it again had more than zapped what little energy I had left for the entire situation. Half an hour ago all I wanted to do was go through it with a fine tooth comb, but now that was the furthest thing from my mind. The cuckoo clock that hung on the wall above the coffee machine chimed six times, and I groaned. I had ten minutes to make a trip that would usually take twenty or I'd miss my train home.

"You all set for tomorrow?" She asked, getting to her feet at the same time as I did.
"Yeah, I am. Thanks again, Clair." She had spoken to her boss about giving me a trial run for their company. I don't know how she managed it, but they had agreed to let me take on a small scale client for a week. All I had to do was make sure they were happy, and see to it that their needs were catered for, and they'd give me a job.
She dismissed me with a wave and shot back something about the amount I had done for her over the years, and literally sashayed away. On anybody else, that would look ridiculous. On her it was completely captivating. Clair was the kind of person who had their own gravitational pull, but who also would have been fine if it vanished someday. She was composed, and polished, and genuinely funny and interesting. Except for the fact that I loved her, I probably would have hated her.
I on the other hand had to dry a Mango Slushy stain off of the crotch of my jeans in a public restroom twice last week after accidentally tripping over the same step.

When I climbed into bed that night my head was heavy with too many thoughts, but the thing that left me smiling instead was the picture that was now my phone background, of me sandwiched between Brett and Eddy, the one where Eddy was giving me bunny ears and Brett looked nine years old. Much to his disgust, I pulled Sirloin into my side as I drifted into a dreamless sleep.

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A/N: This is a completely new first chapter. Sorry. I realised there were a lot of inconsistencies within the story that needed to be addressed, and the easiest way to do that was to completely rebuild it. The next chapter will be up this week.