Short Stories

SR 1.2

It's an awkward thing, when you first meet someone. You feel their energy for the first time, they sniff around yours. You're drawing conclusions about the person as they do the same to you. 

That didn't really happen with Josh. 

For the first time in weeks I leave the comfort of my house. I go to the small cafe that's opposite the town center. It's an old establishment, like one of those little diners that has trash food but everyone goes there. Going up to the counter and taking a seat I look around aimlessly, I'm not meeting anyone, I'm just going to observe. 

And observe I did. 

My eye catches at the mysterious figure of a man sitting in the far left corner of the diner next to the gaudy fake, white potted ferns. Singular coffee mug on the table. Dark hair that falls like a curtain at the sides of his head barely brushing his shoulders. A three week old beard shooting out on a clenched jaw as he reads the papers. He's way too young to be reading the papers. 

I can't take my eyes off him for a minute and I think he knows I'm staring because eyes of milk chocolate look up at me. He shifts anxiously in his seat. My eyes catching corded muscles that ripple under a plain white shirt. I will my eyes to look away and focus on something else, like the food that Angela just placed in front of me. 

Quickly snatching her hand before she could walk off to tend to someone else I hope she sees the bubbling question in my eyes. 

" What is it hun?" She says leaning to the side with a hand on her hip. She's worked at the damn cafe since I was young, she even brought me the giant slice of chocolate cake for my seventh birthday with seven identical pink candles sticking out the top. 

"Who's that?" I say gesturing to the guy I was molesting with my eyes a few seconds before. 

She turns to look at him and then slowly turns back with a whistle, eyes darting around the room before ducking her head to speak. "That's Joshua McIntire. Came back from Iraq early. He got the PTSDs. Apparently he can't be around nobody for too long." 

My eyebrows quirk up, not just from Angela's horrible pronunciation of PTSD but also her obvious over-exaggeration. I take a fry and bite into it fiercely while watching Josh. His head picks up to flicker over me a second later. 

I decide there and then that there was only one way to move forward. 

Picking up my basket of fries and milkshake I head over to his seat. He watches me approach, calculating eyes tracking every movement like a predator and I feel it ripple through every fibre in my body. I could see his right leg starting to tap a fast rhythm into the floor. I try to smile but I'm not quite sure how it looks. Getting closer, he sits back even more, shoulders broadening and broadening and broadening. I start to think then as I watch how huge he is that this is no ordinary man. 

"Hi there Josh, anyone sitting here?" 

"Well no uh...but." 

"Thanks." I swiftly take a seat not wanting to hear his protests. Rocking back I study him and I see it all. Those eyes, they tell me a hundred things at once. He shifts again and watches me as his arms start to move across his chest into a fold. Jaw tense, foot tapping furiously into the floor. 

"I brought some fries. " I say pushing the basket towards him as I take one with a wide grin. 

By his reaction, I didn't think he liked fries. 

He stays quiet but I see the questions forming on his face, those eyes show me the wheels turning in his brain. A brain that probably has so much in it he can't decipher it. A brain that has been transformed into something I would never understand.