losing myself in you
[Karen looks for beauty tucked away in corners of dark alleyways and empty parks at dawn. Noah looks for something else in soft-sung words and the chords of his guitar. They’re both dreamers who dream of things they never thought were possible.]
Karen manages to stumble across Noah in a coffee shop one rainy day.
Her breath curls up into the cold air, a smoky ashen white, reminiscent to the days where she'd spend hours out in the winter cold and pretend to smoke, pretend that she was an adult, someone with authority and nothing like drink your milk, do your homework, go to bed holding her back until she was called inside for dinner. She would amend, in years to come that being adult was, well, kind of sucky.
“Double espresso, on the go please,” she says, words clear and well-used rolling off her tongue as she rummages through her pocket for change. She chances a look at the rain pattering against the glass outside and promptly backtracks. “Scratch that, I'll have it in here.”
The person serving her behind the counter is a boy with soft brown eyes and tussled light brown hair. The peeling tag on the front of his shirt announced in neat loopy cursive that he was in fact, called Noah.
He nods and gives her a lingering look that she can't decipher, before promptly moving to the side and flicking one of the espresso machines on.
“I'll be at table seventeen!” she calls out as she moves out of the line, unnecessarily loud and drawing a few odd looks in her direction.
The boy -Noah- looks up at her again, this time serving another customer, brows lightly furrowed and casting the same lingering look her way.
Karen doesn't bother with figuring it out, and doesn't think of it as she seats herself and watches the rain trail clear see-through rivers down glass.
Like tears.
---
The person who brings her, her espresso is a young woman with curved lips and eyes that danced in mirth.
“Your espresso,” she smiles and hands her a cup. And a towel.
What?
“Hey! Um, miss-” Karen squints at the crumpled name tag and the chicken scratched writing on it. “Miss Nicole. I- Your towel!”
The young woman stops mid-step, and laughs, colourful and bright.
“It's not from me.” then she gestures in the general direction of the counter. “Noah, counter-boy over there thought that you'd catch a cold. I can see why though,” Nicole eyes her hair sceptically, taking in wet strands of blonde and streaks of dyed black clumped together. “So he asked me to bring you the towel. You can leave it on the table when you're done with it”
“Um, thanks. I guess” She murmurs, and she is. Thankful that is.
“No worries,” Nicole smiles again and walks off, tray in hand to the next table. Karen is able to catch words fondly spoken, ‘Such a nice boy’ before the young woman is out of hearing range.
Karen makes sure to leave a generous tip before she leaves.
---
Noah, as Karen later finds out, much, much later, sings songs at an old run down bar on Tuesday nights in order to help with his rent.
His roommate finds it ridiculous that he doesn’t just use the money his parents left behind for him when they went to Europe, and he tells him that it’s complicated.
Tonight, he’s sitting on an old rickety stool singing love ballads to a group of people too inebriated to hear him. The words flow evenly out of his mouth, the familiarity of the words warm and comforting. Several tables down from the makeshift stage and shabby spotlight, he can spot his brother and his cool eyes, warmth teasing at the edges of his lips.
Aaron, his elder sibling had returned from New York two days ago, dressed smartly in a pinstriped suit and complaining about the contents of his fridge as well as his brother’s hobbies and lack of proper social life(“Why are you such a girl? At least stop singing all those love ballads.”“What’s wrong with love ballads?”).Though in spite of his apparent detest for Noah’s love ballads, he still attends his brother’s performance the following Tuesday and even wolf whistles at the end of it (“Even if you are a total girl, you’re still my brother. Or, um, sister”)
Noah smiles softly and thinks that this is family and wonders why he would want anything more than that.
---
Karen is content with life. She spends her spare time stumbling through the city in a daze and strolling through alleyways and empty parks with a camera hanging around her neck and a grin tugging at her lips.
So many things that people miss, so many small things, moments that are left ignored or unnoticed in favour of the hustle and bustle of life. Karen captures these moments through her camera lens, and wonders how many people bother to look for the beautiful things in life rather than keeping their eyes forward and on stone pavement.
‘You’re such a dreamer,’ she’d been told once by a girl with bright eyes and numbers written along the purse of her lips and the lines of her face. ‘There are no rules with you, sometimes I envy that.’
‘There’s a price I pay,’ she tells the girl with bright eyes, but is stopped when the other girl shakes her head.
‘No price is too high for freedom’
She hasn’t seen the girl in years, can’t remember the sound of her voice or how tall she was. But she still recalls the numbers written along the purse of her lips and the success written in her eyes.
Karen wonders if she is happy.
---
While ambling along the halls of her university, Karen spots a familiar head of tussled brown hair and a flash of soft brown eyes.
“Hey!” she calls, waving her arm in exaggerated arcs, and running up to the boy. “Hey,” she says again when she’s slapped a hand on his shoulder and met startled eyes. “You’re the guy from the coffee shop right? Er, Noah I think?”
“Yes?” Noah shifts uncomfortably on the spot, fingers fidling with the strap of his bag, eyes uncertain.
Karen grins a little wider and lets her arm drop from where she was gripping his shoulder.
“I wanted to thank you. For the towel, but I never had a chance to since your shift was over before I finished my coffee.”
“The towel?” He frowns a little before his eyes light up in realization. “Oh, ah-” he shifts again, flushing slightly. “It was nothing.”
“Nothing?!” Karen draws back incredulously, hand flying over her heart in mock shock before laughing. “So what’s your major? I didn’t expect you to attend this university. You didn’t seem like the artsy type to me.”
“I’m a music major,” he says softly, as if dreaming about something outside of logistics and numbers was something to be ashamed about. Karen finds it a little heartbreaking.
“Better than my major,” she grins a little. “I major in photojournalism. People say I won’t amount to much, but I love it either way, you know?”
Noah’s eyes dart away from hers and he hums something that sounds like an agreement.
“Oh! Look at the time.” She holds up her arm and squints at her watch. “Professor’s going to kill me if I’m late again,” and muttered under her breath, “Why does he have to be so high maintenance?”
Karen’s off running down the hall the next second leaving Noah with a ‘See you around sometime’ and kicked up dust.
He stares at her back and feels almost cheated. He doesn’t know her name
---
A/N: This story was picking up dust in the corner of my hard drive, so I decided to post it YWS. I'll probably never finish this piece (the reason why it isn't posted in the romance novel category) as I can't really bring myself to write anything more for this (there's a couple more thousand words for this hidden away on my computer, but I feel as if I should just post a small part of it for peace of mind and because I don't know where else to cut the story in a way that makes it sound somewhat finished). I do feel a bit iffy for not making this post longer in order to flesh out the characters more and show that this isn't completely plotless, but the story would end up sounding very incomplete otherwise.
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