“It’s a lonely world when your life falls to pieces,” I tell him. “I never knew I could feel so lonely and I didn’t know what to do when the man who was my best friend and my lifeline couldn’t be a part of my life anymore. I didn’t want to see anything that reminded me of him.”
“I tried to do the same. I’m originally from Michigan, but I moved to Connecticut to get away from Mel. I just had to get away.” Colton takes a moment to take in his surroundings as I’m taking in the sight right in front of me. He’s spectacular and perfect, and I should have asked him if his wife was blind and dumb too because obviously, she is. This
man will fly across the world on a whim chance of meeting someone, isn’t a typical kind of man.
“This feels surreal,” I tell Colton. “In a good way.”
“I feel like I know you. Does that make you feel weird?” he asks.
“Only because I don’t know a thing about you.”
“I’ll tell you anything and everything you want to know about me because I need your friendship. I need you in my life, and I’m sorry if that scares you. I’m being totally forward, and I am never ever like this, but when all hope is gone, we jump, right?”
“Right,” I tell him, agreeing wholeheartedly. Maybe I should find this odd and a bit creepy, but it all feels kind of serendipitous. “Misery loves company.”
“It sure does. Although are you still miserable? Your letters felt therapeutic to me as if you were tossing all your pain away and dumping it onto the paper to serve back to Frankie. Do you feel that way?”
“That’s why I stopped writing the letters. I decided I had nothing left to say,” I explain.
“I feared that was the case. I had been receiving those unnamed letters every few days like clockwork. Then, they stopped. I have missed your words that completely described my feelings. I imagined myself having the ability to say the same lines to Mel, but knowing her, she’d find me and try to blame me again, and I couldn’t handle the thought of that happening.”
“Well, on the other side, Frankie didn’t exactly hunt me down, so I had to realize my letters were just falling into a void somewhere.”
“They weren’t, Rose. Those letters were helping me. They were making me wish I knew who was strong enough to write such thought-provoking statements that ripped my heart out even when I didn’t know you. You’re brilliant.”
That’s a lot of recognition to give a stranger, but I might just take it.
I am so caught up in the moment, focused on this man’s face, and wondering so many different things that I didn’t spot the rain clouds moving in. The sky has opened, and we’re sitting in two bistro chairs getting drenched with monstrous size raindrops.
“Your laptop,” he says, taking it and slipping it into his fleece. “Come on, let’s get inside.” If he didn’t point out the fact that my laptop was getting wet, I might have stayed seated under the rain, feeling the euphoria of nature and all it encompasses, such as fate.
I follow Colton to the coffee shop door. He opens the door, but I know that doesn’t mean much if a person is going to turn out to be a cheater someday. Still, I appreciate the gesture. “Thank you,” I offer, sneaking beneath his arm to step inside.
The weather isn’t warm enough to be in short sleeves and soaking wet, and the heat isn’t on full blast in the coffee shop, so I can’t help but shiver a bit as I stare aimlessly out the floor-to-ceiling window.
Colton takes my laptop out from within in his fleece and places it down on a small table. He rushes to a napkin dispenser and returns to dry off my poor machine “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I can get it.”
“You would have noticed the rain if I didn’t distract you. It’s my fault. Plus, you’re shivering.” Colton unzips his fleece, pulling one arm out at a time. I don’t say a word until he’s reaching over with it to drape over my shoulders.
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“Please. Let me keep you warm from the rain.”
“You aren’t real, are you?” I ask him, pulling his coat a little snugger around my chest.
His fleece smells like a light cologne mixed with laundry detergent. It’s comforting. I glance down at his boots, recalling one of the first things I noticed about him when he walked into the coffee shop. “Are you in construction?”
“Yes, I am,” he says, peering down at his boots. “Very perceptive.”
“What kind of construction?” I continue, wanting to learn as much about him as I can in whatever time we have.
“Mostly, I work with housing developments. I do a lot of the framing work.” That explains his bulky upper body. It must be all muscle.
“You said you’re from Michigan?”
“Yes, but I grew up in Connecticut, then moved out to Michigan. Therefore, I was technically moving home, you could say.”
“Family?”