Bring Me Back to You

The look in his eyes could've turned the waves of the sea behind him into an avalanche. Or something.Cold and blue, they were. Arctic and way-off, they were too. Even though they didn't look frail, a wee speck of secrecy did fall short to hide in them. No clues of warm sunshine and bubblegum and acoustic lullabies. Just a wintry mist fogged them up, like the one that was shrouding his veins up, dimmer than they needed to be.

Uncaringly, he stepped inside the coffee shop by the bay, clouds of dust filling his shoes like nebulas, and leaving the mixture of the wind that could've, would've been able to catch his nineteen-year-old chalk skin if it wasn't for the jacket he was trapped thick in. He was quaffed slowly, by the vanilla concretes with the smell of saltwater and forest pines, freeing his lungs a bit for the sunrise.

The moment he sat at his usual table, he ordered his usual cup of coffee. It didn't matter to him that it was his first time in years here. No, the thought didn't matter to him at all. Truth be told, the atmosphere could've even been refreshing. Although there was one little thing that had been bothering him all the while. One thing, that messaged unnerving bubbles on his stomach for some reason.

It was just that the place was an absolute stranger to him.

He knew he was still in the same room—Mediterranean taupe walls, perfectly-burnished biscuit chairs and tables, and waiters and waitresses serving to the few people inside with the uniforms he memorized too well. Even the view of the bay, with the tangerine prints of the sunrise, curdling through the ocean waves with its orange and pink glow, in the glass windows that stretched vast from the ceiling to the floor beside him was quite the same. True, almost everything was the way his mind had coped to remember. So what was it that made the place so painfully unfamiliar to him?

Yes, he remembered then. The place was foreign, because of something missing. Oh, like a jigsaw puzzle it was. If even one single piece was lost, the whole will not be the same any longer. He perfectly knew what that missing piece was, however. Who the missing piece was.

His first love.

This was their usual destination, where they usually end up after a stroll around the bay, or a date for some special cherry-on-top occasions, or even just ordinary dates.

And how he terribly missed those days. And out of the blue it swept over him, that perhaps that was the reason his life and the place had separated in the past years. Maybe for the lack of reason? Purpose? Himself, he had no idea. But drop by drop, they sure had gone. His feelings of aspirations to be here were crushed into crumbs, too few and too little for him to come back to the place ever since she left him. But now his mind couldn't even tell why he had come here at all. There had been a barricade between himself and the place ever since their past, and yet there he was again, sitting on the same place where they used to be.

He swerved dull eyes away from the glass window. Memories are only made to torment and regret, he thought to himself. He looked around then, not because he was expecting anything, but to rest his head from those troubling thoughts. So he was a hundred and one percent certain that he wasn't expecting it at all.

A girl. She was sitting on the other end by the glass window with caramel eyes. They emulated the glint outside, luminous under a fine cluster of fine lashes and were moving from left to right, intently following the sentences on the book of her left hand, with its first dusty-lipped pages curled to the front on the perforated ends of the cover. Her right fingers were cuddling a coffee cup. Her hair was in shades of molten copper flowing down her chest, a waterfall in contrast with her cherry lips that looked overflowing with lustrous warmth.

And it was no wonder why he thought she was beautiful. Indeed, her physical statuesque was alluring. Yet he thought, there was something...something about her that was more than that. Finer women had toddled on those restless eyes of his before, and for some reason, he was intensely intrigued by this girl. Something was pulling him, dragging him like a strong magnet towards her.

What was her name? What book was she reading? Were her lips really as warm as they look? He was dying to know.

And there he was, staring at the woman with longing eyes, and again, he wasn't expecting anything. Oh yes, no expectations at all...

...and that was when she looked back at him.

She must've gotten the feeling where people can feel that they are being looked at, or just a plain intuition to turn around that it so happens that her eyes fell upon his. They were looking at each other.

He smiled at her.

Suddenly, he saw her eyes began to blink in fast motions. Her ever-so-rosy cheeks turned into even pinker shades of crimson delight, while her lips tumbled open in confusion, probably if she should say something or smile or what. But when words seemed to tangle in her mouth but failed to fall, her head ducked awkwardly beneath the book, looking her best to keep her focus with delicate eyebrows knitted together.

He looked away from her, confused by the confusing reaction. Confusing, indeed. What the hell did that mean? Did she want to say something to him? Did she...

Whatever it was, he shrugged it out.

He had been in love before, that's as obvious and clear as the gigantic pane of the window beside him that was revealing the peak of the heavens. And he had been hurt, as a result. And from the moment it happened, he swore to himself that he wouldn't want to topple over stuff like that again. His life orbited with the world just fine after that. It was even perfectly stirred, he could say.

Yet there he was, feeling like a bamboozled child who had fallen on a murky cliff several times before, bruised to the bones, but was willing to fall on it again. Or maybe it wasn't that. Maybe he just grasped the reality that no matter how smoothly blended his life was, it still lacked the flavor that would complete it all along.

What the hell am I thinking? This is stupid, his backlash to the previous thought. He lubberly sipped his coffee, ignoring the gurgle in his tummy that was sending him to his overhanging demise, or whatever it was.

And that was when it happened.

It just came to him that his drink was still as hot as the intestines of hell, stabbing the very cells of his throat like a rogue knife, like his mouth had just been kissed by the deep burning of the liquid from the back of his teeth.

Of course, it made him spew out the liquid for comfort—something that had been sucked right out of him even before the episode—and droplets of coffee and saliva sprinkled unskillfully on his table. He removed the remains of the liquid resting on his lips by the back of his hand, and sighed.

Great., he thought.

Soon, fire turned to ashes and he could breathe again. Once more he felt his constricted muscles relax and loosen back to its uncaring state; numb and bitterly cold were his eyes again. A tiny pinch of curiosity lingered in his mind, however. No, if he really had to admit, it was not just a tiny one. And if truth be brutally bared and revealed, an overflowing amount of curiosity suddenly struck him like lightning.

He took a glance at the girl again.

Did she see his stupid spit momentum? He hoped not. But negative particles of twisted hopes smothered him down to the thought that she did. His stomach and pulse heaved, telling him to get ready for the sight of her disgusted face, in case she really did see, if she's keen enough to notice him.

But his prediction didn't happen.

Instead of a sight of displeased features, the girl had her moistened lips curved upward, conquering her face, exhibiting warm sunshine and bubblegum and acoustic lullabies—all the things that his eyes hid from the world under those bags of infinite secrets. She now had her book closed beside her coffee cup, and her elbow was resting on the table, with fingertips tucking clumsy strands of bronze hair to the back of her ears, and was laughing prettily at his gesture. In a good way.

He laughed too.

Sense, it didn't have any. To her eyes he was a stranger, and to his, so was she. But now they were smiling at each other welcomingly, like they had breathed into each other all their lives.

A smile—an instrument to touch someone's soul.

An instrument that cleared up the gloomy fog in his eyes, finally surrendering back to the mysterious arms of....

"Here's your coffee, sir."

The waiter's voice tugged him to consciousness, completely interrupting his thoughts. He had put the tray from his hands to his table and he blankly stared as he placed a cup of coffee on top of it.

This made him pull his eyebrows together in confusion. But I already had my coffee, hadn't I? he thought to himself. I even spat out—

He looked at his table for the second time. To his surprise, not even a hint that a first coffee cup had ever been there—just a tidy clone of a blank canvas was on top of it.

His heart suddenly jolted out a heavy beat, a beat too heavy for his whole body to take. He knew he already had his coffee, and he knew he didn't ask for another one.

"Excuse me, but I already had my coffee," he politely told the waiter, raising a finger.

The waiter's eyes blinked in surprise at him. "You...just ordered this one, sir."

For some reason, the waiter's deafening footsteps as he walked away made his heart and breathing began to beat horrendously fast. His body trembled, and a smack of fear took over his veins. A gentle sweat gradually trickled down his forehead, and for a second he wondered why.

He just stared at the fresh and full coffee before him, and decided to ignore the waiter's peculiar action. He curved his eyes back to the far end of the shop, where the girl had been sitting.

He hoped to find her, smiling again. He hoped to find those rosy cheeks shining through her fair skin, those golden eyes reflecting cinnamon-colored beams from the sky by the window, and those lips—those warm, welcoming lips that produced fuzzy loops down his stomach.

But there wasn't anyone on the chair by the far end of the coffee shop window.

Empty.

His heart collapsed and crumbled down to shards in sorrow and despair. He looked around the room frantically, browsing through every detail that his vision could touch.

He knew that she had been there. He knew. He was solemnly sure was there. She had just been smiling back at him...wasn't she?

And then it hit him.

Those familiar features, those familiar sounds, that familiar smile...

...it can't be.

Tears thawed from his eyes as he looked down. His hands. Oh, his hands. Crumpled skin greeted his eyes, witnessing the deep furrows crinkled by time. Old and gravely pale, they were. His heart grew weaker as he realized the truth, earning him the desire to rest and lie down for a little while.

He wasn't nineteen anymore, the smile he received before wasn't just from any girl's.

He stared at the empty seat. It seemed like a thousand miles now, with the memory of his lover's fading away flooded his mind. She died in his very arms that cold night. And tears continued to fall, drowning his old heart in a pitiable cry as her sweet silhouette overlaid his blurring view one last time. Now she was visible to him, to tell him that...she was there too. Everything started to turn from shades of sepia and into what seemed like the present ticking of the hours, bringing the coffee shop, their nest of love besides heaven with angels singing out their songs, back to its old times, bringing love back into their hearts...and bringing him back to her again.

And as he saw that last smile that dawned on her lips, he fully closed his eyes that released freeing tears of his broken heart.

Eyes that were filled with sunshine and bubblegum and lullabies.

Eyes that were warm all along.