Sunday in New York

It was a Summer day in New York, June 28th to be exact. I finally had a day off from my exhausting job as an intern for Rolling Stone magazine. I'm an aspiring journalist but at the moment I'm the gopher. I go to Starbucks everyday, run errands, sit in on interviews and photo shoots. Other than the high stress and lack of sleep, I have a pretty good job.

But as I said before, today is my day off. It's a gorgeous Sunday in New York, I slept in till ten, had a simple breakfast of fruit and oatmeal and tea, I got dressed and now I'm on my way to Barnes & Noble. I took my time browsing through the books, sipping at a tea I bought from Starbucks a few blocks down.

I took a book down from one of the shelves and read the back cover. As I became interested in it, I started flipping through the first couple pages and began to walk around the corner. I became so absorbed in it I failed to pay attention as to where I was walking and ended up bumping into somebody.

"Oh no, I'm so sorry!" I gasped when I realized he was holding a cup of coffee. "I'm so sorry."

He turned to face me and lightly laughed, "That's fine, nothing drastic happened."

"Again, I'm terribly sorry." I looked up at him, holding the book close to my chest.

"That's okay, don't worry about it, I get so preoccupied sometimes too when I read a good book." He smiled.

He had a great smile, I failed to notice that at first.

"What book are you reading?" He asked, looking at the book in my arms.

"Oh, it's The Picture of Dorian Gray. It's my favourite." I softly smiled.

"Really? That's a pretty heavy book."

I made a face.

"No! Not that I'm saying you're not the type to read heavy books, I just meant that it's heavy...there's a lot of words and detail...I'm really digging myself into a deeper hole. I'm sorry if this sounds bad." He gave a short laugh, pushing his dark hair back nervously.

I laughed, "No it's okay, I understand. It is pretty wordy and heavily detailed, but I love it because of how passionate it is. Oscar Wilde had this way of writing that, you just don't get in today's literature. His way of writing was so, casual, but he got his point across."

He smiled, "You know, I've never read any of his work, but now that you tell me how great it is I just might have to."

His eyes were nice too, they were a pale green and he had dark eyelashes that made the colour of his eyes stand out even more. He was really handsome, he had the kind of face that you only saw in 1940s and 50s films; He had almost a James Stewart look with the masculinity of Cary Grant and the youthfulness of James Dean. In other words, handsome was too weak a word to fully express how handsome he really was.

I blushed and cleared my throat, taking in a breath about to introduce myself. "I'm-"

But I was cut off. My phone started to ring and everyone started giving me the evil eye. I put the book on a shelf and excused myself from him to answer my phone.

"Hey where are you? I'm at the restaurant. Please tell me you didn't forget our brunch date?" My friend asked over the phone.

"Oh no, I'm sorry, I'll be right there. I'm like, ten minutes away." I bit my lip.

"Alright, I'll be waiting." She laughed. I just laughed and hung up, going back around the corner where he was still standing.

"I'm sorry, I have to go." I half-smiled, pulling the strap of my messenger bag higher onto my shoulder.

"That's okay." He smiled.

"Um...well, it was nice talking with you...bye." I shrugged my shoulders, taking one last look into his eyes before walking past him to leave.

"Bye." He smiled.

Walking away, I looked over my shoulder before turning the corner. I saw him take a book from one of the shelves. It was the Picture of Dorian Gray.

I smiled to myself and kept on walking.