“I’m slightly…intrigued.” I looked up to a smirking face. He paused before his last word and grinned now, as though there was an underlying brilliance to his phrasing, as though he knew something I didn’t. I met eyes of deep oceans, crashing waves. My breathing hitched, and I coughed on the sip of coffee that burned my mouth. “Your thoughts seem to be making you distraught, uncomfortable even. And that sketch, is it you?”
He sat down in the chair across from me, though I hadn’t invited him. His eyes stared into me, and his question hovered between us. I heard something touch the table, and he slid his hand towards me. Slowly, lifting his palm, he revealed a penny. It looked like it had known too many hands, too many pockets, too many years. I felt the urge to laugh, to mock his visible, tangible cliché. Instead…
“It—it was. Well, years ago. Feels longer than ten years.” I fumbled over my words, tripping and stumbling in bafflement as to why I was speaking to this stranger.
“I could tell. Eyes never change, even with age,” he whispered back, eyes trained on the paper between us. “Who’s the artist?”
I unconsciously glared up at him, steadily becoming more livid at his blunt intrusion into my evening. Today wasn’t for strangers.
“That doesn’t matter to you.”
The waves of his eyes continued to crash and swirl behind his dark hair. For a moment, something flickered across his face, something that could have almost indicated I had been too harsh. It was too fleeting to tell. A crash tore me away from him. The barista crouched down a few tables over, sighing and picking up pieces of broken mugs. Blacks and browns of mocha and java and cream spread across the tile, bleeding into the cracks, blending hazelnut and French vanilla. It was an aroma almost shocking. I picked up the mug in front of me, still watching the girl carefully gather the pieces of disaster. When I set the coffee back on the table, a second penny sat in front of me, begging to gleam like it had once before. I hadn’t even heard the stranger dig for more change from his pocket.
“Why does my history matter to you?” I questioned, tilting my head slightly.
“You’re the type of stranger who feels familiar. Like you have a story I already know but can’t quite put into words.”
“What story do you know the words to?”
And he told me.
“A river separated my home and my neighbors from the school and the local shops where I grew up. I walked across a bridge everyday to get to the library and my classes and the grocery store. One night, I was late coming home. The sun had set and I stepped onto the bridge in darkness, feeling my way across. That’s when I saw him.
“Jeffery never talked to anyone in town. He lived alone. No one knew a thing about him. Sometimes, he’d disappear for a few days and come back with a look in his eye that no one could describe; he’d come back with eyes of different colors. I saw them brown, I saw them green, I saw them blue and ice-cold. That night, crossing the river, I watched Jeffery sit in his old wooden boat, oars in his lap, talking into his hands. He was whispering and I could hear the faint echo of each consonant flicker off the water. Jeffery used to tell his secrets to the fallen stars he said he could catch.
“I need to know your story.” He reached his hand toward me, attempting to touch the tips of my fingers with his. I jerked back, tugging on the sleeve of my sweater, wrapping it closer around my shoulders and the flowing, ruffled cotton fabric of my cream colored dress.
“I need to show you something. Maybe it will help you understand. I drew it the night I saw Jeffery on the river.” He bent down, reaching for the worn canvas messenger bag that sat by his feet. I watched him pull out a tattered looking sketchpad, the cover nearly torn off. Carefully, he turned the pages back, and I saw glimpses of rivers and trees and old men in wooden boats. He lingered on a page on which I assumed to be Jeffery on the river, but this time, sitting in the boat with him was a brilliant sketch of a crescent moon. He ran his finger along the arc of the boat and turned the page.
“This.” It was all he said as he flipped the book around toward me.
I blinked. I said nothing.
Maybe the features were a little skewed. The eyes weren’t quite right. The hair wasn’t exactly the right length…but the arm.
I rubbed the length of my sweater sleeve, tugging on the end. I looked at the stranger sitting across from me as I shrugged off my sweater, revealing my shoulders and my sleeveless dress. The ink almost burned on my skin. His eyes followed up from my wrist as he stared at the permanent snake that circled and swirled and slithered its way up my forearm, across my bicep and rested its head on my shoulder.
I fixed my eyes on the sketch, tracing the penciled snake.
“Please,” he whispered, pulling out a handful of pennies. “Tell me your story.”
