Surprising Events

I thought what to give you as a Christmas present, I didn’t know, like, Nope, no idea, so I was thinking what would you like, and i had this idea of maybe giving you something special, something a bit more personal than just a gift bought in some store, and i remembered that you liked my blog, and probably it is one of the reasons why we are together, you realized I wasn’t just a “Playful boy”. And so I decided to write something for you. Something just for you, hmm, I hope I find a good way to present it, because I don’t think there is enough time for me to make this is a small book or something, I had the idea a bit too late, so, just talking stuff in advance.

I really hope you like this dear. I don’t see anything else I could give to you that would be more personal than this. There is a lot I would like to tell you, we have talked about a lot of interesting and deep stuff, but I also wanted this to not change in time, and I can’t promise that maybe our Believes or actions will remain the same in the far future, so I will stick with the other option, a story (the harder Idea too) hopefully I will have enough time till the 24th December to write a good and not-so-short story for you gorgeous). Maybe a couple of stories, again, I am improvising here (this will sound funny when you read it I guess).

The wonderful and frustrating events that got them together, again, and again.

They say the world is a living thing, not just a big mass of rock, earth, water, clouds, and organic material, which would include a lot more than we sometimes imagine. Organic Material, sounds a bit too cold to call it that way to the enormous amount of living creatures that have this big mass of floating rock as their home, their only possible home.

Trees, from those big ones, with some many leafs that provide the so desired shadow in the middle of a hot summer, to the slim ones, the bushes, the climbing plants, palm trees, so many of just this type of Organic Material, maybe the most honorable one, usually not harming but giving life, without possible complain, they grow if they are cut (if not cut to much), they give away their children to feed those who seek nourishment.

Micro organisms, most of the time to small for the eye to see, without some fancy gadget or tool, actually, for most of our short existence in this planet we call Home, we did not know about their existence, no idea, at all, some of us, the smarter of us, with the brightest minds imagined them, small things being everywhere, being the responsible for sickness and also life, some times they were called crazy, oh, well, most of the time, they were called crazy, but here we are, knowing those little animals (if you can call them that way, why not?) are pretty much everywhere, we ourselves are composed by thousands of different kinds of this little funny-looking Organic Material.

Before continuing It’s important to highlight that just Organic Material doesn’t mean life, of course, but what is life without it? The sole fact of life itself is quite a mystery, and unless you quote some of the hundreds of different explanations from the different religions, no one knows how life emerged for the first time in this big floating and good looking balloon we call earth.

And so, it comes to us, not specifically us, but animals, the category we are in, mammals, to be more specific, one of the again, thousands of organism that share this place with us, some are big, other small, some live in big families by the thousands, working as a big unit, and so others prefer the freedom of the loneliness, but above all, we, Humans, the “Masters of them all” if we are so egocentric to call ourselves that way, of course. We go around building our big cities, building our small towns, crafting our clothes and tools, gadgets if those tools are way too complex for the common folk to understand, we have computers that try to simulate the universe, and depending on the result we are looking for, a lot of times they are successful, all that power, intelligence, big kinda functioning societies, and we still don’t have the answers for so many basic and so important things.

They say the world is a living thing, and who would possibly doubt it? I just mentioned just a bunch of the extremely complex beings that occupy the world, it is a vibrating world, full of wonderful living creatures. But wait, that is just in the outside, in the shell itself, in the mere skin. If we are to talk about the world, we shall know it as much more than just it’s skin.

So I say once again, they say the world is a living thing. Is it? Well, If i had the answer to that question I wouldn’t be writing this story, and the little of it would be a scientific one, this would probably be published in a nature (and quite important) magazine, but nope, I will instead give you this tale, in which you shall see some peculiar events, and maybe get your own answer to the question included in the sentence I, so annoyingly, have repeated. Some say the world is a living thing, I say the world is just a hand playing around, and the universe the owner of the hand.

Chapter I

The unexpected coincidence

It all started one, let’s call it that way, Unusual Day, one unusually cold for the record, he was walking down the small street of this unorganized city, which was build by their own people, without any thoughts of the future, and the big, really big problems that those small streets would cause with the inventions of this world changing intricate machine, called car, automobile, or a bunch of other not so common names. When he finished walking down this thin street, just to get to a new, bigger, and in this case big and car-friendly street, he was hit by a paper, imagine one of those scenes in cartoons, in which the character is hit in the face by one flying paper, piece of magazine, or bulletin, you are probably thinking that in our story, the paper that hit our guy in the face was also of some kind of importance, but not at all, you are mistaken, that paper had other purpose rather than giving our guy some information. He instantaneously took the wet paper out of hit face, it was a rainy day, and so he had to pull hit right hand out of the safety of the pocket in his jacket, just to get it get with this old wet paper, ‘where did that came from’, he thought, annoyed by the water in his face and the cold of this unusual day.

I won’t give you the names of our two main characters, for that would be a irresponsibility  of me as the author to give you any personal information of this two special persons, have in mind that I am the one who knows this story, being able to look at it from the special and so comfortable perspective I am, or I was? I am. Yes.

Let’s call our guy “Dreamful” or “Dreamy” guy, that sounds like a good fit for him. So, our dreamful man was now annoyed by this unexpected incident, hating the cold as he did, he now needed to find a place to warm and clean his face, he didn’t have anything that day, he was out in the street with the only purpose of avoiding the guy of the rent, he didn’t have money to pay for his room, and so, once again, like he did last week, decided to disappear for a couple of ours, because of this he had all the time of the day to just do, as he usually did, nothing (Are you starting to understand the nickname “Dreamful”?).

Our dreamy guy continued his walk on the street, cold and annoyed as he was, looking for something to do, and a place to be for a while, without having to worry about the cold, he was in a new side of the city he was never in, usually he just walked straight from the thin street, getting after a while to the place where most of the restaurants and cafes were. But this Unusual Day, he turned right, each one of his steeps bringing him closer to this other incident.

Our dreamful guy was still walking, he was getting warmer, and have forgotten about the incident with the ‘Stupid piece of paper’ and he called it in his mind every time he remembered it, and all of this just to be able to finally find a place to get some hot coffee, some relaxing music and hopefully some heating. And so, he saw it, The Cofe Shop, it was The Cofe Shop, no, really, it is the name of this cafe, maybe the owner wanted to give it some special and peculiar name, which would explain the lack of one F and one E, or maybe it was just mere irony, since it was opposite to the main street in which all the coffee shops and restaurants were, and quite far from it too, it was actually The Only Coffee Shop Around for a cold guy to get into, or maybe the owner just had horrible spelling and bad idea of how business works.

If I have to tell you what our guy did, then you are not paying enough attention. Nevertheless, when he got into The Cofe Shop, the first thing he saw was rather peculiar, the place was full of people, not what you would expect from a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere and with a weird name. After the little shock produced by so many people in such a small place, our dreamful guy looked for a place to sit, while he was taking one menu from the front of the bar as he always did, he hated the ‘How can I help you?’ and the constant ‘Are you ready to order?’ he was always ready to order, because he always ordered pretty much the same things everywhere, and it was also quite obvious that a waiter was going to help him, that was their job anyway.

Our guy finally found a table, the problem was that the only table available, was not so available, a girl was actually sited in it, but she was alone, and since the table was supposed to be for four people, he thought ‘sure, why not, she’s just reading anyway’, and after crossing the whole cafe, because this table with the girl, or the girl with the table, whoever you prefer, was in the other side of the entrance, in a corner, probably with the best illumination of the whole place, this table was perfectly under a light bulb, while all the other tables had to share one light bulb, which is gave this sense of calmness that so may cafes look for, but since this table was in a corner, it had all the light for itself, take in mind too that only the front of the store had windows, the rest of the walls had just this continuous and wonderful  wooden-like tapestry, with really great illustrations of some paintings from the Sistine Chapel, the table our guy was walking towards had at it’s side one illustration of Zechariah, one of the minor prophets, and an old man reading for eternity in the famous ceiling of this Chapel, and in so many other replicas just like this one.

—Hello, do you mind if I sit here with you? This place is crowded –He said, hating to interrupt her in her reading, but the so long craved for coffee was worth the price–.

—Oh, uhm, hi, sure go ahead –She replied, a bit surprised to find herself being interrupted like that–.

—Sorry to interrupt you by the way. Your table was the only one available around here, and I’ve been looking for a cafe for the last half an hour or so, didn’t expect to find this place in here.

The girl just replied ‘Don’t worry’ and moved her focus back to her big yellowish book with this deep dark blue color and some white and red letters, a thriller book it seems by that cover. The short answer didn’t surprised our guy at all, he was actually expecting her to reply something like ‘Sorry, I am waiting for someone’ or something alike, so the fact that he was now scanning the menu was a good uplift to his mood, when he was ready, he called a waiter and told him what he wanted ‘A mocaccino with double cream and some cinnamon on top please, and an apricot pie, thanks’ as always, a mocaccino with double cream and some cinnamon was the usual, he hated going to some cafes which didn’t have this coffee, or even worse, they didn’t know how to make it properly, and of course, the apricot pie, this one wasn’t always available everywhere of course, but when they had it, he ate it, and he rated it every time, looking for the best apricot pie. The waiter replied with a simple ‘Of course sir, in a minute’ and off he went to take his apricot pie and to ask for his coffee at the bar, but just before leaving the waiter moved his eyes from our guy, who he was attending, to the girl sited next to him, it was something unusual, like, this waiter wanted a closer look of her.

Our guy waited for some minutes, and even with the place so full of people, the coffee arrived quite fast with the apricot pie, which was to his surprise, quite big, not those small and miserable pieces you get from some coffee shop chains. And so, he started his ritual, took the spoon (or fork, depending on the preferences of each cafe), cut the pie in three pieces, each one around the same size, then the two upper pieces in half, and proceed to take the first piece, slowly, and then he smelled it for a few seconds, it was fresh, a bit hot, probably the perfect combination between out of the oven and not so hot you can’t it it, the first test was complete, and the pie passed with a ten out of ten, great smell, now he finally took the spoon to his mouth, and just by tasting a bit of the pie he knew it, this pie was not ordinary pie, it was one of those, one of the best ones, those perfect pies he pursued, now it was just matter of ranking it between the other 3 pies which were able to get into this category before, he found the first one in a small shop, in a really cute and a bit hidden shop in Luxemburg, when he was 23, and was going around Europe with just a backpack, a big one. The second perfect pie was found in New York City, in this case it wasn’t a small and hidden shop, it was a quite big and established bakery called Lafayette Bakery, it seems that this apricot pie of them was an experiment of something, because for the two weeks he stayed in NYC, he was never able to find that pie again, the bakery never had it, and everyone in there told him that they didn’t sell apricot pies, quite a shame, the same happened in Luxemburg, he found that small shop three dais before leaving, and wasn’t able to go back for more. The third pie wasn’t in either a small shop nor a big bakery, it was actually made by the mother of one of his girlfriends, if you can call that a girlfriend, they just dated for some weeks, and one of those dais when he was at her home, her mom showed up with this big-ass four flavored pie,  apple, blackberry, blueberry, and of course, apricot. The worst thing of leaving that girl was leaving her mom and her wonderful and perfect pies, and the mother missed him even more than the girl, since he was chatting with her about recipes and flattering her of how good their pies were every time he was at their house, ‘It’s a shame it didn’t work out for you two dear’ said the mother to her one afternoon, after she found out that they had broken up, ‘Whatever, he was a pie-obsessed idiot’ was her reply.

And then, this pie, the forth one, found in this weird named, perfectly decorated, and crowded cafe, there was no doubt, it was the forth perfect pie, he couldn’t avoid to say out loud  ‘Oh my god, this pie’ when he took the first piece of it, and, obviously, was moaning with every new piece that ended up in his mouth. The pie was so good that he totally forgot about the coffee, which was good, because the coffees in this place were deadly hot, usually the waiters warned the customers about it, but since this waiter was more interested in looking at the reading girl at the table than for the safety of the tongue of our pie-obsessed guy, the fact that he forgot about it was actually good, it would have been a disaster not to be able to taste his pie properly because of a burned tongue.

With the last piece of pie finished, our guy rushed to ask for another piece, he actually told the girl at the cashing machine ‘Hey, hello, I want to buy the whole apricot pie, now, don’t sell it to anyone’, which took the pour cashier for surprise and the only reply she gave was ‘Ah, ah, OK, let me ask for the price of it, are you sure?’, he was sure, oh, he was sure of little things as much as he was sure of this.

When he returned to his table, and after giving a big sigh, he remembered his coffee, which by now was colder than how you are supposed to drink it, but anyway, the pie was perfect, who cared about the mocaccino with double cream and cinnamon at the top. But after drinking a sip of it, and going through the surprise of such a good coffee, and drinking again, he couldn’t, again, avoid to say out loud ‘Oh my god, this coffee, what is going on with this place!’, the coffee was perfect too, he hadn’t a ranking for moccacinos with double cream and cinnamon at the top, it was just his preference, but this one was great, one of the bests coffees he had tasted, ‘That explains why this place is so crowned, my God” he said.

—Do you know that you call upon God quite often? –Said the reading girl, suddenly–.

—Uh, yeah I think so, sorry to interrupt you again at your reading, but God, have you tried this coffee?,

—Yeah, I got a latte when I got here, and then I ordered a mocaccino, but mine without the double cream and I am allergic to cinnamon, so. –She said, with a smile–.

He didn’t reply immediately, because with that smile, he noticed that this girl was beautiful, like, really, really beautiful, she had big, deep blue eyes, with a bit of brown in the center, perfectly right and white teeth, gorgeous skin with some freckles, just about the perfect amount, and long thin and light brown hair, ending in curves, he couldn’t see the whole hair, but the little he saw, was enough, this girl was gorgeous, no doubt why the waiter was firing looks at her every time he could.

—You are really perceptive if you remember how I ordered my coffee –He said, smiling back at her, managing to hide his surprise by her just found out beauty–.

—Or maybe you are just annoying by interrupting me with my book so I was hating on you while you were ordering –Said she, playfully, but serious enough to make him doubt if she meant it or not, but after seeing him with his mouth a big open and the surprise and indecision in his eyes he burst into laughs– I am just kidding –She said while waving her right hand around in a way to dissipate the tension in the table– I am in fact perceptive, or at least I like to think I am.

—Good God, you are mean girl you know? I didn’t know if I had to laugh or to take my coffee and just find other place to swear with this elixir of life.

—No, no, you can stay, you are not so annoying, but I could take some of that heavenly pie of yours, since you bought the whole thing!

—But of course you can, by the way, where is that lover of you with my pie? –He started to look around to find the waiter that was the responsible for their table, and by doing it he found out that the place had now even more people, what a good idea to buy the whole pie, it would have been a shame to lose it like the other ones– there he is.

After reminding him of the piece of pie he ordered, and asking for another piece for her, and two more mocaccinos, both with double cream and one without cinnamon, he went back to focus on her ‘She is truly beatiful’ he thought.

—And now you look like that waiter, looking at me like an idiot –She said, once again smiling, ‘What is wrong with this girl, she is so playful’ he thought– how did you called him? My lover? Are you jealous or something?

—I wasn’t looking at you, I was looking at, well, my pie, I was thinking about my “Heavenly Pie” while my eyes were fixed on you –He said it slowly, trying to find a good come back for her comment, the idea of himself looking at her like an idiot wasn’t so attractive–.

—Is that supposed to make any sense at all? –She replied, while laughing, and once again waving her hand in the hair–.

—It will make sense when you try that pie woman, it will Shake Your Bon-bon, Shake Your Bon-bon.

Once again she burst into laughs, he was actually surprised that she got the reference to the 1999 Ricky Martin’s song. The waiter arrived before she could handle her laughs, and when he looked back at her, she was actually holding her belly while laughing.

—Well, here it is, ready to discover a new dimension of Bon-bon?

—Oh my God, you need to stop it, my belly is hurting, how can you even remember that song, I was but a little girl when it came out. And sure, let’s see what is this swearing all about.

—Wait, you can’t just eat it like that, give some respect to the pie. Here, let me –And he proceed to carefully cut her pie in five pieces, just as he always did, what he didn’t notice, by being so focused on the pie, was that she actually looked surprised, for the first time, she looked at him differently, who was this guy cutting her pie so delicately, giving more attention to his work than even to her, she wasn’t used to it, she knew of her beauty, and she was used to use it at her will, but this guy, he didn’t even noticed her for the first fifteenth minutes– there you go, that’s how you eat a good pie, five pieces, the smallest the first, so you don’t get overwhelmed by the taste, and then, the bigger parts so you enjoy it fully.

—Has anyone ever told you that you are weird?

—Yes. A lot of times. A girl actually was jealous of her mother because I wanted to see her mother more than her, she makes this pies, no, she makes The Pies, for real.

—You. Are. Weird. Dude, for real.

—Are you going to try the apricot pie or what?

And so, the girl took her fork (now it was a fork, maybe they ran out of spoons?) and picking up the first piece, smelled it a bit, and then put it into her mouth. Her face showed all he wanted to see, surprise, followed by delight, followed by pure and mere enjoyment.

—I told you. Now who is the one with the stupid look in her face? Uh?

—Shut up –She said, with her eyes closed, her head a little bit down, and her mouth still with the piece of pie, the sight of a person enjoying something, it was it, he wanted to take a picture of her in that moment, but it was too late when he thought of it, without mentioning how weird it would be to take a picture of an eating girl he just have met– this pie, Holy shhh. What is wrong with this coffee shop, seriously, first the coffee and now this thing, if this cafe were in the main street you couldn’t even get in here!

—I know right! I had never known of this place, and I’ve been here for like four months or something I always go to those mediocre coffee shops in the main street, but this place, I have found heaven. And quite good company to share it with.

She stopped chewing and enjoying the pie for a second, which fired some alerts in him, ‘Did I say more than I should have?’ he asked himself. But after looking at her face, he saw happiness, he saw that kind of look you find in your loved ones, that kind of happiness you feel when you get home after a long trip, with all your suitcases, exhausted and you open the door of your home, and you smell that particular smell that every household has, and you can’t avoid but to smile, maybe just in the inside, but to smile nevertheless. Those sparks of happiness, he knows how to enjoy them, and for some reason she was going through one of those sparkling moments of happiness.

—Well, yeah, you are a weird guy, but a enjoyable one too. Aren’t you going to eat your pie? Or you are going to look at me eating for the rest of the evening?

—My pie. Shit, right, I better eat it before you steal it from me, looks like this three coffees you have taken made you hungry –And so, he took the first piece of his pie, without smelling it, as he always does, without giving too much attention to it, as he always does, because he had found something even more rare, something even more exquisite than a Perfect Pie, he had found her, this unknown blue eyed girl, what secrets lay behind her perfect smile, he wondered.

Just like that, they spent the whole day together, at The Cofe Shop, talking about life, and it’s important that you understand this, they talked about Life, not their lifes, not what they did for a living, how old they were, or where they came from, they didn’t know each other name, or the reason behind how each one of them got there, he, struck by a wet paper which changed his habitual everyday route, and she, deciding that after four years in that city, it was time for her to visit that The Cofe Shop she saw so many times, but never had the chance, the time or the opportunity to get into, and also, it was a good place to be, to run from everything, it was easy to forget about the world and the problems of leaving, once again, everything behind, when you had a good books in your hand, a good coffee getting cold in front of you, and in this case, without expecting it, one of the best companies she have had in a long time, it was a shame that company would last just as much as the time of closing for The Cofe Shop, that time in which they both would have to go, each one in opposite directions, that time which they both, without thinking about it, hoped would never come.

Chapter II

An Unexpected Goodbye

At the beginning of the book I told you, repeatedly, they say the world is a living thing. And maybe I did not explain myself all too well, by “Living Thing” I refer to something with a purpose,  with the ability to adapt to different changes, and above all, with the capacity to change something, to modify it’s environment, to create a little fluctuation in the natural flow of things (you could argue that even that fluctuation is a part of the flow of things), by saying this I am trying to simplify the definition of life. A snowflake can adapt to different environments, it’s  different every time, with every iteration, but it doesn’t have a purpose, it cannot change anything, maybe with enough snowflakes it can turn a street into a mountain pass, but it’s not making a change too anything, it’s not affecting it for it’s own survival or any other reason, where a plant grows and can even destroy roads with time, in order to have more space for its roots to grow, a snowflake doesn’t  act upon anything, but the place it falls thanks to gravity.

They say the world is a living thing, and who says it can not be? Maybe it is shaping some aspects of our lives, being that giant guardian angel that look after it’s minuscules children, or just wants to have some fun with our little understanding of the universe, and all those strange coincidences are not coincidences at all, but an invisible hand shaping the form of our lives by strings we can clearly see, but which purpose we do not understand, or in most cases just underestimate, not seeing the water-clear importance of such a small incidents as a wet, flying piece of paper.

Continuing with our story, we left our dreamy pie-lover and our playful blue eyed girl talking in The Cafe Shop, and as I already recorded, they talked about many things, this book would take several more pages if I was to write all the things they said, and to be sincere to you, I hardly remember all of them, so fluently they talked and so disregarded of everything they were, that is hard to remember what they said, but to remember what was happening between them, that easily find it’s roots in your long lived memory.

It is important to imagine what happened with our two young lings, because that is core in our story, and this is just the beginning of the series of unexpected incidents that I, trying my best as my memories of them fade away with time, will relate to you gladly. To help you with this task, you need to know that they, together, finished that famous apricot pie, of which there were still 3 pieces left by the time we left them talking, take into account that they shared each piece of it, so immersed they were in the words of the other that little time there was left to think about such a carnal thing as enjoying a good piece of pie, no matter how good it was, but nevertheless, those 3 pieces soon found a better place, since they had no chance against the almost unconscious action of a hand and fork (or spoon, for some reason the pie-killer tool kept changing) picking piece by piece while the devourer watched intensively the other narrator, the same repeated over and over again, with the only difference being who was using the fork-spoon, and from time to time the call for a new piece of the heavenly but now not so enjoyed apricot pie which was the second attraction of this endless ride.

When they were leaving, our dreamful guy remembered to ask their waiter (which now was a girl, since the time for their shift had come long ago) if they made that apricot pie every day, or just on Wednesdays (It was a Wednesday, which made even more strange the crowdedness of the place), the answer was as unusual as he had learned over the years with all those apricot pies, ‘No, we don’t have it that much, is in the menu because everyone loves it, and the usual customers tend to ask for it once they have tried it, but since it’s made by the owner’s wife, it’s in fact unusual the days we have it’, was the waiter’s response, ‘such a shame, It’s quite a good marketing campaign, now you will have me here everyday asking for it’ he said, and while saying it, he noticed something strange had happened in our girl’s face, she seemed rather sad for some reason, ‘And you sir, are not the first one that would do such a thing, you were actually lucky enough to find it almost as new as it was when you arrived, and smart enough to buy it all, as they have told me to you did’, said the waiter, smiling and asking for permission to leave, since everyone was starting to leave and they had to clean tables, take payments and waiter’s stuff.

—Is everything good? Something changed in your face suddenly –He asked her, noticing that the small hints of sadness were still in her face–.

—Yeah, yeah, of course I am, I was just bored of that girl telling us the apricot pie’s story and stuff!

—Or maybe you were just jealous of me talking to other good looking girl, I mean, she has something you do not, she has the information of when those pies are made! come on. You gotta admit it.

—Admit that you are crazy, sure, but the pie logic is good, you should get her number or something –she replied, as playful and smiley as ever–.

They walked out of The Cofe Shop, and even when they knew it was already quite late into the night, because the cafe was closing, they got surprised by finding themselves into the night, when they have got into the cafe at mid afternoon, with plenty of sun light. And so, they started walking without direction, using it as an excuse to not let each other go, and even if it sounds quite strange, or if it doesn’t, I have to remind you that this two random persons never met before this day, this have been the only day, the only coffee, the only talk they ever shared till that day, and even so, they felt as if they knew each other for such a long time, and they knew, even without knowing, that they were going to take different paths after they said good bye, but the funny thing is, they never did.

—Wait –he said, suddenly, they had walked for some minutes in silence, not an awkward silence, just the kind of silence you embrace when everything seems to have been said–.

—Uh? What? –she replied, leaving behind her thoughts–.

—I don’t know anything about you, I mean, I know more about you that I know about a lot of people! But I don’t even know your name, how can I possibly not know your name!

—Because that way we are just the perfect person we found in a sunny day, in a weird name cafe, with whom we ate the best pie ever –she said, it wasn’t an instantaneous reply, but it was the best one she could think of–.

—You are not going to be the perfect person I found in all of those things you said, you are going to be a girl with a name and a phone number to which I can call and invite you to take another coffee, I can’t promise the pie, but at least the coffee.

—No, I am not. You told me that you had never seen that cafe before, because you always go the other way around, but today a paper hit you in the face or something, so you changed your route, right? –there is was again, those little hints of sadness he could see in her face before–.

—Yes I did, but what about that? It was great to meet you, and all the other good stuff.

—Well, in my case, I have seen that place hundreds of times, I live around the corner, like 5 or 10 minutes away, and I walked through that street almost every weekday, since that is the route from my university to my home, countless times I have seen that cafe, and I never went in, because I was always to “busy” to take a cup of coffee, dumb me.

—I don’t understand, you were there today, that is all that matters, is it not? –he now grew worried, those were not hints of sadness, it was sadness itself, ‘What is going on’ he thought–.

—Yeah, sure, but how many times did I miss the opportunity to be there? That is probably the best coffee in the city, but I wouldn’t know, since I don’t go around drinking coffee and relaxing like a normal human being.

—You are confusing me, seriously, what are you talking about? It’s not the end of the world, we can go tomorrow if you want.

—That is the problem –she stayed silent for some time, staring at the concrete in the sidewalk, while he was looking at her, trying to figure out something from the little expressions in her face– I am moving to Norway in two days. I am now, finally, officially an architect, and so I found a good job vacancy there, there will not be a tomorrow for me around here.

—You are moving to Norway in two days? What the hell? Are you kidding me or something? Is this one of your serious jokes that I should find funny?

—No of course not, I am serious, I am moving to freaking Norway. In two freaking days, I figured that I should visit that cafe at last, even if it was almost my last day in this city, it’s better than never. But it really pisses me off that it was such a great place, and I never went in, not even once.  –she was not more angry than sad, he could say, he was still lost, even more than before, she was moving to Norway in two days, the perfect blue eyed girl was moving to Norway in two days, what kind of joke was playing the universe to him–.

—I wasn’t expecting this, you could have slapped me in the face and told me I am a jerk, and I would have been lees surprised, I swear –he was truly surprised, he wasn’t that good with women, just about enough, and even an idiot could see, even feel, the attraction between those two from a mile away, he always struggled to meet new people, so when he did, he expected at least to be able to know them better–.

—And I wasn’t expecting to find a weird pie lover guy in the day I decided to take off for myself, you have no idea of many things I have left behind, how many things and people I have rejected just to focus on my career, you were not supposed to be there.

He was not supposed to be there indeed, from all the days in a year, and for all those years of her studying, going through that street over and over again, just once she decided to go in and take a cup of good Colombian coffee (did I mention the reason for the coffee being so good, is that the owner imported it directly from Colombia? One of the best coffee grains available, he did not charged so much more than the usual, but the coffees in a cafe are extremely expensive anyway, even if the coffee grains used are the worst), the only day she went into The Cofe Shop, from all of those opportunities, she had to met him.

She was not supposed to be there neither, from the months he had been there, from the countless times he walked up and down that thin street, and never even thought of going right instead of left, what for? No particular reason, but today something changed, she was leaving in two days, so it was now or never, the possibility of a future opportunity was no more, and for him, it was a mere “coincidence” if you want to call it that way, a wet paper hitting him in the face, changing therefore his direction, leading him directly to her feet, or I should say, her table.

They walked about her trip, her job proposal and all that was in between, when she was leaving exactly, and so they walked and talked, until she found herself really close to her home, and so it was time to say good bye, but as I said, they never did say good bye, or this story would end quite drastically and boringly, don’t you think?

—So, that is my apartment –she said, pointing in the direction of the third floor of a building– I guess it’s time to part uh?

—This is so weird you know? You are going to other country, and I just met you, and this is crazy, so call me maybe, from, Norway?

Once again she burst into laughs, it was a great way to dissipate some of the tension that had been building up until this moment.

—No I don’t think so –she said, after recovering– you know the guy from the video was gay, right?

—Yeah, not a good song to use in this moment I guess.

—Well, I think is a good –I said it twice, and I will say it again, they did not say good bye, because he was expecting those words, and even though he did not plan it, thought about it, or decided it, he kissed her just before she could finish the sentence, and what a kiss it was–.

—See you around, blue eyed girl –he said, almost in whispers, they were already at the door of her building, she was already holding her keys, and this sounds way too cliche, but the cliches exist for a reason, it’s not my fault, and so, they separated from each other, feeling each others breath still–.

—See you around, pie lover guy.

She had already opened the door, their hands were losing contact with every movement she made, and when their hands were no longer in touch, and she was about to go past the wooden door, she said her name to him, and closed the door behind her quickly. He knew her name now, he had forgotten to ask for it again, after he had tried a couple of times, and desisted seeing that she did not wanted to tell him. But she didn’t know his name, and even as she was laying her back to the wooden door, holding her keys up to her chest, she regretted both meeting him, because he was something special, and not knowing his name, because now he was going to forever be the “Pie lover guy”.

She stayed there, for a whole minute, finding herself sited in the floor after a while, still holding her keys, and when she was going to step up and leave to her apartment, she heard his voice, he had said ‘It was a pleasure to meet you, blue eyed girl’ followed by his formal presentation, with just his first name, and then ‘See you around’, apparently he had been there, in the other side of the door the same time as she had, probably thinking of her long gone, she could hear sadness in his voice, and everything he said was like talking to the wind, words wishing to be heard by the right ears, and they were, it’s hard to tell by who those words were heard, but the right person was there, listening, and it draw a smile in her face.

He was no longer the pie lover guy.

Chapter III

Missing the coincidences

And that is the story of how they met, our dreamy guy and our blue eyed girl, but so far you have read and imagined the story seen just from the side of our dreamy guy, but what happens with our blue eyed girl? Unfortunately my knowledge on her thoughts and life before that meeting is restricted, probably because she sparkled no interest in me, or she didn’t represent any  great possibility for success in my great plans. But all that changed the moment those two individuals met, I was very interested in the results that that meeting could report after a while, and so, I will show you now the world through the eyes of our girl, for the world is different for each pair of eyes that travel, live and love, no moment is the same, no color have the same hue.

She was staring the airplane’s window, looking at the clouds, just as thousands, millions of other people just like her have done before, kids being amazed by their first rememberable trip provided by a big tube of metal, with something similar to wings in each side, and some other now basic flight technology that avoided human kind for thousand of years, until after countless mistakes two forever-famous brothers started to discover the secrets of human flight. She stared at those pure white clouds, typical clouds in which you can truly believe you could just jump over and over again, until your adult brain kicks you back to reality ‘You would just fall through it’, is it survival instinct? Is everyone brains just trying to protect ourselves from committing suicide by trying to land on a fluffy white cloud? Or we have grow to lose those little impossible things that used to amaze human kind, that used to push normal folk to create some kind of device to reach the highs and, maybe, just maybe, land on a fluffy cloud?

She thought. And thought. She thought a little bit more, nonsense things as you could call them, thoughts that could possibly not be useful, or that she thought, but what else could you do, in a two hours flight, with some sleeping like dead woman at your right? Not much, but think. Eventually, as you could imagine, she thought of him, as she had done so many times and so confusingly for the last two days since she closed that thick wooden door, the clouds lost their enchantment, sadly, as she realized, for thinking of fluffiness was way less painful than thinking of a pie lover guy who she would never see again, but, anew she was wrong, for the coincidences had not finished, not even close to finish.

Doble espaciado aqui.

—Now, the annoying part –She thought, not being her first flight and knowing what lay ahead, all the work to get to her residence, starting with getting the baggage, getting a taxi, hopefully not getting lost with the address given by her not yet boss’s assistant–.

She was finally at her new, lonely and hopefully warm house, overwhelmed by the fact of all the things she had to do now, just to arrange all the things he had brought with her, packing just what she considered essential for the first few weeks, it wasn’t much, but it was more than enough for her to know that, after all, she was there, by herself, in a place she did not know at all, hopefully with a new and worthy all-the-sacrifice job, she had to get used to that place, after a lifetime of knowing your city, it can be even scary to not know the place you are now living in, imagine that, all the night dark corners that you shouldn’t go in, all the over expensive placer you shouldn’t buy in, all the social rules that you do not notice at all if you grow up in the same city, but you can’t think about and you need to get used to when you are in a new city, an outsider, a newcomer, a tourist, at least for the next few weeks, months maybe.

—And it all beings –She said out loud, after a long sigh, a sigh that gave her the strength  necessary to push away all those useless thoughts–.

She walked down the door into the house, since she had been standing next to the door since she entered the house. She left the baggage next to the wall, walked down the corridor, and laid down into the couch, ‘Finally’, was all she thought, and while her eyes closed slowly, she started to think about him. Where could he be? Was he thinking of her? He wasn’t anything special at first, just a normal guy, jet-black hair, semi curly, brown eyes, white skin, taller than her, nothing really special about him, the most remarkable thing is probably his voice, as least for her, it was a kind, soft but quite deep voice, not those kind of deep voices that show dominance, or are even annoying because they’re too loud, no, just that good amount of bass sound coming out of his lips.

She smiled, and then she laughed at realizing she was smiling when thinking about his voice. ‘It was quite sexy’, she said, and laughed some more. She then fell asleep, and into her dreams there was the key to find his dreamy guy, but as you may recall, we cannot remember most of our dreams, after all, dreams are just our minds dumping the trash out, while qualifying it, so we can keep our sanity at point. And just as most of the morning dreams, she didn’t remember this one neither at waking up, but it is useless for me to take advantage of my viewpoint, it’s not fair at all, so for now let’s leave our boring (and yet sleepy) blue eyed girl alone, because for now she’s just going to get along perfectly, new country, new apartment, no friend or family, and of course, new job, hopefully.

doble espacio aqui

He was walking down the street, as usual, with not much to do, he was realizing how things had changed in the past two weeks, since he knew that nameless girl and ate that stupid pie, he finally got a job, not because he really wanted to, but the opportunity came by itself (or so he thought), it was what he liked doing after all, photography, he never studied it, but his father was a world famous photographer, while his mother had a business empire. His father traveled the world with his 15.000 thousand dollars camera (plus extra equipment), taking photographs for every magazine you can think of, if the magazine is widely popular, they probably had or eventually will have a photograph taken by his father.

His mother in the other hand, she was a business woman, ruling her little clothing empire in Europe, expanding every time the economic climate or her “Business Intuition” let her, at least she had a business intuition, because she never had a mother’s one, as he always joked when someone mentioned it. And then there was him, a 29 years old half Medicine degree, half Information Technology degree, and finally a Fine Art diploma at Leeds College of Art, which of course, his mother paid, like everything else. An useless diploma, Art, like if he could use that for something other than showing it “proudly”, the most important reason of him finishing it was the annoyance of his mother, and of course, the promise of an important percentage in the stock of her company, not so much to really hurt her, but enough for allowing him to do pretty much nothing for long as her mother didn’t destroy the company, which, he thought, was less likely than him becoming the next Van Gogh.

He found himself in The Cofe Shop, lost in his thoughts his legs had brought him to this place once again, for the 6th time in the last two weeks, and every one of those times, they, of course, didn’t have the apricot pie, because that’s how life works, things happen when you don’t expect it, things happen beautifully if you’re not looking, but if you dare to even give a glance to the engine of the world, it will either blind you, or shut down entirely.

He ordered his  “mocaccino with double cream and some cinnamon on top”, and he realized he should probably make some presentation cards, “Hello! I am the mocaccino-with-double-cream-and-some-cinnamon-on-top guy, I love apricot pies, my lifeless doesn’t have any sense, but I take really great photos! Of nothing remarkable!“. Yeah, that would suffice, that’s probably how his dad managed to be in a different country every 2 weeks, calling his light capturing camera “My baby”, and protecting it like if he didn’t have enough money to buy other 10.

She shook his head, what was wrong with him lately, he wasn’t so grumpy all the time, he was pretty happy with his useless life, getting money randomly from his piece of the (wait for it) business pie he got by just studying some art stuff, remembering some name, dates, theories and that kind of stuff you can use to pick up girls at any art museum.

His coffee arrived, it was the same guy who stared at the blue eyed girl that other day, the other day that seemed like a dream ripped off his mind, and never forgotten.

—Oh hey, how are you? –Asked the blond waiter.

—Hey bro, I’m good thanks, what about you?

—I’m good, I’m good, sorry but we don’t have that pie of yours, the wife of the owner is sick, so she hasn’t cooked any.

—Yeah, the first thing I did when I got in was look at the counter and try to find that bastard, no luck –No luck, he thought, he would exchange countless of his beloved pies to see the girl again.

—That happens. Hey, what happened to your friend? She never came around again, and trust me, everyone comes again.

Auch.

—Oh, yeah, no, she’s no longer around.

—Ah, uhm, sorry about asking –Said the waiter, while thinking ‘shitshitshitshitshit dumbdumbdumbdumb’.

—Uh?, no! no! she’s not dead or anything, don’t worry –He was laughing, which relaxed the waiter’s expressions– she’s just out of the country, some job offer or something, you know. You won’t see her around I guess.

—For a moment I felt like an idiot for asking, hey, sorry, I have to go, can’t stay around just talking, it’s going to be really busy soon, let me know if I can help you with something else.

—Thanks, I will –and just like that, the waiter left him, after poking with a stick into his heart, why was he thinking about that random girl, why, after two weeks, it was ridiculous.

So there he was, at the same coffee shop where they met, feeling like a fool for thinking about a girl who he was never going to see again, but he couldn’t give up the idea of her, he couldn’t give up that small but blinking hope that kept his heart beating, there is a great advantage in Humans, and a great disadvantage too, when a human have hope, no matter how little it is, when the desire, when the wish is truly real to the heart, there is no way she can give up to what the heart or mind truly wants, because hope is nothing more than the existence of a possible solution to a problem, hope is nothing more than the existence of a chance, no matter how small or insubstantial, to triumph. The pure randomness of a game, the randomness of life which is a game by itself, is what makes humans addicted, when the randomness ends, it’s game over.

And the randomness was just beginning.

He got an email, which he checked through his phone. It was from who was going to be his boss.

Subject: Emergency meeting tomorrow.

‘I am not even a employee yet, how can I be asked to be in an “Emergency meeting”?‘. He though, and then he read the email itself, it had his name in it. “Tomorrow you will all meet our new colleague, The Dreamy Guy (I swear that’s what the email said!), who will be joining us, he will be our new head photographer, due to circumstances out of our control, and, hopefully he is reading this along with everyone else, so, congratulations to your promotion before your first day of work, and sorry to inform you in a broad email, I will explain tomorrow to you all. Please, do your best to be at the meeting in time”.

You can image how disoriented our guy was, “Promoted?” he thought, he hadn’t even started the job, he was supposed to start next week, and he was supposed to be in the photography department, but not as Head Photographer, just as a boring generic photographer, taking pictures of the products, personnel, the cat of the boss, whatever they asked him to shoot, it was supposed to be a quiet, easy and boring job, with the opportunity to travel from time to time, or so he thought. ‘Head of Photography? But what the…‘.

Faltan coincidencias aqui.