"I met another one today."
The moon showed it's face from the cloud it was hiding behind. She looked smaller.
"Looking good," I chuckled. "Are you trying out a new diet or sum'?"
My joke was met with silence. Nothing new there.
"Anyway, about the boy." I placed my legs, cross-legged, on the blue lovesack I was sitting on and looked up at her. The view was perfect.
"There was something about this one," my voice came out as a soft whisper. "I can't figure it out."
I could feel her pulling the somebody's-in-love face at me.
"No!" I exclaimed. "Don't use that word. It's-it's not love. You know I find all that 'love at first sight' saying to be shitty and false. I don't even have the time to be falling in love. Literally."
I sighed and threw my head back, almost falling off my seat. "This is stupid. He's just another boy. Whatever I'm feeling will go away. It always does."
When I closed my eyes that night, I found myself falling again. But it was a different kind of falling. I was wasn't falling down a pitch black pit – I was falling for Nick.
Nick.
A complete stranger.
*****
13 days
I didn't expect to see Nick in Moosh again.
"Oops."
My body stumbled back before I could bump into the tall figure in front of me. He smelt like sweet cinnamon rolls and the ocean. A weird but satisfying smell.
"Ah, adventure time girl," sounded his deep yet light voice.
His voice. It sounded familiar.
"Nick," I smiled. My heart was racing and it sent a weird feeling up my oesophagus.
His hand brushed through his wavy brown hair. "Did I forget your name or are you stalking me?"
Right. Neither of us had introduced ourselves to each other. The only reason why I knew Nick's name was because I had seen it scribbled on his coffee cup from the day before.
I laughed to ease the awkward atmosphere surrounding us. "Um, no. I... um...saw your name written on your coffee cup. Yesterday."
He smiled softly. "And you remembered it?"
"Photographic memory."
"Well aren't you lucky."
Pft. Lucky was a person who did not know when they would die. Lucky was a person could remember their past. Lucky was a person who had actual friends, not a moon. Lucky was a normal human being. I was not normal and I did not feel human.
"I wouldn't say that," I smiled, pushing aside the strong feeling of sadness I was beginning to feel.
We stood in a questioning silence for a while before I remembered why we had nearly bumped into each other in the first place. He was leaving the store and I was about to enter. He probably had some place else to be.
"See you around, I guess." The words left my mouth before I could even process them. It usually took me fifteen beads of sweat to say something as simple as hi. But with Nick, I almost didn't care.
"See you around." he nodded his head. Before walking away, his deep sea blue eyes locked with my soup-brown eyes. He held his gaze for a split second, smiled, and then left.
Without any warning, as I turned stood in line, my brain began to narrate a conversation that sounded familiar.
A conversation that was buried somewhere in the midst of a part I could not remember.
"Soup brown eyes?"
"How else would you describe these basic brown eyeballs?"
"Beautiful. Charming. Sexy. Attra–"
"Okay, Shakespeare, I get it. You can lie."
"Your eyes are beautiful. I mean it."
"Thank you master."
"I think we should jump now before it's too late."
"Yep."
"I'll be right behind you."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
My mind went silent. The line had moved and so had I. Something told me to look back and so I did.
Nick was outside the café looking directly at me. One blink and he was gone.
*****
That night, as I sat in the bathtub filled with scented rose petals, the mark on my wrist began to hurt.
My doctors had always told me that the mark on my wrist would begin hurt as I approached my death date. They told me that it happened to all those who were marked. They also told me that I would begin to have nightmares about falling or jumping.
I rubbed the 18 mark on my wrist, wincing in pain every now and then. Suddenly, a sharp pain shot up my entire hand. I gasped let my hand drop in the water.
The inside of my hand felt as if someone was slicing open my muscles and veins with a sharp knife. I couldn't handle the pain no matter how hard I tried.
Black dots covered my vision. Everything went silent. The only sound filling the silence was my beating heart.
As my eyes were about to close, I saw a tall figure approaching me. I couldn't make out it features.
"Nicholas," I whispered absentmindedly, before everything went dark.
When my eyes opened again I was in my bed. I was in my pyjamas and my hair was somehow braided back in two lines. My hair was impossible to braid, let alone comb.
"What?" I whispered, confusion beginning to cloud my thoughts.
I fast walked to the bathroom. It was pristine. Not a single drop of water. As I was about to turn on my heel and call it a weird night, my nose picked up a scent.
It wasn't my perfume's scent but my mind was telling me that I knew that scent. Words could not describe it but it was strong and a pleasure to the nostrils.
"Nancy, you're going crazy." I shook my head and exited the bathroom. "There is no scent. It was all just a dream."
I jumped back into bed and wished the moon a goodnight. A few seconds after resting my head on my pillow, I fell asleep.
I didn't dream about falling. I dreamt about a tall silhouette walking towards me.
"Nicolas."