4 – Coffee Spills and Pencil Strokes (Xian)

I bite the bottom of my lip as the wall curves slightly into my back. Dallas would be there in a bit and I still don’t know what i thought of when I agreed to this. My voice left me back when we were still in the classroom because my partner for the project is him. A million flashbacks of the museum night crawls back into my brain. Dallas doesn’t seem to remember me, but I do. And how his mouth felt on mine– The price of slipping up is something I cannot pay.

“Sorry, I’m a bit late.”, Dallas grins the way sunshine feels, “I pay the drinks, okay? After all… I made you wait.”

There is something about him which makes you follow him. His smile drags me inside the café. As he promised, Dallas pays for the drinks. Nervously, I sip on my cola and fidgets with the straw.

“So, any idea for the story? I bet the others are going to write Happy End kind of stuff but I…”, ready to work, he has his fingers gently curling around the pencil.

“Something rather sad.”, I mumble, “A tragedy like Achilles and Patroclus maybe?”

His eyes start to shine, pointing carefully with a fry to my direction. He nods approving of the idea, already writing and half way sketching it down.
“Friends growing apart? Lovers to enemies? Star crossed lovers?”, Dallas places a dark pen behind his ear, pushing a bit of his brighter brown hair back as well. It reveals that he has a helix at the top of his outer ear. The ring carries a tiny charm which almost looks like a dragon.
My interest peaks as I start to scribble down possible scenes we could work into this yet-to-be-named project in a bit more detail than anticipated. Covered with silvery pencil dust and a bit of black ink, I think for a moment before showing the first attempts to Dallas.

“How about strangers to lovers to strangers again? Well… Maybe less strangers but… what if one of them dies at the end? Saving the other. It’s cliché but– I still cry when I read this.”

There is something in the way my voice almost trails off at the end, and I am scared that he could notice. That behind me lays an unspoken story, filled with a sadness my project partner shouldn’t be able to understand. At least his eyes won’t reveal how much he knows, and I hope for his soul that he doesn’t.

“Hey, do you know the page or word limit for this one?”, he starts sketching something into his sketchbook again, “I just want to make sure that we can fit every little beautiful inch of this story into this.”

I shrug: “I think– there is not really a word count but pages. At least 10 pages. Maximal 100. But I think it is to fit in all the art too.”

Something shimmers in the eyes of my partner, it is almost the kind of cocky confidence of what makes me think what Achilles must’ve looked at Patroclus at times. I don’t know if this is going to end well, but for once, there is a spark of hope igniting flames inside my chest. I, despite my usual pessimism, wish that this time things will be okay.