There’s a
cute guy sitting at the table opposite. He has dirty blond hair and a five o’
clock shadow. I’d like to see if his eyes are blue, but he’s looking down at
his laptop and I don’t want to stare. Okay, maybe I do want to stare, but that would be grossly inappropriate and frankly very rude.
He'd already been sitting there before I came in to this Starbucks outlet. I took
this table because it was empty; I’m not quite sure if I intentionally sat
opposite him so I could look. My motives aren’t always that clear to me. Actually, the table beside him was empty too when I came in, but it had an empty cup on it, leftovers from its last occupant. Was that really a deterrent? Probably not, but I had no overriding need to move the cup just to sit at the table next to him when there was a perfectly clean one diagonally across.
Then again,
it might have been subconscious, because I like looking at people - just not talking to them - and I’m
sitting facing the door. Well, between two doors - one directly opposite me, and one to my right. There is a wall behind me, with a rack of tumblers and mugs for
sale. I read Dune: You shouldn't sit with your back to the door, if you value your life. I am
surmising this guy hasn’t read it - or maybe he doesn’t care. He’s probably just
not paranoid and doesn’t have any enemies, though I'm sure this line of thinking has appeared in more than one fiction series. Then again, I am probably reading too many epic fantasy stories, with too much bloodshed and war. In real life, I sit
with my back to the door when I'm feeling particularly anti-social and don’t want to know who’s coming
in. Stab me in the back for all I care. Those are the times I usually have my kindle out as well, to make sure that no eye-contact is made.
His plain white shirt enhances his broad shoulders. It's rare to see plain white shirts nowadays. You always get the shirts with statements (either cute or offensive), big brand names emblazoned across the chest or those with some fancy design. White is nice. Crisp. Sexy.
He has two
rings on his left hand; on the middle and the ring finger, worst luck. I see
that clearly enough because when he’s not busy typing, he either leans his
cheek on his left hand or covers his chin with it, rubbing at his stubble as he
thinks. There are two cups on his table but only one of him, so he’s either been here long enough to drink that much or his wife has gone off to do
something and will come back for him later. Probably the latter.
I think his
eyes are dark, though. Oh well.
---
I was supposed to do a character observation piece for an online writing course by FutureLearn. It was supposed to be less than 200 words, so I cut out a chunk of the piece above for the course and then fleshed out the remainder just for fun.
And yes, there was a real guy sitting at the table diagonally across from where we were having our Write-In at Starbucks, Tanjung Tokong on Monday. I apologise for being distracted from working on my A to Z posts to write this digression instead. #sorrynotsorry
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