He wore black jeans, purposefully ripped at the knees, and a dark grey shirt that was slightly too large for him. It had several tiny holes in it and faded artwork on the front – some sort of zombie film poster from the Sixties or Seventies. Over the shirt sat a stonewashed denim jacket that looked as old as he was, the sleeves rolled up to reveal pale forearms with a covering of dark hair. Despite all of the strategic sartorial distressing, he managed to not look like he’d just had a fight with a porcupine or had been living on the streets, which I applauded him for.
He looked creative, as if he could also be an artist or a sculptor or something. Whatever his job was, he certainly didn’t look as if he worked in an office like the one I’d just left. I swallowed my bite of sandwich and took a sip of coffee, the liquid scalding me slightly as it passed over my tongue. I swallowed that too and I made the mistake of not filling my mouth with something before the words began to try and push themselves out of it. I made a strange ‘ku’ sound before jamming the sandwich back into my mouth and smearing hummus over my right cheek. He looked up from under his tousled dark fringe and observed my awkwardness for a moment, before going back to nursing his cold tea, staring down at the surface as if he was trying to read the tea leaves.
The hand that clutched his cup wasn’t covered in paint or ink or clay and so I threw my guess about him being an artist out the window. I noticed a burst of hairline scars that crackled over the knuckles of his right hand, which lay balled into a fist on the surface of the table, the scars taking the pattern of forked lightning. A further glance caused me to notice that the nails of his scarred hand were slightly longer than those on his left and the ends of his fingers on his left hand were calloused. Musician – that was it. He played guitar.
My mouth opened again to ask him what sort of music he played but, again, I stopped myself. Just eat your sandwich and shut up, I chastised myself. You don’t need to speak to him. You can bet a million pounds that he does not, under any circumstances, want to talk to you.
‘So, what are they saying?’ For God’s sake!
He looked up at my question with that same fog lingering in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry?’ he asked in an accent that I didn’t quite catch.
I awkwardly gestured to his cup and said it again, cringing inwardly as I did. ‘Your tea leaves, what are they saying?’ Why could I not just sit still and be quiet?
He looked down at his used-up teabag and prodded it with the end of his finger. It bobbed pathetically in the milky water before settling again. He huffed a laugh that was so subtle it simply sounded like a heavy breath.
‘Not very much, to tell yer the truth,’ he replied and this time I heard his Irish accent loud and clear. ‘I don’t think they tell yer too much when they’re still in the bag.’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘that must be where I’ve been going wrong.’
We smiled at each other as the rest of the people around the table retracted themselves a little further from the conversation, as if they feared being pulled into its gravitational field. He unfurled his scarred hand and I noticed that he was holding something small and orange. I got a better look at it as he rolled what seemed to be a misshapen marble between two fingers.
‘Wildly underappreciated game,’ I said, almost raising a hand to my face and slapping myself silent.
He turned to me with a questioning frown.
‘Marbles.’ I pointed to the one in his hand. ‘Used to play it with my uncle.’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said, slipping the marble back into his pocket.
‘You play guitar?’ I nodded towards his hands, only then realising how creepy my observations were.
‘That’s right – among other things.’ Although he was frowning, his mouth was pulled up on the one side by a wry smile. ‘How’d yer know that?’
‘Fingernails. My ex used to play. I’d recognise the cause of those callouses anywhere.’ I blushed. Had I just inadvertently flirted with this man by casually dropping into conversation that I was single? I wasn’t usually this bold. It had taken me a year to even imply to my ex-boyfriend that I fancied him.
The guy beside me was attractive, in that very specific musician kind of way, with large blue eyes lined with dark lashes and a chin dappled with dark stubble, which was interspersed at intervals with flecks of red.
‘Sorry.’ I nervously sipped my coffee and swallowed the bitter liquid. ‘I know it’s not the done thing to talk to strangers anymore, but I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut.’
‘So, this is somewhat of a chronic problem for yer then?’ His smile grew a little until it was almost a full-blown grin and my stomach lurched like I’d just driven fast over the brow of a steep hill.
‘Oh yes, since birth. In fact, I left the womb plying the midwife with small talk.’ I laughed in that moronic way I did when I found something surprisingly funny. He countered with a laugh more musical than
