whisperback

Whether that was the day he truly started living or he truly started dying, Lewis would never know. He hadn’t even heard him come in; he had been too busy with another customer. He wondered whether that was strange – to have missed the moment Jamie entered his life.

The exact moment he first saw him was imprinted on his memory. Jamie. James. James F Bailey. Strange that he never learned what the F stood for. But that was later. For now, a complete stranger was browsing in the poetry section, his lips moving silently as he read.

Lewis firmly believed that all great poetry could only be read aloud. Maybe that’s why Jamie caught his attention. Or maybe it was the way his brow was slightly furrowed, or the way his eyes moved rapidly over the page or the way a lock of hair fell forward onto his face and he didn’t bother pushing it back because that would take time away from poetry.

Jamie was lost in his own world and Lewis found that his gaze was drawn back to him repeatedly over the course of the next few hours. Wherever he was in the shop, whether at the cash register, or stacking books, or reaching up to a higher shelf to reach a novel for an old lady (a trashy romance novel that she had wanted for years), Lewis kept looking back at this person. Jamie hardly moved in all that time, except to pull down another book and another.

Lewis remembered Geoffrey piping up at that point, something asinine about a voracious appetite for poetry. He also remembered being pushed forward to serve Jamie when he finally approached the desk to pay for his purchases. A John Donne anthology and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel.

That was the moment Lewis should have spoken. Instead, he watched Jamie walk out of the door, having counted his change out into his hand.

“Batter my fucking heart,” he murmured just as the door was closing. Jamie paused on the step. Glanced back inside. And kept walking.

The next few days passed all too slowly. He couldn’t take his mind off Jamie, even though he was still nameless in Lewis’ mind. Geoffrey referred to him as the “pale poet”. Actually, Geoff referred to him as “Pale Poet, GSOH, Looking for SWM, Age 18-25, for deep meaningful conversations and hot sex.”

Lewis told Geoffrey to piss off.

Geoffrey just laughed.

Their next meeting was inauspicious serendipity, clouded as it was in heavy autumnal rain and lifeless thoughts. A coffee shop, frequented by students and workers. Actually, it was the door of the coffee shop. Lewis was walking in as Jamie was walking out. It was a snapshot memory. Jamie’s slender fingers were wrapped around a paper coffee cup, absorbing the heat. Later, that would strike Lewis as strange for Jamie was always anything but cold. His skin was invariably hot to the touch, a strange thing, enticing and extraordinary. Again, his memories were getting ahead of him. The coffee shop. Where he opened the door and walked straight into Jamie. Spilt coffee (no use crying over it, Jamie said later) and Lewis’ college books on the ground, covered in coffee and rain and some soggy dead leaves.

They both crouched down to pick up the books, some innate panic within them both that, above all else, the books must be saved. When they stood up, they exchanged blushes and smiles. (It could have been worse, Jamie said later. What if it hadn’t happened at all?)