The first time I set eyes on her, I didn’t notice her at all. She was preoccupied with work, moving around the restaurant dealing with various customers. They all had their requests and questions, and she managed them with a look of disinterest on her face and a blasé nature in her body. Very casual. Relaxed, but in the way that could be taken as an insult. It didn’t look like she was thinking about anything else, it wasn’t that. She could have been day dreaming of what she would do when she got off. Again, it wasn’t that. It was simply that she didn’t care about the people coming in. Perhaps she had worked there for too long, or had dealt with too many people in her time. She wasn’t there for the customers, she was there to earn money. Well, I was one of the customers. I’d gone in on a date. A coffee date. We hadn’t called it a date, but I knew his real intentions. Yeah yeah, he said he was inspired to help me with my project. Yeah yeah, sure. I call bullshit. So I was sitting across from him, listening to an endless stream of stories of which I zoned out for most of them. I truly believe he only invited me to coffee to sit there and listen to himself talk the whole time. To sit there and feel good about his own achievements and that time he fought of a shark in the ocean and saved a little girl that was swimming out deeper than she should have been and her parents met him on the beach and everyone was crying and he got onto the front page of the - whatever. Shut the fuck up. I wish I had told him to shut the fuck up. A black ball was growing inside my middle. Not my stomach, but that part just below the ribcage. It probably would have burst at some stage, only I got distracted. He was talking, telling another story, words pouring out of is stupid mouth. Sitting up straight with his chest puffed up like a parrot. His head cocked to one side and eyes looking at his hands that were wrapped around his coffee. I could almost see the yellow crest stretching out from the top of his head. A cockatoo. The irony. I can’t really remember how I was sitting. I know that I wasn’t sitting up straight, on the edge of my chair, eyes only for his pretty face. I’d long since finished my short black - no sugar - and was fiddling with the edge of my books. Feeling each spiral on my notebook, as if counting them. I wasn’t counting. I looked around us. Now when I write about it, I wonder why I stayed seated. Why did I feel I had to be polite? He had offered to help me with my thesis. Why not just call him out? Perhaps it was more enjoyable to sit and watch someone like that, than awkwardly call the whole thing to a close. My back was against the chair, bum slid forward. Shoulders slumped. My hair was out, messy. My hand crawled into my jacket pocket, searching for cigarettes. A subconscious idea for escape. I flicked open the lid, slid out one cigarette, tapped it a few times on each end - why do we do that? - put it between my lips and spoke through them saying I’d be back. I wrapped my scarf three times around my neck and walked outside. It was only 3 o’clock, but it was pretty much dark. There were a few people sitting outside, drinking mulled wine and smoking. Funny that somehow drinking is acceptable anywhere and anytime in this city. How summer and sunshine is an excuse to drink beer at any time of the day and night, and winter chill and darkness is an excuse to drink mulled wine or anything really at any time of day and night. A city of alcoholics. Happiest Country in the World. Yes. That’s for another day though. I stood outside, enjoying my cigarette. It was then that I noticed her. She had darted outside to clear a few things off tables. It would have been 5 degrees. I watched as the chill rose the skin and hair of her pale arms. She didn’t change though. Didn’t change expression. Her lips were perhaps a little more pursed. A woman in fur asked for another mulled wine, slightly slurring her words, holding her cigarette out as if it were the 20’s. Blondie didn’t react at all. Didn’t nod, didn’t shake her head, didn’t say a word. However, a few minutes later she returned with another mulled wine for the woman in fur. Communication at its best. I drew in the last of my cigarette, accentuated as if drawing in courage to return to my table. Though as I smothered the embers into the ground, her image floated in my mind and a curiosity tickled at the back of my head. For the next hour, I sat with another cup of something warm, allowing Mr Story to continue to talk stories at me while I dreamily observed this character wander around the restaurant in the most laid back way I’d ever seen. I wouldn't even have been surprised if she had put her feet up herself, with a drink in her hand. That’s the day it started, I suppose. It was the day I first set eyes on her.