Melody’s fingers idly traced the rim of her coffee cup, the steady motion grounding her, though her mind was anything but still. The bell above the door had barely registered in her head, the jingle becoming just another background noise in a morning full of unspoken thoughts. His voice, low and rough around the edges, cut through the haze of her own frustration, and she met his gaze with a flicker of something close to recognition, a slight lift of her brow. "You could say that," she replied softly, the weight of the unspoken words between them hanging in the air as if they'd been waiting for this very moment. "One of those mornings where it feels like trying to catch smoke with your hands, you know?"
Her eyes moved down to the notebook, the pen now an afterthought, abandoned mid-sentence like so many other things in her life that hadn’t been finished. She exhaled quietly, her shoulders loosening ever so slightly as she looked back at Simon, not bothering to hide the ghost of a smile that tugged at the corners of her lips.
"Maybe I was just too ambitious with the idea of writing this morning. Some days, it’s like the words are a distant memory, and all you’re left with is the ache." She paused, studying him for a moment. "Guess that's where you come in, huh? Offering that 'break' I didn’t know I needed." Her voice was playful, but there was something softer underneath, a quiet kind of gratitude for the quiet understanding between them, however fleeting.
“catching smoke,” he mused, accent smooth on hoarse syllables, scarred fingers furling loosely around the plain mug the barista had handed him—black coffee, uncomplicated, just bitter enough to take the edge off, “aye, know that feelin’ well ‘nough… s’like nailin’ jelly to a wall some days,”
a name gets called out from behind the counter, sharp against the din of the cafe. simon flinched—just barely—but his features remained steady, the only thing to quicken was the rhythm of his thumb against heated ceramic, “writing’s a bit funny like that, won’t come when y’call it, but right as rain it’ll show up when y’try to sleep later,” pauses, dark eyes roaming again before they return to meet her gaze, “reckon the tryin’ counts more than the catching, though,”
his mouth quirks up at one corner, the scar there pulling slightly, “‘less you have a deadline, that is,”
