#he stories

[sammysoysauce]

He slipped out the front door without a word and it wasn't until he was farther up ahead that we realized his shoes were missing. We wondered where he could be walking to in this weather and when he stepped back inside a few minutes later he half-smiled and said that whenever it's raining he has to go outside to just feel it all.

[sammysoysauce]

I politely said no without any real reason at all and he nodded and said I was scared of something. I laughed and almost replied with a half-assed joke before realizing he was right. I am scared of something but I just haven't figured it out yet.

[sammysoysauce]

He sat in front of me on the bus ride home. The chair he chose was perpendicular to mine and his profile was all I could see as he opened his book and began to read. Or had he always been reading? His eyes remained thoughtfully focused on his book from that point on. Over speed bumps. At stop signs. He never looked up. The pages were tattered at the ends and the paperback cover had wrinkles the way people do when they age. He wore glasses with large frames but the piece that should have went behind his right ear wasn't there. His glasses were broken. But it seemed like he didn't notice it at all. His glasses never moved from their place on the bridge of his nose even as he leaned further and further into his book. He seemed lost in it. The name of the chapter was a word I'd never heard of before and as he turned the pages, there were passages underlined in red and blue ink. Had he underlined it? Or had he found the book somewhere else with those markings already in it? These were my thoughts for the first thirty seconds before I realized I was staring too intently. But luckily he never noticed this. And yet I noticed all of this without ever thinking to ask his name.