Dammit, every time!

I sigh in frustration, and grab at my eraser.

Every time I draw a face, I get the nose wrong. And this beautiful handsome face I haven’t seen in two years is no exception.

“A coffee is almost guaranteed to help, can I get you one?”

I look up from the half finished drawing and smile painfully.

“Yeah, thanks Gabriel.”

Gabriel has been serving me since I started coming to the café a few months ago. She always knows exactly what to get me.

The café— Addicted— sits on the corner of the street my cottage is on. At around eight fifteen every morning, I sit at one of the tables outside and have at least one coffee and toast with avo before completing a drawing. I try to keep my life as simple as possible since… him.

I sip the nearly scalding caffeine slowly, savouring it. Today is nearly a special day. The 27th of May, the day he double crossed me. The day he… let himself be captured so that I could be safe, and gave me my emotional scars. 

It’s almost funny what happened the day after. The 28th of May was the day I got my physical ones.

When I finish my coffee I put it in its saucer, and pick up a 2B pencil to try at the nose again. 

My hand moves unconsciously to the eyes after a minute. Tears start pricking my eyes as I let myself do something I haven’t done since they took him. 

I think about his eyes. The way they seemed to miss nothing, the way he would look at me with such adoration. The way we would train together, and I would beat him seven times out of ten. He smelled like rain. Rain, and something else I can never identify. Fresh mint, almost.

I smile, lifting my hand to wipe away a tear before it falls but—

Another hand, larger than my own, gets there before. I stiffen in surprise, open my mouth to yell, but then I see the scar and the yell dissolves something halfway between a gasp and a sob.

Just below the thumb, a thin raised line of skin. My heart starts hammering instantly, my eyes trained on just the scar, I don’t look up.

A dream, this has to be dream— it’s not—

Callused fingers touch my cheek, and my brain shuts down and the tears start falling in earnest. Then he speaks, and I hear his voice.

“Look up, love.”

I do.

“I got— I got your eyes right at least,” I whisper.