Hand Knitted Gloves

She sits quietly, silently, complaintive. Her body subtly vibrates as her pulse dances beneath the layers of skin. There is a hum, gentle and sweet, and it is unclear whether the sound is coming from the girl, or the air surrounding her. Specks of gold shine in her eyes as the sun tenderly hits her face. She shields her eyes from the intrusion, too transfixed on the words of her book to pause for a second and absorb the warmth. He admires her from two tables away.

  The café bustles and moves, everything vibrant and active, and yet he cannot take his eyes off the gold specks and the almond face of the girl in the corner of the room. He had never seen her before, but somehow she projected an air of familiarity; he felt she knew the warmth from his fireplace, the jagged stones on his street and the smell of Mrs Dawsey's burnt bread which she insisted on bringing him every Tuesday, and which he habitually accepted with a wary but tender smile. She projected an air of comfort. 

He wonders what her name is. The auburn accents of her hair make her seem autumnal, combustible, and comforting all at once. He notices that she has cast a pair of loosely knitted gloves aside on the table. They look homemade, perhaps a tatty gift, or maybe she knitted them herself whilst sat in front of the television, unsure whether she should focus on the news or the needles in front of her. But a scarf still encases her neck; clearly, her book is too enticing that she could not spare the time to loosen the knot and free her neck from its confines. She looks like an Ebony, or an Anna, or a Zara, he thinks.

  He finds that he is drumming his fingertips on the table in front of him. The coffee placed on the table no longer steams, the breaths of warmth no longer curling in the air in front of him. She has captured his attention, undivided.

 It is not often that you see someone and know that they are meant to be in your life somehow. This is a feeling that is normally realised in hindsight, whilst you lie in the comfort of your bed, partner wrapped around you like clingfilm, and it occurs to you that if your friends hadn't dragged you out on that reluctant night, then this destined partner would not have entered your life and impacted it in the way they did. And even when the air beneath this clingfilm bubble grows stagnant, you know it was inevitable your meeting in the first place.

  But as he stares at this Ebony, or Anna, or Zara, he knows he is sat at that crooked café table, two tables away from her, for a reason.

 She sees him instantly. The moment he stepped into the dingy corner café that she frequented every morning at 10:15 sharp. She watches the man order a coffee and place himself two tables away from her. She's aware of his gaze, resting on her face, scorching the cells of her skin, and tearing the membranes apart. She wonders why he is staring, trapping her with his eyes at her crooked café table. She looks at her book, but the words swim and entangle and contort so that her eyes blur with the effort of reading them. 

She observes him through her eyelashes; notices the stubborn curl declaring its presence on his forehead like a six-year-old stomping their foot, seeking attention from distracted parents. She notices the crookedness of his grey glasses as they rest haphazardly on his face and the strip of tape above his left ear that indicates that they are broken. She wonders how they broke; did he sit on them, did they fall from his head, were they the victim of some tragedy? She questions why he is still wearing them; did it happen yesterday, could he afford a new pair, is he lazy?

  His name is Dan. That wasn't a guess. She knew it. She recognised him the moment he stepped into the dingy café and sat two tables away from her. She hasn't seen him for years, maybe ten or so, but she still thinks about him now and again. She never means to, but sometimes she'll be sat at her desk, absorbed in the blue light emanating from her computer screen in the mid-afternoon gloom, stuck in some writer's block or other, and her mind will slip, completely accidentally, to the boy in front of her.

  She hated him. Hates him still.

  She recalls hours and days and months of fear and angst and apprehension, skirting the walls of school corridors in an attempt to evacuate the peril that he brought her. He was a masochist. He breathed his oxygen from her pain, and starved her of her supply, engulfing her with poisonous air instead, which invaded her body and shut down each of her cells, one by one. She was drowning in the decaying air around her. At least that's what it felt like then.

  He wasn't very original. He insisted on calling her 'plain Jane', the overly clichéd parody of her name never ceased to entertain him. He called her boring, ugly. He called her nothing.

  He pulled her hair, yanking the fine threads from her scalp, ripping them to the roots and hideously laughing in the process. He plucked her, like a daisy from the ground. He played games with her, pulling the petals from her stigma and chucking them to the floor, stomping on them for good measure. He didn't care whether she "loved him" or "loved him not". He just enjoyed picking her apart.

  Then there were his hands. She was always aware of where they were. She got into the habit of wearing layers, too many layers. Her face was always flushed with the heat of them. But she liked to have the protection. She never knew when his hands would next strike. And they always managed to slip underneath the layers, no matter how many she wore.

She remembered feeling like Winter; beaten and battered, cold and callous. She attempted to hibernate in the shadows of the hallways, surviving off morsels of kindness, spared only by teachers who did not care for the hierarchy of the childhood kingdom. He was her Jack Frost; biting, brutal. She was a snowdrop in a blizzard. 

  He stands up, pulses of determination running through him, overtaking him like a flood. He is drowning in the determination. He must speak to her for it to evaporate; for the flood to dry up and for his breathing to regulate. He makes his way over to her, crossing the two-table gap between them. His eyes are locked on the golden specks and almond face. But she doesn't notice his approach. She is too embedded in the past to notice.

  She realises his presence when he blocks the ray of light flooding her eyes so that she re-emerges into the present.

 He smiles nervously, the pulses of determination subsiding as the apprehension increases. This was not like him. To approach beautiful girls in dingy cafés, but he could not resist this time. He hesitantly rests his hands on the chair opposite her and clears his throat to remove the frog lodged in it.

'Hi.' The one-syllable word seems to be all the frog will allow.

She says nothing in reply.

He clears his throat once more.

'I was sat over there and couldn't help noticing you.'

A silence ensues. He can't help but admire her beauty once more, the gleam in her eyes that seems to indicate an intrigue, an amusement. She can't help but despise the earnest expression behind his grey glasses. Anger bubbles within her so that she feels it erupting in boils beneath her skin, hot and uncomfortable, more than uncomfortable in fact, excruciating.

It angers her that he doesn't appear to recognise her. Yet she has been continuously haunted by him. Once fresh and unblemished, her bonnet had been scratched, the man in front of her being the one to damage the precious paintwork. It had cost her greatly to restore it, and yet here he was, keys in hand, with the capacity of damaging her once more.

Eventually, she utters a 'Hello' in return. She chooses not to abbreviate the word. He deserves nothing but formalities.

The smile on his face widens. He takes her response as encouragement. She takes his smile as deplorable.

'May I sit?' She once again makes no reply, to which he hesitantly pulls the chair out and perches on the tip of it.

'May I ask what your name is?'. To this, she smirks incredulously, which he interprets as an engagement with his conversation. He admires the way her upper lip curves, unsymmetrical, like a crescent moon glimmering in a night sky, or a banana.

She pauses, before, 'Jane.' He is satisfied with this answer. Jane, who reads in dingy cafés, and knits, and has auburn accents in her hair and gold specks in her eyes. Yes, Jane suits her well.

'But', she pauses, considering her words. He leans forward, chin on hand, intrigued on what is to come. He knows he has met her here for a reason. He knows he entered this dingy café and sat two tables away from her for some purpose.

'You can call me "plain Jane." Would you prefer that?'