The first time Nick noticed Sylvie, she was sitting with her feet tucked beneath her in an oversized chair. The chair was nestled in the quiet corner of the coffee shop where he’d just started working. Her delicate hands scribbled away in a black leather journal, taking breaks every few seconds to slide her blond hair back behind her ear. With furrowed eyebrows, she wrote feverishly, and Nick wondered what she was writing.
The fact that she was writing in a journal struck him as odd. Being a writer himself, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d handwritten anything. What was the point when he had either a laptop or his smartphone with him all the time? Writing by hand seemed so inefficient. And yet, as he watched her erase a few words, then write something else in the space she’d just cleared, he had to admit he was intrigued.
A customer approached the counter, probably Nick’s twentieth of the night, an older man in a sports coat and a gentleman’s cap. As he took the man’s order, he kept the curious writer girl sitting in the corner at the back of his mind. After the man took a seat to wait on his half-caff hazelnut mocha, Nick glanced toward the corner, expecting to see writer girl still working. His heart sank when he realized she was gone. He wondered if he’d ever see her again.
