Evan

It was raining the afternoon Evan ducked into the used bookstore on the corner, the kind where the bell above the door sounded like a toy and the cat chose customers like a sovereign granting favor. He wiped his glasses on his sleeve and breathed in the smell of old paper and damp wool. A record player in the back murmured Nina Simone.

“Careful,” the owner called without looking up. “Floor’s slick. Everything worth it is.”

Evan laughed under his breath and wandered to poetry, because drizzle always pushed him toward other people's certainty. He reached for a weather-beaten copy of Letters to a Young Poet, and another hand touched the spine at the same time.

“Oh—sorry,” the other hand’s owner said. A woman. She was close enough that he caught a bright note of orange peel from her hair. She wore a silver ring shaped like an orbit on her thumb. There was a small crescent scar on her forehead, like a comma inviting the next sentence.

“No, you take it,” Evan said, immediately hating how quickly he surrendered.

She tilted her head. “Do you like Rilke?”

“I pretend to,” he said. “It makes me feel like the sort of person who could believe in the perfect sentence.”

“The perfect sentence makes me nervous,” she said. “But I like the way he talks to the parts of you that you keep in the quiet. I like that he answers.”

He smiled, and it wasn’t politeness. It was recognition that hit like heat from a door thrown open. There she is, said a certainty in his chest that had no business in a man who couldn’t choose a bottle of wine without texting three friends. There you are.

“We’ve met,” he said, before he could help himself.

She laughed, surprised and delighted, as if he’d tripped and instead of falling he’d invented a dance. “Not yet,” she said. “I’m Mara.”

“Evan,” he said, and he knew the way her name felt in his mouth would be familiar even if he never said it again.

“’Evan’?” She squinted and then grinned. “Like your coffee? It’s written on your cup.”

He glanced at the damp paper cup in his hand and flushed. “Right. Mystery solved.”

Mara flipped open the book to a page someone had underlined decades ago in purple ink: Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other. She ran her finger under the words. “Do you write in your books?” she asked.

“I want to,” he said. “It feels like talking back.”

“I do,” she said, unabashed. “Underlining is like leaving breadcrumbs for the next person. Proof you survived the forest.”

“In case the next person is me,” he said, and it was a joke but not really.

They drifted to the little table by the window. The cat jumped up and arranged herself so her tail tapped Mara’s wrist. Outside, umbrellas bloomed and closed, colors moving like slow fireworks. Inside, everything narrowed to the table and the words and the way conversation opened on its own, as if they picked it up midstream from last lifetime.

“Where do you work?” she asked.

“A marketing firm that sells certainty,” he said. “I write copy that makes people say yes at two a.m.”

“You’re funny when you’re bleak,” she said. “I teach art to ten-year-olds. We made galaxies yesterday. Glitter everywhere. My apartment looks like a disco threw up.”

“Galaxies and glitter,” he said. “It suits you.”

“Because of the ring?” She wiggled her thumb. The silver orbit caught the light. “My sister says it makes me look like a magician’s assistant.”

“You look like someone who knows how to disappear and come back with an answer,” he said, surprised by his own honesty.

Mara’s gaze softened. She leaned her chin into her palm. “Do you ever get that feeling,” she said, “like when you remember a dream at noon, and you’re like, oh, if I had held on a second longer, that would have explained the whole day?”

“Yes,” he said. “Right now.”

They laughed, and the owner glanced up, measuring them with the fond suspicion of someone who’s seen too many beginnings and knows how often they are excuses. “You two buying something or turning this place into a museum?” he asked.

Mara looked at her watch and startled. “God, I’m late,” she said. “I’ve got to catch the 3:15 bus or my friend will text me the skull emoji until I die.”

“Wait,” he said, and then he didn’t know how to complete it. Wait—what? Don’t leave yet? Can I—? Will you—?

She hugged the Rilke to her chest. “I’m buying this,” she told the owner, then turned to Evan. “Will you be offended if I steal the breadcrumbs?”

“Only if you don’t leave me any,” he said.

She smiled. “I’ll underline something you’d underline," she said, moving toward the counter. “If you find it, we’ll know.”

“That’s a terrible system,” he said, following, laughing, terrified.

“It’s the only one I’ve got,” she said.

She paid in coins and rain-spotted bills, slipped the book into her tote, and then her face did a tiny weather pattern he would replay later in bed: anticipation, regret, a small brave nod. “It was really nice,” she said. “Meeting you.”

“Yeah,” he said, uselessly. “You too.”

The bell clinked as she pushed the door open. The rain had gentled to a mist that made the street glow. She stepped under the awning and lifted a yellow umbrella. She hesitated, glanced back. Her eyes met his through the glass.

Say something, said the certainty in his chest. Ask. Go. It’s only three steps, it’s only the truth. You’ve been rehearsing for this since you were born.

“I—” he said. The words jammed in the doorway of his mouth. He suddenly saw every time he had asked and been told no. He saw himself in the bus mirror, desperate, stranger-ish. He saw the owner’s eyebrows lifting, the cat’s indifferent yawn, Mara’s patience thinning in a way he could never forgive himself for.

He lifted his hand, but not his feet. He watched her wave, that small brave nod again, and then she turned and moved into the moving picture of umbrellas. The yellow bloom folded into the rest, then was gone.

The bell was a punctuation mark he hated.

“You gonna let that happen?” the owner asked, not unkind.

Evan deflated into a chair. “Apparently.”

The owner wiped a ring of coffee from the counter with a slow rag. “Doors don’t open themselves,” he said.

“I know,” Evan said. “I know.”

“First editions don’t sit on the shelf long, either,” the owner offered. “You’ll need to learn how to run.”

“Not my sport,” Evan said, trying for a joke that came out a confession.

The cat leaped down and strolled over, deciding that his shoelace was worthy of attention. He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the table until it hurt. The rain made the window glass a story told in Morse.

He bought a different copy of Rilke—less loved, more pristine—and tucked it into his jacket as if it could keep his chest from collapsing. Outside, the rain had faded to a memory. The street shone like it had bitten its tongue.

On the bus ride home he called his friend Jordan. “I think I met my person,” he said, staring at the damp footprints on the floor, the plastic order of the seats.

“The bartender?” Jordan asked. “The barista? Did they write ‘Evan’ right this time?”

“A woman in a bookshop. Mara. We reached for the same book. We talked about galaxies and underlining and everything that matters when the weather changes. She—God, Jordan, she was like a light I recognized.”

There was a silence on the line, a different kind of listening. “And?”

“And I let her go.”

“Because?”

“Because I don’t chase,” he said. “Because I hate the sound my heart makes when it hits the ground. Because I thought if she’s it, it would be easy, and it wasn’t, and I panicked, and—”

“Buddy,” Jordan said soft. “You don’t find easy. You find real. Real has a bus schedule. Real has good shoes.”

Evan laughed helplessly. “What do I do?”

“Go back,” Jordan said. “Leave a breadcrumb. Tell the universe you’re not hiding under the table. And next time, run.”

He hung up and got off two stops early. The sky had cleared into a bruise-colored evening. He jogged the last block back to the store, feeling both ridiculous and like a homing bird remembering it had wings.

“She’s gone,” the owner said before he could ask, not unkind.

“I figured,” Evan said, breathless.

He pulled a receipt from his pocket and wrote, hand shaking, To the woman with the orbit ring and the yellow umbrella: I’m sorry I wasn’t brave. Underline anything. I’ll be looking. —Evan. He slid it into the pristine Rilke and placed it back on the poetry shelf, high enough to be a little fate and low enough to be found.

The owner watched him with narrowed eyes, then nodded. “Better,” he said.

Outside, the air smelled like the world after a decision. Evan stood on the sidewalk and looked at the people passing, any of them holding a yellow umbrella in his mind. He felt the ache of the missed moment like a bruise he could press to remind himself it was there, it had happened, it mattered.

“Next time,” he said to no one, to everyone, to the set of his own shoulders in the reflection of the darkening glass. “Run.”

Julia O’Hara 2025

THANK YOU for reading my work. I am a global nomad/permanent traveler, or Coddiwombler, if you will, and I move from place to place about every three months. I am currently in Peru and heading to Chile in a few days and from there, who knows? I enjoy writing articles, stories, songs and poems about life, spirituality and my travels. You can find my songs linked below. Feel free to like and subscribe on any of the platforms. And if you are inspired to, tips are always appreciated, but not necessary. I just like sharing.

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