The Bookstore Where Our Eyes First Spoke

The old bookstore on Elm Street was supposed to be torn down by spring. It smelled like dusty paper and warm cinnamon, with creaky wooden floors that whispered with every step. Leah had wandered in on a rainy Tuesday, hoping to kill time. She wasn’t expecting to find the last piece of her heart between the pages of a book—or in someone else’s eyes.

She spotted him first in the poetry aisle, his fingers gently tracing the spine of a Rumi collection. He wore a navy coat, slightly too big for his lean frame, and his hair curled like it couldn’t be tamed. He hadn’t noticed her yet, but when he finally did look up, their eyes met—and held.

He smiled.

Leah should’ve turned away. She was only there for an old travel journal she wanted to gift her best friend. Love stories didn’t start in real life like they did in books. But somehow, she smiled back.

He looked down at the book in his hand. “Have you ever read this one?” he asked, holding it up.

Leah nodded. “Rumi is dangerous,” she replied.

“Why?”

“Because he makes you believe in soulmates.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you don’t?”

Leah shrugged. “I believe in timing.”

The man chuckled. “That’s deep.”

“I hang out with poets,” she said with a smirk.

That made him laugh, a warm sound that settled under her skin like sunshine after days of rain.

They didn’t exchange names then. Instead, he handed her the book, and she handed him a memory—one neither of them could name yet.

The next time they met was two weeks later, same bookstore, different section. This time it was philosophy. Leah was thumbing through a dog-eared copy of Letters to a Young Poet when she heard the familiar creak of shoes behind her.

“You again,” he said, grinning.

“You again,” she echoed.

Still, no names.

They talked about Camus, about loneliness, about how some people enter our lives like punctuation—some are commas, others are full stops.

He said, “You feel like an ellipsis. Like something unfinished.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she walked away with a smile and left him wondering.

Over the next few weeks, they became regulars—never on purpose, but always somehow arriving around the same time. They traded stories, shared favorite authors, laughed in corners of the shop like they were the only ones alive.

He told her about his father’s antique camera, how he loved taking portraits of people who didn’t know they were beautiful. Leah told him about her mother, who left her a box of love letters and taught her how to read between the lines.

But they never exchanged numbers. No names. No promises.

It was as if the magic of their bond lived only inside those dusty walls.

Then, one Thursday, Leah didn’t come. Nor the next.

Days stretched into weeks, and the bookstore felt emptier than usual.

He waited.

On the eve of the demolition, he returned with a photograph in hand—a portrait he’d taken of Leah on a rainy day when she had laughed, looking up at the skylight like she was catching memories.

He taped it to the shelf where they first met, next to Rumi.

Below it, he wrote:

"She believed in timing. I believed in fate. Maybe they’re the same thing, just written by different poets."

He signed it with a name she never knew.

A year later, Leah returned to Elm Street. She had moved away for work, for healing, for space to think. The bookstore was gone—replaced by a sleek new café. But something tugged at her, pulling her toward a small frame hung by the new owners.

Inside was the photograph. And the note.

She read it once.

Then twice.

And when she turned, there he was—ordering coffee, wearing that same navy coat, only this time, he looked older. Tired. But when he saw her, his eyes lit up like a sunrise breaking through fog.

She walked over, heart pounding like a poem trying to escape.

“Hey,” she said softly.

He stared at her, stunned. Then: “You came back.”

“I believed in timing,” she whispered.

And this time, she told him her name.