CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

 

Jared sat in a booth at the back of the coffee shop, buried beneath a mound of books, daydreaming. He’d fallen through a trapdoor in his mind and tumbled through thoughts of alien worlds.

Scrawling on a pad of paper, his pencil made quiet chick-chick scratches as he transferred the images from his head.

Jared, absorbed by thoughts firing through his mind’s eye in rapid succession, was only barely conscious of his doodle, or of the young woman who’d appeared at the other end of the table.

She quietly slid into the booth beside Jared and waiting for the trance to release its grasp on him.

When it did, it did so with a start.

Jarek noticed her out of his peripheral and startled, snapping the graphite head of his pencil in the process, leaving a gray smudge on the white page.

“Ah,” he squeaked. A noise he immediately regretted making. One does not squeak at beautiful, strange women and hope to make a positive first impression. He wasn’t off to a strong start, so he kept the ball rolling with a question that fell out of him more accusing than he’d intended. “Who are you?”

The woman had auburn hair and dimpled cheeks. Her hands moved to the sketchpad tucked under Jared’s forearm. A disconcertingly forward action, but he made no move to stop her, which in and of itself was odd, but perhaps no more so than a random woman seeking out his company.

“I’m Valerie,” she said, studying Jared’s sketches with voracious intent.

The name seemed familiar, conjuring a memory that pirouetted just beyond his grasp before frolicking away back into his subconscious. Then again, it wasn’t a particularly uncommon name.

Still, something about her made Jared’s brain tingle, which was to say nothing of the way his heart kept trying to leapfrog its way into his throat.

“These are amazing,” Valerie said, reverently turning each page as though the sketchbook was far more precious than it actually was.

Jared stuttered a non-response before stopping to gather his words. “Thanks. They’re just doodles.”

Valerie nodded in that distinctly feminine, knowing sort of way. “Where do you get your ideas from?”

“Uh, everywhere, I suppose. My grandma says I have an overactive imagination, but I’m not really sure how to compare one imagination against another. So who knows?”

“I see.” Valerie turned another page and her eyes lit up. The dimples in her cheeks deepened, and she smiled. “Even this one?”

Jared leaned on his elbows for a better view of a portrait he only vaguely recalled having drawn. His eyes darted up to Valerie, then down to the drawing, and then once more back to Valerie for a final round of double-take.

The resemblance wasn’t simply uncanny, it was impossible.

“I swear, I uh… I wasn’t following you or anything like that,” Jared said, suddenly feeling incredibly awkward at the implication of having drawn the woman without her consent. “This, I don’t know, just came from up here.” He tapped his temple with a pencil. “I didn’t mean…”

“It’s okay, Jared,” Valerie said, holding a finger up. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time. And I’m thinking you were looking for me too, but maybe you just didn’t know it.”

“Uh…” Jared stopped cold. “How do you know my name?”

Valerie smiled.

“Have we met before?” he asked.

Valerie smiled broader. “Not in this lifetime.”