Jessa & Eli (A Very Short Story)

A girl named Jessa slips her hand through a coffee mug, with Monet on the outside and chai on the inside. A boy named Eli reads out a Psalm from his grandfather's cocoa leather Bible, pages taped into a cracking spine. This is Wednesday afternoon. She's a photographer; he works in the bookstore they're at a table in front of. She's from Mississippi; he's from London. He misses his home, she feels it in his words. They met the day he overheard her quoting Mrs. Browning's sixth Sonnet. Against her nature, she trusted him. He makes her laugh; she makes him smile. He gets used to how she hums "The Scientist" without realizing it; she finds herself tipping her head at the way he says "love". Her messy bun bothers her less around him; he realizes he speaks to her like poetry, far too often. He's the only one allowed to see her drawings, but the way his eyes crinkle through the black rimmed glasses, she never can capture. She thanks God that He makes her Wednesdays like this; he understands the end of Proverbs more each time he sees her. She's forgotten hurt; the table where they sit is now London to him. She wonders why he hasn't asked her out; he thinks her first name sounds nice with his last.