Chapter 8

Aesthetic café; The smell when you come in is as sweet as when you open up that fresh bag of coffee beans, and you inhale a long whiff of it, wanting to enjoy it forever. There are little nooks to sit alone or with others, sipping on hot coffee, and there are windows so you can look out at the trees, and there is mellow music playing in the background, maybe a live musician on his/her guitar, piano, etc. Maybe a few long community tables to share, to do homework, work on your business, or have a book to read at.

It’s a beautiful and warm place to just think and observe.

The café in such honeyed hues brings a sweetness to the day, coaxing an inner smile that warms from within. The ambiance of the café, its homey aroma, draws my soul into its cocoon for a few blessed moments.

The café tables in their rich deep browns, the aroma with its dark aromatic perfume, call me in from the wintry day.

The Aesthetic café is purely magical. It's their safe haven since they were young.

There sat the three - friends from childhood, all lost in their own world.

Nyla, was reminiscing about her childhood. And most importantly about they three.

A friend is heavens gift, a co-captain for when times are rough, a co-conspirator in blessed mischief, a bud with petals of pure love, and one who'd be in the trenches with you if the battle cry ever comes, no matter what, where, when or with whom.

They become part of the foundations of one another's homes, for they supported each other from soul to eyes of mirth. That is what they were, that is what they are, friends that belong together in this life and evermore.

Their friendship feels as the wind or the water that flows between open fingers in a summer stream, yet when the wintry winds blow it is the woollens and the hearth, and in dangerous times it becomes both sword and shield. For them, friendship is a kind of love and love is an emotion for real and casual heroes.

There is no fine whisky in fine lounges or among those celebrated on pedestals that can match the smallest speck of this joy that is her friends. For no matter the weather or the place she find herself in, it is there within her and she is warm.

She sighed loudly and looked up at find two pairs of eye gwaking at her.

"What?!" Nyla asked flabbergasted.

"Care to share your thoughts? " asked Marcus.

"No, nothing...uhm.. Was just thinking about something random." said Nyla.

"Even though I don't want to believe you, I  will for sometime as I'm famished and Imma feed myself " said Ella in her excited voice seeing her favorite cake in front of her.

A bloom of summer strawberries and cream adorned plate, she called it her Wimbledon cake, and said it was made from "all-love."

Nyla just shaked her head at her and looked at Marcus who still had his eyes squinting at her. Nyla wriggled her eyebrows and Marcus just shrugged and turned to Ella.

"Like seriously Ella, when weren't you hungry " scoffed him.

"Thanos, you don't want to trigger me now, You know very well hungry me is the dangerous me . So zip your mouth and don't disturb me" Ella said sternly.

They two started bickering as usual and Nyla just sipped her coffee and closed her eyes at the feeling of her coffee reaching her throat. And hummed in satisfied with a beautiful smile lingering on her lips.

For Nyla, the aroma of the coffee is part of the rhythm of the day, another anchor in routine that soothes and gives a sense of normality and predictability.

Nyla seriously wanted to be like a coffee in someone's life. She wish she was like the morning coffee, touching so lightly upon the lips. Touching lightly and then entering your sweet abyss. She wish she was it's aroma, it's curls of foaming cream. She wish she was it's caffeine and those brown hues that serenade one's heart following their dawn, her dusk, their rise, her rest.

She was snapped out of her thoughts, when Marcus asked her to get him a red velvet cake showing off his puppy eyes in process to convince her.

"Gross, don't even think you are looking cute Marc" Nyla fake gagged

And did as told, she was standing in the when heard the door of the café getting open alerting the people about the new entry.

As cliche, as it sounds, Nyla felt a sudden wave of blissness and relief passing in her. And there was some kind of magnetic force pulling her towards the door, so she looked at the person who entered the café.

The moment she saw him, Nyla froze, the guy who entered the café and heading towards a free table was looking attractive as hell.

If he wasn’t a male model which he should have been. The lush, mother lode-gold hair he groomed so carefully had a rippling quality, a sign of his rude health. His only blemish was that he was beetle-browed and they sometimes knitted in frustration.

The aquiline nose he sported complemented his prominent cheekbones. Handsome in an understated way, his basalt jaw and Spartan shoulders spoke of strength. He possessed a latent, leonine power and always walked with purpose and authority.His mariner-blue eyes were orb round and darted constantly, a-gleam with delight and the vigour of youth. They were soft, Irish eyes and swam with slight irritation. But they shone brightly, like two sapphires dipped in milky pools.

He had the kind of face that stopped you in your tracks.

But something about him intrigued Nyla. Definitely not love at first sight but it's like she knew him all along.

And about those sapphire eyes which seems so similar to her.

She was still looking at him when she heard someone calling her.

"Mam, what can I get for you? " asked the waiter.

She snapped her head towards her and asked for a red velvet cake. And she looked back to only sigh at disappointment that the male disappeared.

After five minutes of waiting, she collected her order. And was heading her way back to the table when she found the handsome man with someone else. She passed him when—

"Hey, birthday girl" Nyla heard a familiar deep voice.

She turned and saw the ravenette she met the club grinning widely at her.

"Hey druggie, how are you man?" Nyla asked and side hugged him in the process.

Both were laughing and catching up things not noticing a certain man starring at the girl with wide eyes.

The man felt his throat clogging and it's making him hard to breathe. He can hear his heart beating widely at his chest while he continue to stare at her, whose talking animatedly to the latter. Tears started decorating his sapphire eyes. Tears came as if, at long last, his accumulated ocean of brine was trickling through.

He looked at her Amazonian figure sat well on her wafer-thin body. She had a decanter shaped waist and her complexion had an impeccable, ochrous hue. Her pencil-thin eyebrows eased down gently to her black, beetle’s-leg eyelashes. A sculptor could not have fashioned her seraph’s ears and pixie’s nose any better.

When she broke into a smile, her beguiling, oyster-white teeth lit up the room. It could jolt you like an electric current when that megawatt smile gave you her full attention. Filed to perfection, her Venus-red fingernails ran through her nougat-brown hair. Spools of it plunged around her photogenic face and hid a swan’s neck, elegant and smooth.

He swear he loved her nebulous, Eden-green eyes which were a-sparkle with the ‘joie de vivre’. They were like two beryl-green jewels melted onto snow.

Her calamine-pink lips which looked like like rose petals. It surprised him that they were plump and botox-boosted as she had a demure, timorous personality. She was speaking to the latter in a dulcet voice as sweet as any songbird. Her voguish clothes still kept captive an aroma redolent of cinnamon and meadow-fresh mint.

The only thing that's running in his brain was 'She became more beautiful' .

Before she snap her eyes at him, he wiped his tears and immediately looked away, as if he wasn't staring at her a while ago.

"Hey bro, this is Nyla and Nyla meet Jace, my brother, my bestfriend " he heard Harry.

"H-Hello Jace!" he heard her voice. He closed his eyes for a second and continued to maintain his stiff gesture.

Harry smiled awkwardly at her and leaned towards Jace, "Telling a Hi wouldn't be bad, yeah?" whispered Harry and straightend his posture.

Jace turned his face towards her, oh man those innocent and curious eyes is starring right through his soul.

"She's nothing but a stranger and I don't want to have any sort of communication with her" said Jace and rushed out of the café informing Harry to join him fast.

Nyla wasn't really expecting that, Man was rude like so rude. Who pissed in his cereal this morning was the only question running in her mind.

" Sorry on behalf of him, he is usually not like this,  it's just a work pressure and anyways catch you later, gotta go bye. " Harry said cheerly

"Yeah, no problem " she passed a tight lipped smile towards him and waved goodbye and proceeded towards her table.

Still feeling a tad bit bad for the way the man named Jace behaved towards her. She doesn't like people who are rude and grumpy.

With a aloud scoff, she sat on her chair.

"I'm never asking you to get me a cake hereafter " She heard Marcus muttering.

"Sorry got caught up with Harry the guy I met at the club yesterday"

"OMG, that sexy douche, shit I missed the chance of meeting him in person"Ella said pouting.

Marcus immediately turned towards her and glared at her.

Ella was taken back by this and they started bickering again leaving Nyla in her own thoughts about a certain sapphire eyed man.