Made for One Another

 He meandered through life as a shadow, a wisp of one at that. To pass him on the street wouldn’t  cause a single memory to be formed. He marched through his days invisible to the rush of humanity.

If vanilla is as plain as you can go in the world of ice cream flavors, she was store-brand - cardboard boxed. Not even as interesting as French or churn-style or even vanilla bean. Plain. In a cup, not a cone.

He liked to think he worked in finance, but a cubicle with a dried up plant and a motivational poster in a call center answering questions about car warranties wasn’t exactly Wall Street. It wasn’t any street that didn’t end in a yellow dead end sign.

She liked to imagine her work skills as necessary to the fabric of society itself; in reality, she was a barista (and not a very good one at that) at a strip-mall, corporately-owned coffee shop.

He breezed in to get a small coffee, black.

She was working the counter for once, this being a slack time for the more adventurous customers.

Coffee ordered, he handed her a $5 and she handed back his change. As she did so, the handful of silver fell and skittered across the marble counter. They both bent to retrieve it.

Their skulls collided, the sound like a thumped melon. 

Their heads snapped back, and they looked at each other with hands on foreheads and through a sting of tears. 

The skin of their cheeks went rosy, simultaneously.

“You know, why don’t you toss a shot of French vanilla into that order,” he said.

She shivered ever so slightly, gooseflesh raised on her arms, and smiled.