"D--Devin..."

Cerise's quivering tone makes Devin's gut churn and heart constrict like all the blood has been vacuumed from within. Add to her discernibly unpleasant exclamation, her obsidian eyes wide, and willowy frame stiff, and all those emotions - fear, confusion, uncertainty - swimming across her visage, and his vestigial distress proliferates into full blown, crippling dismay. He can only keep imagining the worst - Cerise leaving, Cerise avoiding him like a new kind of plague, Cerise not wanting to even remotely associate herself with him...

Devin cannot let that happen.

Taking a small step closer to her, he gently says, "Cherry... hi."

He decides that's the stupidest of all the things he could've said.

Slowly, as if her motor controls are being resuscitated after complete homeostasis, she swallows, and says, "I... I need to go."

Eyes lowered, she brushes past him. Devin sends out a hand as if to stop her, but thinks the better of it and pulls back, calling out to her instead. "Cherry!" her nickname, a word so sweet, yet can never match the sweetness of her personality, has ripped from his throat with so much urgency that his voice sounds alien and detached even to his own ears. "You said you didn't judge people..."

Cerise stops, much to his relief, but doesn't face him.

At this point, Devin feels like he's reaching to hold on to something that didn't even exist in the first place. If practically seen, he knows there isn't much between him and Cerise, but then, his instinct insists otherwise. There is definitely something between them and he needs to save it. Cerise's silence is filled in by the winds and the waves, engaged in their susurrating, and singing, and rising, and crashing. Desperation increasing, Devin speaks again, "you said you didn't care who I was, or what I looked like, or--or..." He's at a loss for words, at a loss for hopes of keeping this - whatever this is - from dying out. "Cerise... just..."

His frustration builds to a point where he now wants to punch something. Something so hard that it breaks his fingers and the physical pain overtakes this stupid, emotional agony. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort is within punching distance, and so Devin balls his fists and shoves them deep into the pockets of his hoodie, counting backwards from fifty in his mind to calm himself.

He's at thirty-seven when Cerise finally turns around, scrutinizing him as if she's looking for answers to questions she doesn't even understand. Then, she says, "you're Cigarette..." like she's confirming that once and for all.

"Yeah..." answers Devin. For some reason, he wants to look away from her. He takes to staring at the stipple of trees a short distance to the right of where they stand.

"I wish I could say I didn't judge you, but you already know that's not true..." Cerise's voice is soft, filled with something that sounds like regret. "I was just..." she trails off.

"Scared?" Devin fills in questioningly. Then, with surety, he says, "you were scared of me."

He hears her sigh. "God, I'm such a hypocrite... I said I didn't care, but then your reputation is... it's so..."

"Bad," Devin states, unable to hold back the mirthlessly cold laugh that bursts forth. "So, you do judge people after all, Cherry."

Cerise starts, "I'm sorry. I didn't--"

Devin cuts her off, "it's alright. You're only human. All humans judge..." Regretting how rude he comes off as, he adds, "our ability of higher thinking kind of mandates judgement."

The quietude that shifts in between them is bothersome, unwanted, and full of things that go unsaid. These are things that Devin doesn't know how to express without possibly messing them up so badly that his jerk of a personality shines through. Briefly sparing her a glance, whence he sees her thoughtfully chewing on her bottom lip, he tilts his head back a little to look at the sky. Clouds - gray and massed, to match his mood - scud by slowly, making somber promises of a rain later in the day.

Just when Devin thinks he has hurt Cerise with his sharp, unfiltered words - hurt her so much that she doesn't want to talk to him anymore - he hears her say, "um... you wanna go and get something to eat?"

Devin's gaze snaps back to her in surprise. Unsure of whether he heard her correctly, he incredulously queries, "what?"

Raising her eyebrows, Cerise clarifies, "I wanted to get lunch with you, remember? Talking over food is... is pretty fun."

"I--uh..." Devin doesn't understand where this sudden change in Cerise comes from, but he doesn't fully condemn it either. Maybe things are going in the right direction from here on... at least, that's what he hopes most for. Before he can get in another word, however, she suddenly speaks up.

"It's okay if you're busy, though," she says hastily, "we can do it some other time. You know, start anew over a cup of coffee or something."

Start anew? Of course, that's a great idea! And if that's what Cerise wants, Devin is more than willing to comply to this earnest request.

"No, we'll do it now," he affirms. "Let's go get lunch, I'm starving."

Cerise's laugh - her real, genuine laugh, unmarred by the phone's buzzing backdrop - has made it to the top of Devin's list of the most wonderful things in the world. And he happens to have a feeling that other things about her will soon be up there, too.

***

When Cigarette turned out to be Devin Jameston, Cerise felt like a ton of bricks had dropped on her. And drowning in a myriad of fear, and confusion, and doubt, she could hardly form coherent thoughts until Devin spoke... and, goodness, he spoke so persistently, and with such impassioned entreaty, that she had felt her very heartstrings pull her back and tie her to him.

Devin's reputation is far from the kind of person that she conversed with over phone, and she made quick judgement of that, but that's what she regretted as soon as she came to terms with her own hypocrisy. She shouldn't have judged him like that... the blueness of his eyes hold a sincerity that not even the most skilled of actors can execute.

She makes the amendment for it as soon as the idea strikes her. To ask him out to eat together. He looks confused at first, and asks for confirmation, which she gives wholeheartedly, and then, to her happiness, he agrees. He seems to give in to her requests easily - he agreed to meet her, and now he agreed to have lunch with her; the thought fills her stomach with overzealous butterflies.

They walk back to the road side by side. After crossing the divider, Cerise steps on the curb, walking in the direction of Market Square, but she's stopped by a high whistle. Turning back, she sees Devin standing at the driver's side of an old Chevrolet pick-up. "I brought my ride... but if you wanna walk, we can."

Although Cerise doesn't mind walking, she decides to take up on his offer. There's no point in leaving behind the vehicle to walk somewhere when you can very well drive to it and reach faster. Within ten minutes, they make it to the Square, and have parked in the lot of Homemade - a small, family-owned restaurant with homely service and quaint ambiance.

Like a true gentleman, Devin moves ahead and holds the door open for Cerise, making her cheeks go warm. She's thankful for her inheritance of darker skin, for it helps hide her blushing. Inside, Devin just waits behind her, indicating that she needs to pick a place to sit. She chooses the two-seating table near the storefront, next to the window.

A peppy waitress appears out of nowhere at their side as soon as they have settled down, ready to take their orders. Cerise notices that Devin doesn't even open his menu, straightaway ordering a cashew milk risotto for himself, then looking patiently at her - ostensibly, he's familiar with Homemade. She flashes him a faint smile, before dropping her eyes to the menu and scanning trough the list of dishes, while acutely aware of his intense scrutiny boring into her. Ultimately, Cerise settles on a mushroom-onion-corn pizza and a glass of lemonade.

With the waitress gone, Cerise thinks of striking up a conversation, but she really doesn't know how to start. Her brain seemingly abandons her right when she needs it the most. Across from her, Devin sits leaning back in his chair, busy looking outside. His hands are on the table, and his long fingers drum a faint rhythm on the hardwood surface. He's rather beautiful, Cerise notes, with a sharp jawline, thin nose, good lips, and skin with olive hued undertones.

Having studied Devin elaborately, she turns away from him lest he catch her staring, to leave her attention out the window at the people going around Market Square. This is precisely the reason she chose this seat - so she can look outside in uncomfortable moments like such. Soon, she loses herself in sonder.

"We were gonna start over..."

Devin's voice brings Cerise back from the lives of strangers to the restaurant with him - from out there and then, to in here and now. "Huh?"

"We were gonna start over," he repeats.

"Oh, yeah." She feels almost stupid, devoid of ideas of how to play out her own proposal. "So, how do we do this...?"

"Hi, I'm Devin Jameston," he says, gaze full of sparkling amusement. "I like spending my days avoiding human contact, and spending my nights staring at the sky, wondering what the hell is taking those damn aliens so long to come down and destroy earth. Sometimes, I concentrate on complicated integrals."

A smile etches itself over Cerise's mouth, and she can't help the giggle that escapes her. She catches on. "Hi, I'm Cerise Miller... I appreciate poetry and peonies. I'm a pluviophile and a logophile..."

"Logophile?"

"A lover of words..." At Devin's agog expression, Cerise explains, "I love to look up words... the words I find most beautiful earn a place in this notebook I have."

"Ah," Devin says, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. For a boy, Cerise thinks he has quite the full lips... "A collection of beautiful words," he muses aloud, "I must see Cerise's Collection of Beautiful Words..."

Tearing her stare away from his mouth, Cerise has to swallow before she can talk. "I'll... I'll, uh, bring it along one day."

"That'd be great. Thanks."

"Um, no problem."

Their waitress takes that opportunity to come by with their food, and Cerise cannot be more thankful, because the icy keenness of Devin's blue eyes have become too much for her to handle without combusting internally. With her pizza in front of her, Cerise now has something else to concentrate on without appearing inconsiderately lost in another world.

They would've eaten in silence had Cerise not gotten over her coyness and garnered the courage to make eye contact with Devin, and offer, "you wanna try my pizza?"

To her disappointment, he shakes his head in denial. "It's not that I don't want to share... it's just... I'm vegan. And I hate cheese. But, you can have my risotto, if you'd like."

"Vegan?" she asks, curious, "watching your health?"

Devin scoffs. "Far from it." He swipes Cerise's lemonade, and takes a swig. After downing it, he says, "I have always been against oppression of all kinds... and then, one day, I realized that I'm an oppressor, too."

"Oh..." Cerise studies him, his confession sparking a new interest for her in him. "I get it, animal equality."

"Umm..." Devin's brows knit together as he frowns - it's a cute frown. "Yeah. In a way..."

"And what sparked this realization, may I ask?"

"You may. A vegan fair in Portland, a Netflix movie called Earthlings, and lots of slaughterhouse footage..."

"God... I guess I missed the fair, I'll pass on the slaughterhouse footage, but I'd like to see Earthlings."

Like that, Cerise succeeds in keeping him engaged in this discussion. It's heartwarming to watch him talk about his stand against oppression - clearly, that's something valuable to him, and she can listen to him go on like this for ever. They continue on the topic, until it's decided that they'll watch Earthlings together, tomorrow afternoon.

Then, they revert to their 'starting anew' introductions, in which, in spite of not gathering anything new about him that she already hasn't, Cerise finds that he is the most unique person she has ever come across. His uniqueness can be attributed to his malicious misanthropy. He basically does everything to differentiate himself from other humans; he wants absolutely nothing to associate himself with this race. It's intriguingly comical.

Thus, Cerise determines that Devin truly isn't what the rest of the world has made him out to be...

***