SHE IS UNREAL.

The trace of a smile that coated her pinkish lips as her eyes catch me walk into the coffeeshop drew on a wide smile of my own.

"Coffee?" She asks me knowingly.

"Please," I pass her the money and she puts it into the register. I continue my way to sit on one of the stools by the counter and watch her as she makes my coffee.

"Why do you really drink black coffee so late?" She asks me and her interest does make me smile.

"You really wanna know?"

"Well, I'm not gonna beg. But it is odd. Look around," she gestures at the empty café and I nod.

"I have to work. I have multiple jobs at the moment, some where I have to take shifts extra late, or I guess early. So I need the caffeine to get me going."

"Oh," She looks confused. "To the point where you don't sleep? You need work that bad?"

"Yes," I bite on my bottom lip, mulling over whether I should tell her about my mum's state or not. But otherwise, she'd think I'm homeless. So I sigh and start explaining. "My mum's sick."

"Oh... I'm sorry," She searches my eyes, the most emotion I've seen from her emitting through those crystals. "Is that why you weren't in last night?"

"Yeah," For some reason, her question, or her attention to my disappearance the night before, or her concern actually makes me smile a little. "And it's okay. I'm working for her wellbeing. Treatment needs hospital, hospital needs money and I need to get that money."

"The world is just fucking cruel," Stellula says.

Stellula, I've discovered, means little star in Latin. And it couldn't be more accurate. She is a little star. She has midnight in her eyes, lust on her lips, and stardust in her hair. There are infinite constellations littering her cheeks in the sunlight.

"Maybe," I agree with her as she passes me the cup of steaming coffee. "But I live with it."

"I live with it, too," she says and looks to be reminiscing. "And it's not like you have any other option, anyway."

"I guess not," I sigh and play with the cup of coffee in front of me.

"I, uh," Stellula clears her throat and I look up at her. "I don't remember much of my mother, but I believe she was an incredible human being."

"I'm sorry," I study her small smile, both appalled and crushed as she shares her story.

"Why?" She looks at me as if I'm crazy for apologizing. "She's lucky. She's in a way better place than this one. I think my dad is with her there, too."

My chest tightens on my heart. She has lost a mother and a father. She is orphaned. My hands twitched from how much I wanted to hug her. But instead, I studied the curve of her nose and the depth of her gaze and the curl of her lashes and the structure of her ear as she tucked one side of her hair behind it.

She is unreal.

"I think you're an incredible human being, too," I tell her, nodding my head as if confirming my own words.

Stellula stares at me, as if she's realizing what she said, what I said, our current hearts' close proximity, then she chuckles. She rounds the counter and takes the tall stool next to me. "I'm really not, Devon."

"You are," I smile. "You just don't know it."

"Well, you are sickeningly sweet tonight, aren't you?"

I laugh and shake my head. "Not just tonight, I think you're just aware of that now."

"Right," she shook her head, a wider smile tugging on the curves of her lips.

I can't help but acknowledge the fact that her attitude towards me has changed. Drastically. Flipped a whole 180 degrees after yesterday's conversation, when we had the strangest moment I've had in my entire life. You'll lose yourself, she'd said. I don't mind. If I'll get to have her, I really don't mind.

"What do you listen to, anyway?"

"Huh?" I break out of my thoughts and follow her gaze to my headset around my neck as she rests her elbow on the counter before placing her cheek in her palm. "Oh. Different things, really. I have a...very diverse taste in music." I watch her for a moment, noting her interested gaze. "Wanna hear something?"

"Uh, sure," Stellula straightens, pushing off the counter to sit properly before she shrugs.

"What kind of music do you listen to?" I ask her, and the sheepish look she gives me makes me widen my eyes. "Don't tell me you don't listen to music."

"Well..."

"No way," I shake my head. "Are you eighty? Hell, even eighty-year-olds listen to music."

"I just don't have anything to listen on," she clarifies, cheeks turning bright pink. "Besides, it's never been an interest of mine."

"What do you mean?" I argue playfully. "Don't you have a phone? You can easily-"

"I don't have a phone."

"Oh," I say and a grin takes over my face. "So that's why you didn't give me your number!"

"Yeah, sure, that was totally it." She rolls her eyes and we both laugh lightly, my gaze lingering at the way her smile spreads wider and her eyes wrinkle, her cheekbones putting anyone else's to shame. She just looks like God spent a little more time perfecting her creation. She is art.

I look away and down at my iPod when she catches me staring and my cheeks have a mind of their own because I feel them warm up. I'm sure they're embarrassingly red and blotchy as my ears. Shaking my head, I scroll through my iPod to find a fitting song, having a lucky guess what someone of art like Stellula would enjoy.

"It's not that I can't afford one, though," She was trying to fill the silence and avoid any further awkwardness. Though it's weird, I've never felt awkward around Stellula. Just strangely, weirdly but magnificently fond. "It's just because I don't want one. What good would it do me anyway?"

"Listen to music," I point out the obvious but Stellula shrugs.

"It's not a good enough reason to spend my savings on," she honestly says.

"Savings that you spend on cigarette packs?" I raise my eyebrows at her then retract after the look she gives me. "I'm not judging, just curious."

"No, smartass," She inhales and fidgets with her apron. "I'm saving for something else."

Accepting that she's not spilling more on the topic of cigarettes, I just nod and reach towards her face to move her hair behind her ear, a mindless act. But before I could do any of that, just as she catches the motion of my hand, she flinches away warily.

"What are you doing?"

I raise my hands in surrender and chuckle. "I was just... The headset? I was going to, uh,"

"Oh. Okay," She saves me from my misery and tucks her own hair behind her ears, looking at me expectantly.

"Okay," I trail off as I put my headset on her tiny head, positioning it gently on her ears to sit perfectly before I hit play on my iPod.

I played her I Wanna Be Yours by Arctic Monkeys first. She looked like she was listening closely to the lyrics, furrowing her eyebrows every now and then. When the song stops playing, she removes the headset and looks at me strangely.

"Why would anyone want to be a vacuum cleaner?"

Laughter bubbled out of me easily at her question. I shook my head. "You're not seeing the point."

"What is the point?"

"A vacuum cleaner picks up all the leftovers, the mess, the unwanted, and the forgotten. To assume this role, he is taking on the responsibility to deal with what most wouldn't, you know?" I don't wait for a reply, because she's looking at me so intently so I carry on. "And in a way, taking all the bad that comes with the good. A pretty good expression of the potential devotion they're trying to portray in the song. It really shows both: a desire to be close to his lover and a desire to give up things for her." I smile and wave my hands in referral. "Like breathing clean air and having to be a vacuum cleaner and breathe in his lover's dust."

"Wow," Stellula raises her eyebrows in something I can only decipher as fascination. "It's almost like a masochistic kind of love, right?"

I smile amusedly at her discovery. "Right, yeah. Something like that."

Stellula hums and nods faintly then says, "Play me another one."

My smile broadens and I play her The Neigbourhood. Followed by Blackbear and Ed Sheeran. Then Twenty One Pilots then BØRNS then Pink Floyd then The 1975 then LANY.... The list was endless.

After each song, she'd take the headset off and we'd discuss the theme of the song. The lyrics. The artist's feelings. Some songs I just liked for the beat, but she disagreed that I should like something because of 'mindless chatter.' She dissected almost every word and every high note and what the songwriter wanted to show through.

I showed her music. She showed me a new side of music.

"Your songs are still awfully cliché, though," Stellula says, taking off the headset and letting her short hair strands fall back over her ears smoothly. "But I like them. I thought you were going to make me listen to Despacito or something."

I laughed. "Yeah, no. Not my thing, except when I'm with friends and we need something hype."

"Oh, my God."

"What? You surprised I have friends?" Not that I have any in this town anyway. Not that any of them calls anymore. I guess I don't have friends.

Stellula rolls her diamond eyes and motions to the clock on the wall. "It's one in the morning."

"Oh," I frown. "That's late. Come on, I'll walk you home."

"Don't," She gives me a look.

I sighed in exasperation on purpose. "What now? Are we back to strangers?"

"We are strangers,"

"Stellula," I shake my head, chuckling. "I just played you half my playlist. We are definitely not strangers."

I'm satisfied with the grin I receive from that. She then looks away, seems to be turning the gears in her head before she sighs and looks back at me again. "It would just be way better if you actually asked first. Not blatantly announce it like it's nonnegotiable."

"Well, it is," I argue, ready to fire up on how it's too late for her to go around these streets. But she glares at me so fiercely I laugh. "Okay, okay. Would you mind if I walk you home, Stellula?"

"Yes, actually," She jokes but it makes me raise my eyebrow at her until she chuckles. "Come on, Romeo. Wait here, I gotta close up first."

"Romeo, huh?" I ask as she rushes around, washing the few dirty utensils that needed to be cleaned. "Does that make you Juliet?"

Stellula's gaze falls to the cloth she's cleaning the counter in, I can see her visibly gulp, almost like she's scared. And for a millisecond, she was, the most vulnerable I'd seen her. From the few times I did anyway.

"You don't wanna go there," She shuts down the conversation, in a joking manner. I want to say more, for the sake of seeing her in that raw state and maybe making her talk more and open up to me.

I want to tell her that I am not scared, that she shouldn't be.

My mind reels back to the last conversation we had yesterday and I almost catch myself in a daze. For a minute or two, I took a glimpse into her real soul. She puts on this no-nonsense attitude as her exterior, where she can be hostile in favor of defending the walls. The Walls that are guarding her soft, scared interior.

She's just scared. But what is she scared from?

I wonder if that has to do with her parents' absence in her life. I wonder if she doesn't want to love or be loved because she doesn't want to lose. But life is all about loss. The whole point is getting all you can and enjoying it. And the most you can get is love.

It's all I want to give her. It's all I have. I hope I can. I hope she lets me.

My thoughts fight so hard to be spoken out loud, but that would scare her off. It would enforce her thick, high walls after I've managed to take a chip off. And by the way the corners of her mouth edge downwards, something tells me it wouldn't end well if I do.

So I let it go. For now.