The sunlight felt unkind.
Nara groaned softly, pulling the covers over her head as her phone buzzed for what felt like the tenth time. She wasn't hungover, just tired, and maybe a little emotionally off-balance.
When she finally reached for her phone, Zuri's name flashed across the screen with a dozen unread messages.
Zuri: "Tell me you had fun last night!"
Zuri: "Also, you totally disappeared. Did you meet someone?? đź‘€"
Nara smiled, rubbing her temples. Typical Zuri. She sat up, her hair falling loosely over her shoulders, and scrolled through the photos from last night. Her smile lingered as she looked at the group pictures until her finger paused over one. In the background, barely visible but unmistakable, was him.
Leaning at the bar. Same stillness. Same eyes. She hadn't imagined it.
There was something strange about thinking of a man whose name she didn't even know. He hadn't spoken to her, hadn't approached her, yet he had managed to stay in her mind like a song she couldn't stop humming.
She shook her head. "Get a grip, Nara," she muttered, tossing the phone aside. She had work emails to check, laundry to fold, and a perfectly normal life to return to.
But every time her thoughts drifted, she saw that look again, the quiet, unreadable one that made her pulse skip.
---
Across town, Keigh Dynamite sat in his car, parked outside a small café. His coffee had long gone cold, untouched as he scrolled through his own messages. The night replayed in fragments... music, noise, laughter, and then her. He didn't know her name. Didn't need to.
There was something about her calm in the middle of all that chaos, something that made him want to know what kind of woman she was when the music stopped.
He smirked faintly, shaking his head. "You're thinking too much," he muttered to himself. Still, when he caught his reflection in the car window, there was no denying the truth, he was curious.
And maybe, just maybe, the universe wasn't done with that glance yet.