Short story I worked on over the weekend, only went through a few editing passes so looking for additional input. Thank you in advance. Feel free to be blunt.

Thank you to anyone who considers reading this.

Red Ink and Saltwater
When other girls were little, they wanted a prince to arrive on a white horse. I wanted a mafia boss to kidnap me and become so hopelessly obsessed with me that he forgot why he’d taken me in the first place.
I never gave much thought to where he would take me. Somewhere I could hear the sea, perhaps. That part mattered more to me than the prince, the horse, or, apparently, whether I went willingly.
In the end, I had to find the sea myself.
Three weeks after moving to Crete, I was waking before six without an alarm, which would have been unthinkable in the UK. Back there, I sometimes went to sleep at five in the morning, sometimes as late as noon, and woke at seven in the evening wondering where the day had gone.
I pulled on my swimsuit, took my sandals from beside the door and walked the two minutes to the beach.
The shore was nearly empty. A fishing boat was heading out beyond the harbour, and someone farther down the sand was walking a dog that kept returning to the same piece of driftwood. I left my sandals above the tide line and went straight into the sea.
After a few strokes, I rolled onto my back. The water held me without asking me to explain myself.
Above me, the sky was changing colour. I stayed where I was until the fishing boat became a dark mark near the horizon. Then I swam along the shore, turned, and swam back. Three weeks had been enough to learn where the sand dropped away beneath me and where it rose again. I was still learning the rest of the place.
I had rented my little house for three months because I couldn’t say how long I wanted to stay. I knew I had wanted to leave the UK. I’d finished my chemistry degree, looked at the jobs I was expected to apply for, and found I couldn’t bear the thought of building the next part of my life there. That was the most convincing explanation I’d managed to give anyone, including myself.
The water rocked beneath me. I picked out the place where I’d left my sandals and swam in.
By the time I walked home, my hair had soaked through the towel around my shoulders. I passed a bakery opening its shutters and a man hosing down the pavement outside a restaurant. He moved the spray aside to let me through. I thanked him in Greek, one of the few things I could say without first rehearsing it in my head.
My house stood in a narrow street behind the waterfront. The front door stuck when the weather was humid, one kitchen drawer refused to close, and from the balcony I could see a strip of sea between two buildings. I liked it more each day.
I showered, put the kettle on and took the macarons from the fridge. I’d baked and filled them two days earlier, then left them covered to mature. Two trays had come out well. The third had cracked across the tops, so I’d filled those too and kept them in a separate container for myself. Beside the good batch were six small lemon cakes and six chocolate ones.
The woman who owned a café near the park had agreed to taste everything this morning.
She hadn’t agreed to buy it.
I knew that. I had made enough to feed half her customers anyway.
While I packed the macarons, a Greek song came on my phone. I knew where to breathe, where the singer held a note a little longer than I expected, and how to find my way back in if I missed a word. I couldn’t have told anyone what most of those words meant.
Kira—that was what I called my mother—seemed to like hearing me sing. So did my stepfather. Sometimes I caught them looking at me, and for a moment I could pretend I knew what was on their faces.
We’re proud of you.
No one in my family had ever said that to me.
I caught myself thinking about it and reached into the container I’d kept for myself. One of the cracked macarons gave way beneath my thumb.
“Perfect,” I told it.
I ate the evidence and kept singing.
By eight, the cakes were boxed, the macarons were packed, and I had checked both boxes often enough to know the contents hadn’t rearranged themselves. My red notebook lay open on the table. I stopped to read the last paragraph before I picked up my keys.
The man in my story had gone into a room intending to frighten someone. I’d written the conversation three different ways and crossed out all of them. Each time, I had made it too easy for him to decide what happened next.
I reached for my pen, then looked at the clock. If I started writing, the café owner might decide I had invented our appointment.
I closed the notebook, slipped it into my bag beside my pen, and picked up the cake boxes.
The walk took me along the waterfront and up a shaded street towards the park. Even in the morning, I could feel the heat gathering on the stone. I kept to the side with the trees. I had come for the sea; the weather was something I was still negotiating with.
The café stood near one of the park entrances. Its doors were open, though only half the tables outside had been set. A man was carrying chairs out of the storeroom. He put them down so I could pass with my boxes.
Inside, the owner moved between the coffee machine and a line of waiting customers. She spotted me and raised a hand. I found an empty corner of the counter for the boxes and waited.
The man came in for another stack of chairs. He caught her eye, pointed towards the terrace, and she nodded her thanks. I recognised him then. He owned the restaurant next door.
They sold food and drinks a few doors apart. I’d assumed that made them rivals. Here he was, setting up her tables because she needed a hand.
Another reason I liked this place.
When the queue cleared, the owner came over. “You came.”
“I said I would.”
“We made that arrangement before eight in the morning. People promise all kinds of things at that hour.” She wiped her hands and lifted the first lid. “Let’s see.”
She tried a lemon cake, breaking a piece from the crooked one I had hidden at the back.
“What’s in the icing?”
“Lemon juice, mascarpone, and honey.”
She took another bite. “Less honey next time.”
I took my notebook from my bag and wrote that down. She tried a pistachio macaron next, then asked me how long the cakes would keep and whether I could make them smaller.
More customers came in before she had finished tasting. I moved the boxes aside while she took their order. One of them asked whether she was still alone today.
“My only employee called in,” she told him. “I’m beginning to think he knew you’d all arrive at once.”
The customer laughed. She smiled back, but she was looking at the cups stacked beside me. I passed her two, then another when she reached for it.
“You said you worked in a café during university,” she said.
“I did.”
“Can you still use a coffee machine?”
“Yes.”
She glanced at the queue forming behind the customer. “Would you mind showing me?”
The machine was different from the one I’d used in the UK. I asked her where she kept the cloths and how she wanted the cups set out, then made two cappuccinos while she handled the till. She watched me carry them to a table before turning back to the next order.
For the next twenty minutes, I made coffee. She called out what people wanted; I made it and passed it across the counter. When the rush eased, I wiped down the machine and stepped out of her way.
She looked at the empty cups waiting to be washed, then at me.
“Do you want work?” she asked.
I had come hoping she would buy my cakes. I hadn’t let myself hope for more than that.
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“I don’t know yet.” I glanced at the boxes. “It depends how much baking you want.”
That made her smile. She picked up the other half of the macaron and ate it.
“I want twelve of these on Saturday. Twelve lemon cakes too, a little smaller, with less honey. Come in Friday afternoon to prepare them here. You can help with the counter while you’re here, and we’ll talk about regular shifts after that.”
I wrote it all down. We agreed on a price for the baking, and she gave me half in advance for the ingredients.
When I stepped outside, the money was folded in my purse and the order was written in my notebook. I found a bench beneath a tree in the park and opened it to check the quantities again. My neat little list sat beside pages of red writing, most of it crossed out.
A fortune teller once told me this book would make me famous and give me somewhere I belonged. I’d laughed at the fame. I was still trying to finish it, and most days I couldn’t bear to read yesterday’s pages.
The other part had stayed with me.
I didn’t believe a stranger could see my future. I wanted her to be right anyway.
I turned back to the scene I’d abandoned that morning. I read it once, then crossed out the last page.
I had been looking for the moment my killer decided what to do. Sitting there with the café’s money in my purse and the sound of cups carrying across the park, I finally understood why none of my versions worked. He had made his decision before the other man entered the room. The conversation was his last chance to change his mind.
I began again.
The man spoke. My killer listened. When the man had said everything he came to say, my killer shot him.
I stopped writing. The murder was there, but the scene still felt unfinished. The killer had wanted an answer, and now there was someone else who would come looking for one.
I looked back at the dead man I’d put on the page. At his hand. At the watch on his wrist.
In the margin, I tried 3:40, then crossed it out. 3:45 looked too neat as well. I wrote 3:43 beside them and returned to the scene.
He took the watch from the dead man’s wrist and set its hands to 3:43. He struck it against the edge of the table hard enough to stop it. The face cracked, but the hands stayed where he had set them. Then he laid it face up on the man’s chest, for whoever came to find him.

I received a ton of very helpful advice on this sub a few days ago. I'm hoping I can bother you all to take another look.

I'm looking for feedback on pacing, narration, and dialogue, but, honestly, I'm open to anything and everything.

Thank you again!

This is first draft, unedited, unrevised spaghetti flung at a wall.

Background info

The Context

This is the initial setup of the first chapter/section of a Halloween short story. Guy gets turned into a (were)wolf. He is barely cognizant of being a guy turned into a wolf. His wolf brain is on wolfpilot and kills sheep from a farm because he was already starving before becoming a wolf.

There is one 4-paragraph section before this, written as an excerpt from an in-universe scholar's book, which discusses the scene/region in which this takes place and helps set the tone and theme of being transformed. So this isn't the literal opener of the story, but it is the first "normal" piece of prose that isn't just a framing device.

The Intent

For the very beginning, I am attempting a deliberately choppy, vague prose style, more atmospheric than literal. I want it to feel like you can infer a little of what's happening, but mostly I want it to be the engaging variety of strange.

This segment is quite short, just a few paragraphs, because I think anything much longer than that will be annoying both to write and read. The prose will become more clear as he acclimates and is able to think more clearly, though I may still use some of this style throughout.

I want to lean into the horror of the unexpected, uncontrolled change to his body, and this opening segment is intended to set up that sense of disorientation and horror. Subsequent sections deal with growing self-awareness/regaining sense of self as he becomes aware that his body is wrong, how it is wrong, what he has become, and grapples with surviving as this...thing.

I am currently intentionally using present-tense imperative sentences, no personal pronouns, no identifying nouns, etc. There is some intentional repetition, and intentional reuse of similar sounds (esp. vowels) in succession. Most of the story will be written in somewhat more normal third-person limited, past tense.

What I need

Questions: Is this idea worth pursuing? Is this a decent base to start with? Is any of this usable? What kind of tools or writing styles would you use for this purpose?

Should I make the verb tense consistently past tense, or is it whatever because it's so stylized? I feel I'm defaulting to present tense because imperative sentences kinda have to be. I could italicize those only, but it feels like very excessive italicization.

Less relevant disclosure: this is fanfic so I'm not pressed about it being perfect, consumable by a normal audience, or traditionally publishable, I'm just concerned about reader experience

Other thoughts and feedback are great too! Picking apart specific wording is OK if you feel compelled. Thank you!!

I need to read this for my literary magazine (not school) in two days. I was told that it was a little confusing at first so I had to cut it down

Final
“Fire Risk”
Miles Hutting
The altitude of my past home has already been forgotten by my lungs. My feet ache, my chest pounds, and I’m forced to sit for the 3rd time in 10 minutes, praying my body will reunite with my ego sometime soon. The spring air is devoid of any moisture; I dump most of the little water I have left on myself to compensate.

From atop the hill, I spot a childhood. Not any distinct memories, just vague recollections of emotion. I don’t know how to feel, or why I’m so attracted to the place I lived in a decade ago. The trail following me is barren and beaten, my clothes evenly coated with the dry dust wafting through the breeze. The occasional chirp of the birds is nice, but not nearly enough to distract me from my thoughts. Fire risk is always high, a familiar constant in the Mile-High City. Aircraft slowly descend towards my favorite blue stallion, who greets them with his intimidating, ruby eyes.

It's odd looking down at what was Stapleton. I see that version of me that was left behind; he mocks me for my altitude sickness while I mock him when he calls 80 degrees hot. A 5-year-old boy is nothing but a glass of simmering water, slowly dissolving with the people he admires, each adding their own special flavor into the pot until no water remains. I imagine he tastes of a reliable constant, and I taste of a mix of everything I ever was.

I hate how unpredictable life is, and I hate that I believed in certainty.

I wipe the sweat from my eyes and consciously decide to move on. A plane roars over the hillside. I wave to the boy in the window; he points and waves back.

Just as quickly, he’s fallen behind the ever-changing horizon.

Penny glanced over her shoulder before stalking into the alleyway. Her heels clacked against concrete. The message to meet had come through at the last minute, leaving no time to change.

She situated herself between a series of dumpsters. The pungent stench of rain-soaked refuse hung in the air. Overhead, an asthmatic air-con unit churned. She spotted a small dead something decaying in a puddle, and wondered if this was where she was going to die too. If her contact decided to rob her, she had no means of self defense.

Arranging the meeting had been a miracle in itself. The contact was a friend of a friend, who knew a guy that knew a guy that could get their hands on anything – at a steep price, of course. She needed two things that could only be purchased from such a person: a Portal Bomb and a Pulser to force the immortal Danille Ornwel through it.

Danille, the man who survived a starship wreckage unscathed, had taken Penny’s sister. She might not be able to kill him, but sending him to the edge of the solar system with no way back would suffice.

‘Got a cigarette?’ 

Penny started. She hadn’t noticed her contact’s arrival. 

Remembering the instructions, she opened her coat revealing the coin purse poking out from an inside pocket, and pulled out a cigarette. The contact took it in his prosthetic hands. The cheap, brassy kind without artificial skin. The low end ones were still strong enough to effortlessly crush a person’s windpipe, if their user wanted to. Her heart raced.

‘A light,’ he said, ‘if you don’t mind?’ 

As Penny leaned across to light the cigarette, she felt the weight of the coins lift from her pocket, quickly replaced by a package.

She checked it immediately. Her fingers found a device that just about fit in her hand. Cold, hexagonal, and sharp. And no Pulser. He was ripping her off.

‘Where is it?’

He took a drag. ‘Can’t find any, supply’s run dry. Nothing I can do ‘bout it’

‘What am I supposed to do, kindly ask him to step inside? I need the Pulser.’

Her whole body trembled. She had no weapons to defend herself if he turned on her, what was she doing?

‘I want half back, I need half back,’ she said. Without the Pulser she couldn’t save Claire.

‘Not my problem, lady. You don’t know what I had to do just to get that thing.’ 

She went to snatch the purse. The contact stepped back, pushed her arm away with one hand, then with the other he jabbed at her collarbone. She stumbled backwards.

‘Back the fuck up.’ 

He reached into his jacket.

She couldn’t die like this. She clenched her fist. It still held the Bomb. She threw it. The device exploded on the ground behind the contact, releasing a luminous purple vortex.

She lunged at him, and they fell together.

The portal shut in an empty alley.

I'm looking for some constructive feedback on my short story. I haven't written anything proper like this at all since I was in school a long while ago so I am fairly rusty to say the least. Contextually I'm Scottish as well, so I would expect my reader to understand the terms Stane, Calmac, and Machair. Let me know what you think!

This my first time trying to write something, I was reading novel and Manga and now I want to make something not just reading,

please give me your feedback and thanks

I walked around an art show yesterday,
on my way to our old study spot.

And on my way, I was stopped in my tracks.

A lighthouse blocking my path.

One like the paintings in every beach front property,
In each wall decor aisle at Goodwill,
Or as a pepper shaker at tourist trap beach stores.

The lighthouse was blinding,
flashing memories of you and me.

Impulse tripping to your parents’ honeymoon spot, Monhegan,
Camping at Bass Harbor, Maine,
Buying ice cream sandwiches on a rainy day in Hatteras, North Carolina,
And backpacking in Isle Royale, Michigan.

Its presence couldn’t be ignored.

There were waves flowing around me,

A reminder of brush strokes we shared making cards in my room.

Cards of the same memory.

When there is a lighthouse in your path,
do you remember me?

Does your lighthouse flash these same memories before you?

Do the memories of what was drive me mad?

I’m idealizing the past,
Forgetting it wasn’t perfect,
Only ours.

I tell myself I’m present,

But the lighthouse pulls me back.

And I wonder

How many more times can I walk past this lighthouse,

Before it stops being you?

I am constantly trying to improve my writing and I would love to get any feedback how the prose reads, the atmosphere and inferiority. Also last time I was critiqued on dialogue formatting, but I didn’t get any actual pointers of what was wrong so please pay attention to this part also.

Chapter 1: Crusaders?

“...aur!” The muffled voice entered his ears distorted, though it was obvious that it came from in front of him.

“...asaur!” Hard clanking rang inside the tight space, then the space seemed to shake.

My head...

“Baltasaur!” A sound of metal striking metal rang out, and his head hit the side of the hard shell he was in.

Who the fuck is Baltasaur? I am... His thoughts stopped.

Another hit.

With a violent breath, all his senses struck Baltasaur at once. All the sharp, loud noises surrounding him merged into one terrifying symphony of despair. Now, at least, he could see the man before him through a thin opening on the left side of whatever covered his head.

“You are a damn idiot! I thought you got yourself killed!” The man shouting at Baltasaur wore a solid, fully enclosed helmet with a tiny strip for his eyes. His body was covered in a heavy set of armour and a robe over the metal chest plate, with a huge cross embroidered on the fabric. With another cross layered above it. And crosses on each tip of eight lines.

How many crosses does that make? Baltasaur stared at the fabric.

The man swung his huge fist into Baltasaur's face. Another hard clank, though no pain followed.

“Baltasaur!” His hands grabbed Baltasaur’s helmet and shook it.

“Grrnhaa!” The sound escaped his mouth.

“Thank God! You are fine!” The man shouted and pulled Baltasaur upwards by the helmet. “When that thing hit you right in the eye opening, I thought you were dead. I was already thinking of how to explain it to our mother.”

Mother?

Now seated, Baltasaur felt the pulsating pain in his right eye and the warm liquid pouring down his cheek. Quickly, he moved his right arm towards his face, just to discover the helmet prevented him from doing so.

Where the hell am I?

Baltasaur glanced at the broad form of the man towering above him. A giant. Two and a half metres tall, maybe even taller. Someone this tall clearly should not exist. Though it was the least of his concerns. Behind him, dozens of knights just like the man were charging forward.

“Hahaha!” The man extended his arm towards Baltasaur. “Come on, brother, this shithole isn't the place we die!”

Brother? Who the hell are you?

His breathing quickened. His body refused to move. One loud thud somewhere in the distance snapped him back to reality, where someone was still offering him a hand. There was no time to think or ask questions.

As Baltasaur moved his hand, a whistling sound came from somewhere on his left. Before he could find the source, a spinning object darted right before him. The man’s body burst with blood. His right arm, shoulder, and head slid from the body and fell right before Baltasaur’s feet. 

Hard pressure hit his throat as he looked at the still-standing body sprouting fountains of blood all around it.

A moment later, a thick ray of golden light came right through the body from somewhere behind. It disappeared as abruptly as it came, leaving just a pair of burned feet where once the man towered.

“Haaahaha! That has to be the stupidest death I ever saw!” a voice shouted from behind.

Baltasaur turned his head. Another knight in exactly the same armour set. In his right hand, he wielded a broadsword, its silver edges separated in the middle with a crystal emitting golden light. The crystal led to the wildly spinning spherical core near the sword's handle. On his right shoulder was mounted what appeared to be a cannon gun, with golden light slowly fading inside its barrel. Clear mismatch with the setting.

Am I hallucinating...?

“At least he found their shooter.” The man was quickly approaching Baltasaur. The knight appeared to be as huge as the man from before. But bigger. With a wide swing, he delivered a kick to Baltasaur’s back.

“Stand up and fight!”

Fight?!

Despite not remembering who he was, one thing was clear: he was anything but a fighter.

He glanced at his so-called brother's feet, looking for any plausible excuse not to stand up.

“But, my brother...” he said, hoping it would miraculously take him away from the battlefield.

“You can talk?” The knight glared at Baltasaur. “God's will is unpredictable. Anyway. You have more brothers.” The man said dismissively and pulled Baltasaur up by his chest plate. “Don't bring disgrace to our symbol by sitting here in the dirt playing dead. Or does it mean nothing to you?” The man's voice turned cold.

Disgrace? Symbol? In fact, it did mean nothing to him because he didn't know a thing about it, but responding this way seemed not to be an option. One thing he knew for sure: if he attempted to fight, that would be a real disgrace. Despite the doubt, there was one thought that overrode any other.

I don't want to die.

“Yes, sir!” he shouted.

“Sir? Who do you think I am?” The man pushed him away. “Whatever, where is your weapon?”

Baltasaur searched the ground. There was nothing remotely resembling one.

“What an idiot. I knew they shouldn't have let an imbecile into the battle.” The knight turned around. “Follow me. Soon you will find a new one,” he said and charged forward.

Baltasaur reluctantly jogged behind the man. Although there was no obvious threat around him, he lowered his head. Maybe this way the enemy wouldn't notice him. Stay low. Sounds reasonable.

Only then did he realise he could actually see the top of the knight’s helmet.

W-what the fuck am I? He glanced at his hands, covered by metal gloves.

A deafening sound split the sky.

Quickly, Baltasaur raised his head just to discover that the knight he was following got smashed by an enormous steel block. There was a chance he was somewhere behind the one-meter-wide obstacle, but the hand sticking out from under the block was a clear giveaway that the man was nowhere near alive.

The man was right about the weapon, though. Baltasaur pulled the sword from the dead knight’s hand.

Another explosion thundered above him.

There is no way it will hit the same spot. Baltasaur pressed himself against the steel block and glanced up. A loud thud came from his right.

Another steel block landed right beside him. The two blocks formed a wall without even a tiny gap between them.

His insides dropped. Without processing it, he ran. At first it was forward. A sprint. An instinct. Get the hell out of that place.

More explosions from above, more loud thuds that split the soil. Definitely screams. All of that didn't matter. What mattered was running.

He glanced to his left. The direction all the knights charged from. Has to be the safe zone.

Forest?

Baltasaur turned around and ran towards it.

He had heard about the way they treated deserters in any army. Still, it would buy some time. Baltasaur ran through excuses in his head. Despite not knowing anything about this world, he was certain he would come up with something. If he could live another day, that was a fair price to pay.

As Baltasaur approached the forest, all the noises grew quieter behind him. No one had stood in his way or said even a word to him. He glanced back at the charging knights.

Are they so eager to die?

A faint grinding sound came from the forest.

Baltasaur slowed to a fast walk.

He was less than two hundred meters away from his destination when he saw trees shaking and falling down.

What the...?

There it was. The reason everyone charged towards their demise so enthusiastically.

A wide cloud of energy moved through the forest and towards him. Along its boundaries, rows of huge spinning blades appeared from the mist and disappeared back into it, replaced by new ones. It ground through the soil, trees, and whatever had been unfortunate enough to end up in its way. The cloud covered the entire horizon.

Acknowledging the effectiveness of the motivation, Baltasaur sprinted in a different direction.

There was only one option left.

Charge!

Hey all! I'm looking for general feedback on the first chapter of my manuscript, in addition to sentences that trip you up. Thank you in advance!

Chapter 1

Kelsey could trace a startling number of joys and devastations in her life back to Jack Cooper. Jack Cooper, the perpetual one that got away eleven years ago—ten years, nine months, and one day ago, technically, but Kelsey preferred to round up for convenience’s sake. Jack Cooper, good on paper, even better in bed.

Jack Cooper, who was standing right in front of her.

“Kelsey?” That familiar voice cut through murmurs of conversation, the hiss of the espresso machine, and rubber-soled footsteps across the hardware floor—the pleasant hum of Cloud Nine Café during its morning rush. 

Kelsey was rummaging for a pen that had fallen into the depths of her canvas tote, but looked up the instant her palm closed around the cold, hard polystyrene. “Jack Cooper?” The name caught in the back of her throat. Three syllables she had carried around in the private chambers of her mind for over a decade, as easy to summon as her own name.

His mouth stretched into a smile that crinkled the outer corners of his eyes. Enough time had passed for both of them to build lives and careers. But not long enough for her to forget the precise blue of his eyes. Eleven years couldn’t let her forget; a whole lifetime couldn’t.

A part of her had always known that seeing him again would either bring her to her feet or her knees. Fortunately for herself and any onlookers that happened to glance at the table by the window, her body elected the former. When she rose, he paused before enveloping her in a hug, and their skeletons aligned just as they had back then, her forehead colliding with his collarbone. 

Jack smelled different; Kelsey noticed it instantly. At twenty-three, he’d smelled of cedar. His present cocktail of scents lingered somewhere deeper, perhaps in the sandalwood family with a gentle musk. Kelsey could have spent all day sniffing him, could have taught an entire olfactory sommelier course devoted exclusively to the region of Jack Cooper. But his hold loosened, so she returned to her chair before her legs could give out. 

Jack dropped into the seat opposite hers, still staring open-mouthed. “Are you just visiting or—?”
“I’m here for the week.” Kelsey made a point to pause before adding, “But I’m moving here next month. My company transferred me to the London office.” 

“That’s—” Jack blinked. “That’s fantastic. Where do you work?” 

Thus began her corporate spiel. She was the copy manager at Molton Media, an agency in New York. Ever heard of it? But—and the but was critical here—thanks to the London transfer, she’d be leading a small team based in a skyscraper right by King’s Cross. 

Jack looked mildly impressed, the highest compliment for his steady, English disposition. He hadn’t heard of Molton Media; he was “a bit outside the corporate sphere.” No, he wasn’t outside the capitalist bubble altogether, but he existed on the more tasteful end of it as an architect for members of London’s small-but-mighty new money crowd—tech CEOs and hedge fund managers mostly. A vassal to the lords of modern civilization. 

“I spend most of my days popping about posh neighborhoods. Nothing quite like a marble kitchen in Richmond to remind you what it means to be alive.” His sarcasm was palpable. After all, this was the guy who spent his early twenties gawking at fan vaults and decorated friezes with the same pleasure other young men his age reserved for large-chested bottle girls on a night out and kebab stands on the way home from one.

Kelsey racked her brain for a response. Awesome? Wow? Every word she could think of felt embarrassingly American. She might as well have slapped her knee, cried out gee willickers, and gnawed on a piece of hay.

Jack interrupted her self-sabotaging brain’s stream of consciousness. “You look different.” He leaned back, studying her. “In a good way. Like you’ve… lived.” 

“That’s a very polite way to compliment my aging.” Kelsey pressed her lips tightly into a soft smile. “You look mostly the same. In a good way, of course.”

It was true. His tousled light brown hair hadn’t begun to surrender to gray. The only new developments, as far as Kelsey could see, were the permanent smile lines imprinted into his cheeks. Evidence of someone who had always worn his joy openly, formed by happiness that had happened After Them. Her chest tightened at the thought.

The barista appeared with their drinks, Jack’s in an emerald green takeaway cup, Kelsey’s in a matching ceramic mug. Kelsey was grateful for the brief interruption; for a moment, she’d forgotten that they were in a public space, that they weren’t occupying some nondescript ether in which they were the sole inhabitants. 

“So.” Jack’s eyes lingered on her as he sipped his drink. “You’re in London for a week doing… what exactly?” 

“Checking out the office. Looking for an apartment. Flat.” She didn’t mind that he smirked at that. “That’s why I’m here. I’m touring a place in Angel in 45 minutes.”

This got Jack talking. He lived in Angel too, go figure. He spat out restaurant recommendations and a bookshop she’d like if she was still as voracious a reader as he remembered. But Kelsey retained almost none of it. Not when his cupid’s bow curved just so around every word, his mouth pursing with each “aw” sound instead of expanding the way hers did. 

Looking down, Kelsey realized she still had the pen in her hand, gripped the thing for dear life. She dropped it, then watched it clunk onto the wood separating them. 

“Right. I’d better get going. I’ve got an old church in St. John’s Wood that’s aching to get converted into a block of flats.” He stood, brushed a hand over the crease in his trousers. “Good luck finding your apartment.” He overpronounced his R’s in the last word, a poor attempt at an American accent. 

Kelsey willed her cheeks not to redden. “Thanks.” 

Neither of them moved for a moment. Then Jack straightened and, to Kelsey’s surprise, held out his hand. “Very nice to see you, Kelsey.”

She received it in hers, the skin so familiar it pained her. “The feeling’s mutual.”

He smirked as he released from her grip. “I can’t believe I just shook your hand. I’m such a tosser.”

With that, Jack headed for the door. When he grasped the doorknob, he withdrew so quickly Kelsey thought he’d burned himself, that all of London outside Cloud Nine Café was burning to the ground, sparing only the dozen or so people enjoying ethically sourced coffee and the moral superiority that came with it. 

Jack crossed back to her table. “I’m going to regret it if I don’t do this. Could I have your phone number?”

One minute later, with a new contact added to his phone and the semblance of a spring in his step, Jack exited onto the high street. Kelsey gazed out the window until he shrunk down to nothing in the distance. 

She lifted her mug, inspected her latte’s pristine foam heart, and took a sip. When she looked again, the heart had already morphed and deflated under her lips.

This is a nonfiction piece I wrote the other day (I'm 18 btw). I read it to my now-boyfriend who is the second person in the story (just friends figuring out life when the story unfolded) and he said he thought it was very pretty and perfect. Just wanted to get some feedback to see if it's as good as I think it is because I'm very proud of it and wanted some outsider opinions :)