**Diary Entry**
Im always in a rush. Thats just how it is.
This particular November afternoon, I was sprinting down Silver Street, my coat half-buttoned and a folder of documents threatening to spill with every step. The drizzle had started as a whisper, but within seconds, it thickened into a downpour, blurring the pavements. I cursed under my breath. My plan was simpleget home, shower, and finish the presentation for tomorrow. But the rain had other ideas. Shelter was my only option.
I pushed open the door of a tiny bookshop-café, the kind that feels untouched by time, with worn wooden furniture and the rich scent of freshly ground coffee. Shaking the water from my hair, I headed straight for the counter.
“Black tea, please,” I muttered, still avoiding eye contact.
“Not a coffee person?” A mans voice, amused and curious.
I glanced up. Behind the counter stood a tall man in his thirties, dark brown hair, a hint of stubble, watching me with a smile that felt oddly familiar.
“Not when I need to think,” I replied, slightly defensive. “Coffee makes me jittery.”
“Black tea it is, then. Though Ill warn youmost people at this table lose the battle to coffee eventually,” he said, gesturing to the near-empty shop.
For the first time all day, I smiled.
“And you are?”
“Oliver Hartley,” he answered, reaching across the counter to shake my hand. “Owner, barista, and hopeless bookworm.”
I introduced myself, took my tea, and settled by the window. The rain hammered against the glass like it wanted in. As I tried to focus on my notes, Oliver approached with a book in hand.
“Thought you might like this,” he said.
It was an old novel, blue cover with gold lettering.
“How do you know what Id like?” I asked.
“I dont. But when someone dashes in from the rain, orders tea, and looks like theyd rather not talk to anyone they usually need a good story more than anything else.”
I accepted it, surprised. The sound of rain and the aroma of coffee from nearby tables blended into something warm, comforting.
“Do you always work here?” I asked after a while.
“Only when it rains,” he said, cryptic.
I laughed, assuming it was a joke. It wasnt.
The days that followed returned the cityand meto our usual frenzied pace. But then, on a Tuesday, another storm sent me back to the bookshop. Oliver was there, as if expecting me.
“Back again,” he said, sliding me tea without asking.
“Back to the rain,” I replied.
We talked more that day. I learned Oliver had inherited the place from his grandfatheronce just a bookshop. Hed added the café to “give people excuses to stay longer.”
In turn, he discovered I was an architect at a demanding firm where twelve-hour days were standard.
“Sounds exhausting,” he remarked.
“It is,” I admitted. “But I dont know how to do anything but run.”
Oliver looked at me with a calm that unsettled me. “Sometimes, you have to let life catch up,” he said.
After that, rain became my ally. Every time the first drops fell, I found a reason to walk down Silver Street. Sometimes I read in silence while Oliver served customers. Other times, we talkedbooks, films, places neither of us had been.
One December evening, Oliver made an offer.
“Were closing early this Saturday. Some musicians are coming to play jazz here. Fancy it?”
I hesitated. Spontaneous invitations werent my style. But I said yes.
That night, the shop glowed with candlelight, shelves casting long shadows. Oliver saved me a seat in the front row. During the concert, our knees brushedaccidentally or not.
Afterwards, he poured me a glass of wine and sat beside me.
“Ive seen you run in here to escape the rain so many times,” he said. “But I think you were running from something else.”
I stayed quiet, stunned by how right he was.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “And maybe here, I forget what.”
When we left, the rain had returned. Oliver walked me to the door.
“I dont have an umbrella,” I said.
“Neither do I. But if we run, well reach the corner before were soaked.”
We didnt run. We crossed the street slowly, laughing as the rain soaked our hair and clothes.
At the corner, before saying goodbye, Oliver murmured, “Dont wait for the rain to come back.”
I smiled. “Ill try.”
I didnt return the next day. Or the one after. But on Sunday, under clear skies, I walked into the bookshop.
Oliver pretended to be surprised. “Wheres the rain?”
“Today I brought it with me.”
There was no tea that day. No coffee. Just a long conversation, slow and easy, with comfortable silences and glances that spoke louder than words.
As evening fell, Oliver showed me a corner of the shop he never shared with customersa small room with a window overlooking the river.
“My grandfather used to read here when it rained,” he explained. “Said the sound of water reminded him everything keeps moving.”
I pressed my forehead to the glass. “Maybe thats what I love about this place it reminds me I can stop.”
Oliver stepped closer, so slowly I felt his breath before I saw him beside me.
“You can stop and stay.”
I turned to look at him. Just then, rain began tapping the window, as if it had been waiting for its cue.
“Seems the skys on our side,” he whispered.
“Seems so,” I replied before kissing himsoft, warm, tasting of coffee and black tea. A kiss in no hurry at all.
Since then, every rain brought us back together. But it didnt matter if it stormed or shonethe bookshop on Silver Street became our place. In that corner by the river, between books and steaming mugs, we learned something: love doesnt always come with the sun.
Sometimes, its the rain that makes you stay.
