A/N: Okay, so I don't do this much, but here I go. I'm still working on that show-don't-tell thing, so let me know if stuff is too unclear. I can't guarantee that I'll actually come back and edit this chapter, but I will keep comments in mind for whatever future chapters come along.

You can tell a lot about a person by what he does at Starbucks.

Audrey was sipping her addiction over the Thinkpad resting on a half-dozen eraser-worn sheets of calculations and sketched graphs which, to any innocent bystander, would have seemed in complete disarray. To Audrey, they were in perfect order.

Daniel held a sketchpad and a charcoal pencil in his free hand. Not many people got to see the inside of Daniel's sketchpad, but the cover was intact and there were no wrinkled pages sticking out, so one would assume the inside contained crisp drawings and no meandering doodles. Only Daniel knew that wasn't very true.

It was crowded, and it was raining. Daniel loved the rain. He found the moist, velvety air combined with the soft drip-drops on the ground incredibly romantic. He liked to walk his coffee through the Cambridge neighborhood in this kind of weather, but today happened to be just chilly enough to be uncomfortable, so he settled for the only empty seat in the store. He sunk low into the eggplant cushions across from the hard-working brunette. That was the first thing he noticed about her—her hair. She was bent over her work, so he could only see the top of her head. The long, fleecy curls lounged sideways across her head, ends dangling lazily in the humidity, echoing the style of her rumpled papers. Unconsciously, he set his drink on the table and ran his fingers through his own neat hair, tightening the grip on his sketchpad in the other hand. It occurred to him that it might have been polite to ask before jumping into the middle of this woman's coffee house experience. People are picky at Starbucks; they customize their drinks and prefer to make their time there just as personal.

"You mind?" he asked the soft spiraling locks.

"As long as I don't have to talk to you." The reply snuck out from somewhere behind the curtain.

"Big exam?" Daniel ventured, noticing the numbers that neatly littered the page she was working on.

"I make a point not to speak to anyone I meet in a coffee shop."

Daniel frowned a little and cocked his head. "What if you met someone you could spend the rest of your life with?"

That was enough to make the straight lines of Audrey's features slip out from behind her soft hair, arranged in a figure of disbelief. "Exactly. Then every time anyone asked how we met I'd have to tell the romantic story of how we ordered the same drink, sat across from each other, accidentally brushed hands reaching for our cups."

"Tall misto?"

"No foam, extra hot."

"I'm two for two. But I'm completely inconsiderate—leave the toilet seat up ALL the time—so we'd never work anyway."

He was smiling now. It was genuine, and that usually made Audrey either skeptical or disgusted, but she couldn't help being a little amused at this stranger's snark.

Comments? Should I let this go or see where it takes me?