Author's note

I'd just like you to know that this story probably won't be updated for a while. I intended to just post the first chapter and ask your opinion on it. So please review with your thoughts. Is it any good?

I realise this first chapter is a little uneventful but I suppose I'm just setting the scene. I promise it will get much more exciting. Oh and I know there are spelling mistakes, I'll try to sort them out.

I've had this whole story in my head for a while but I'm terribly busy at the moment and can't find the time to do it. I will probably start updating regularly when I've written a few more chapters but please bare with me.

However, if I miraculously find some inspiration then I might give you another instalment in the not so distant future.

Thanks for reading and hopefully reviewing,

Cammy

The Green Bench

Bella sat at her large white bay window over-looking her most favourite place in the world. It was even more perfect, she thought to herself, at precisely this time of day, twilight. The setting sun with its gorgeous array of colours seemed to engulf her here, like a giant warm hug of rich shades of red, orange and purple. It was calming and the immensity and intensity of it all gave her that beautiful sense of insignificance. That whatever her life threw at her, wherever she ended up, she would always just be as insignificant as a particle of salt in the sea. Drifting, sometimes aimlessly it seemed, through the vast ocean that was life.

She looked over the scene in front of her, a small smile playing on her lips as she recalled and reflected on the events of the day. Bella, being such a complex person always felt the need to arrange her thoughts after a long day, and for her, today had felt much longer than long. It was like separating her thoughts into workable chunks. That way, she could sift through with ease, much like sifting through files in a filing cabinet, and work through them until finding her much needed happy medium.

She had always been like this, a thinker. Bella thought about anything and everything. It was sometimes a burden to be thinking constantly but she wouldn't want it any other way. In fact, she knew her mind had always worked differently to others, and she embraced this knowledge whole-heartedly. She dreaded to think of how life would be if she was one of those simple people she saw everyday. Wandering through life in a rush, flying almost, from one milestone to another. Never stopping to think, feel or absorb their surroundings. Never having real depth to their thoughts or meaning behind their actions. Yes, she dreaded it indeed, to be that way. But no worry, she would thankfully never be one of those people. It's not that she thought she was superior to them, just different. She knew how she had her insight and wise ways to offer to the world, they had their defining characteristics which were as equally important, to offer also. And she recognised that in the world, how one person was so unlike another, and it fascinated her. Her overwhelming desire to figure out life and its millions of occupants purely fascinated her.

Bella would happily sit in a café or library for hours on end, thinking and people-watching, another of her traits. She didn't look upon her unusual habit as being noisy or rude, it was just her, though she didn't make a point of doing it too often or too obviously, seeing as a minority of people didn't like her to. She figured that it must seem intrusive to them. Most of the time, people would ignore her anyway; they always had and probably always would.

Bella, after her 25 years, 172 days and approximately 20 hours of life had come to the disappointing conclusion that people were predictable. This was one of the main reasons she knew she had never dated. Every man she had ever met was just that, a simple, predictable, human man. Just a body, with bones and skin. She used to search for somebody like her, somebody who wasn't just a body, but had an intelligent and complex mind underneath all their skin and bones. After all, wasn't it the mind that was the most unfathomable part of the human form and therefore the most desirable? She had searched for someone who had many interesting and unpredictable layers to their personality. Layers she could peel away and investigate, explore. She knew it was a stupid analogy to believe but she thought of most people as oranges, one easy layer to peel away. She however, was looking for something more like an onion, many more layers and depths. So where on earth was her onion?

Nowhere.

That was another conclusion she had reached and it was this conclusion that caused her to stop searching. She figured if there was even the smallest of chances that there was such a person out there, she would leave it to fate to allow them to find each other. She came to this decision about one year ago. It was then that she decided to move here, for a fresh start, to escape what had happened, and move on. And it was probably the best decision of her life to far. By the time she had lived here just one month, in this small, white house overlooking the ocean, she had already known it was home, or as close to a home as she was going to get and she also knew that she would live out her years here, sat alone most nights on this very bay window, her little head ticking over in thought. That she knew was set in stone, or was it?

And as Bella sat there she pondered this, as she had pondered many a time, and suddenly realised how long she had pondered for. Looking back out, from her comfortable position, over the slightly rough sea, she suddenly realised her favourite scene had long gone and she was sat peering out on the now darkened beach cove where her most precious little house was soundly situated. She noticed since the sun had set, the sea had become more unruly than it previously looked and she sensed a storm approaching.

Yes, that was what it was, the calm before the storm.

And it was then, just as she stood up and reached toward the left to draw the curtains and turn in for the night, that she spotted a tall figure. It was hunched over on an old bottle green bench about 30 metres to the left of her home. She often sat there, on that very bench, starring out over the ocean herself, in fact it was another of her favourite places to seat herself and enjoy the scenery. This figure however, did not seem to be sat there to look out at the beauty surrounding the lone green bench. Narrowing her eyes, Bella noticed the figure seemed to be gently shaking and intuitively, she knew what she had to do. She knew this person needed her help and she found herself propelled to do just that, help this poor person.

Quickly, but not too quickly, as she often had a tendency to fall flat on her face, she gingerly grabbed her warm, grey blanket off the back of the sofa and donned her old trainers and chocolate brown pea coat. She yanked open the oak front door, the powerful wind pushing against her in protest, and began to make her way toward the bench. Angry knives of wind stabbed at her face. Bella scrunched up her eyes and continued on, determined to reach her destination. How she got there in seemingly so little time and without incident she didn't know, but she soon found herself facing the figure, the figure of a tall, well-built man, she now realised.

"Excuse me, but are you well?" she asked hesitantly, thoughts flitting across her mind a mile a minute. She didn't even know this man and she was offering her help at this late hour. Suddenly, she began to worry about her own wellbeing, what if this man was bad news?

The man gave no indication as to having heard her question so she asked again, this time a little louder so not to let her voice by carried from the man's ears a second time by the unyielding wind.

"Excuse me, but are you alright? Do you need any help?"

The man's still shaking body slowly turned in her direction. Keeping his head down, away from the direct chill of the wind, his eyes looked up at her. And what a pair of eyes they were.

Piercing emerald green in colour. Dark and deep and quite frankly, beautiful, she found herself thinking immediately. They were large and perfectly round, thick lashes framing both intricately designed windows. She was a firm believer in that, that the eyes were the windows to the soul, and his only confirmed her belief. Looking closer she found how full of expression and feeling they were. Easily readable, like a book. She quickly read feelings of sadness, despair, sorrow, guilt and helplessness. She wondered of the pages she could write just about the emotions in his eyes alone, many hundreds it seemed as she stared endlessly into them. Bella realized instantly that she would happily write for days on end about only that if it meant she could stare into them for days on end also.

She was definitely in unknown territory.

This strange realisation shocked Bella back into a conscious state. Her natural protective and caring streak kicked in again she began to unravel the blanket she had grabbed just a few minutes ago, intending to securely wrap it around the obviously freezing cold man.

As she was doing so, a fat drop of rain landed on her cheek and tingled all the way down her face to her chin. With the combined feel of the winter wind, it chilled her through to the bone.

Looking up, Bella saw hundreds of similar droplets, travelling in downward spirals to earth where they were inevitably going to make contact with both her and the green eyed man.

The storm she had anticipated had arrived.

She worried for only the man's health now, as one look in his eyes had eliminated all her previous fears for herself. This man could be trusted. He was once again a man that needed her help and she still felt just as compelled to do so, if not more.

Bella placed herself on the bench edge as she reached toward the man with the blanket. His eyes watched her intently as she told him with hers that she was there to help. She finally secured it around his broad, shirt clad shoulders.

"Please, come with me. My house it just over there", she pointed toward its general direction. "We can get you dried off and warmed up"

He slowly nodded his head in consent and together, they made their way toward the old oak front door, all the while, rain pelted their faces and wind stabbed away at their bare skin.