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The first thing Austin James Parker noticed about Caroline Beatrice Johnson was not her wild, frizzy, red hair, her astounding blue eyes, or even her half a face smile.  Nope, the first thing Austin ever noticed about his Carrie was her shoes.  Those old, ratty, sidewalk pounders that always seemed to cover her feet.

***
Six Months Earlier
The coffee shop was one of those twenty four hour deals that seemed to attract a group of people so diverse they should run for office.  That was the first thought that came to Austin’s mind as he walked into the place with a tired pair of dress shoes covering his feet.  The rest of him matched the shoes.  Once perfect and polished, but now worked to the point that he had wrinkles in his clothes, and his usually messy brown hair stood flat against his scalp.

Well, hours on a road would do that to anybody.

Austin moved his tired body to a booth, and sat down while an interesting phhh of air came through the plastic covered foam.  He sat there, and then waited.  A waitress gave him coffee, because he asked.  She gave him pie, because she said he had a cute smile.  Austin wondered how she knew that, because he was sure he hadn’t smiled at all during his time spent catatonic at the booth.

The coffee was disgusting.  He went with the pie.  Delicious, which meant it was going to wreak terror on his insides.

Austin spent his few minutes as someone alive eating the pie and inspecting the people around him.  He’d unconsciously chosen a booth in the corner, so he was concealed in shadows and had the ability to watch without seeming to creepy.

There was a group of truckers sitting at a table two booths from him.  They all had on hunting boots that had definitely seem better days.  Like the boots, they looked tired, rough, and a bit happy.  Maybe it had something to do with the hot food in front of them.

Two booths away from the truckers was a group of teenagers.  Four of them, sitting at the table with various drinks, and one huge plate of fries in front of them. Austin only spent a few seconds inspecting their faces, and just a bit more looking at their shoes.  They all had on some for of vans or converse, which he didn’t find the slight bit odd. Every shoe was different from each other, and had definitely been made up by the kids themselves.

They were creative.  If only Austin could claim the same.

Austin spent the rest of the time watching people and their shoes, deciphering hidden meaning in the people by their chosen footwear.  You could tell a lot about people from what they decided to protect their feet with.  He was in the middle of trying to figure out if the pregnant waitress with the sneakers on really had a polished life, or if her sneakers were just new, when he saw her walk in.

Or, more importantly, he saw her shoes walk in.

They were…weird.  They were high tops, but they were so worn that the printed “All Star” on the back was peeled off, and he thought he could see a smidge of the logo on one of the shoes behind the black sharpie.  Other than that, there were safety pins holding the fabric together in spots, and the once white toes of the shoes were decorated in an assault of colors that almost made his eyes want to bleed.

They looked old. Ratty. Used.  Definitely very tired.  But they also looked appealing.  Wonderful.

Perfect.

***

It didn’t surprise Austin that when he told Carrie of his love for her shoes that she laughed.  He just grinned at her.  Of all the things he loved about here, and there were definitely a plethora of them, it was her laugh that was third.  Second only to her shoes and herself.

***

He’d been so stumped over the perfect imperfection of her shoes that he didn’t look up at her until he saw her walking to the bar.  She jumped up and landed gracefully in the seat.  That was when he noticed how short she was.  Or, more importantly, how petite she was.  She looked almost like a waif, skinny legs and arms in a too huge shirt that seemed to be taking the place of a dress on herself.  Unlike the shoes that adorned her feet, the shirt-dress and belt that crossed her waist were perfectly in order.

He watched, interested, as she placed her order.

In the small diner, he couldn’t determine her words, but he could hear the low tone of her speech that held an accent.  He could hear the depth in that voice.  He could hear her smile in that voice.  He could hear something in that voice that made him keep listening.

And then she laughed.

He didn’t know why, but what he did know was that her laugh matched her shoes.  Abused. Loved. Colorful.

Perfect.

***

He loved her laugh so much that he told her so when he heard it.  She sobered a bit.  She just stared at him with a small smile on her face.  Her wide eyes open at him as if she could see all of him with her one powerful burst of energy they emitted.  He loved her eyes too.  And so he told her so.

***

Austin had spend the next ten minutes eating delicious-terror-on-his-insides pie and sipping disgusting-tastes-like-bark coffee while watching Shoe Girl.  She’d hooked her Colorful Shoes into the ring at the bottom of the vintage stool.  They moved to some unknown beat, as Shoe-Girl interacted with the waitress who took her order as if they were long time friends.  What was it his niece had called them?

BFFs. Yeah.

Her smile never left her face, and that just seemed to make her  more appealing to him.  He just watched her, though.  Austin couldn’t imagine himself smiling with her, enjoying her perfectly imperfect company.

He didn’t find it so hard to actually do so when she got up from the bar and made her way over to his booth, though.  She nodded to the side opposite him.

This seat free?

Of course.

She sad down and just stared at him.  Her eyes watched him as he ate his pie, because he wouldn’t initiate conversation with this wonderful appearance in front of him.

What if he scared her away? Saying something to the extent of Your shoes make me want to know you, or saying Your laugh makes me want to hug you. That would be something weird, of course. Right?

Not going to talk to me?

He was startled when she asked the question, and he just looked up at her again.  Then they both laughed, their smiles alike.

This pie is delicious.

She took his comment to heart for a while, watching as he slowly ate small pieces.  She stuck a finger into some of the insides that had strewn on the plate, and tasted a bit.

You’re right. Delicious.

He knew she would think so, although right now he was contemplating on how to be able to feed her a substantial bite.

She looked up at him, and that was the first time he’d noticed those eyes.  He froze.  He couldn’t move.  Those eyes were like magnets to his, and Austin couldn’t pull his away.  Magnetic Attraction to those holes of depth, reason, wonder…curiosity?

Well…

She paused, with a huge smile on her face.

I’m sure talking to you could count as ‘delicious’ too, right?

***

Austin knew that conversation was the beginning of something magical.  And so on the day that he admitted his love for her ridiculous shoes, her laugh, and her gorgeous eyes he also decided that he loved her too.  He loved those parts of her, but the whole of her as well.  The way she looked in the morning or the way she bit her lip when daydreaming.  Maybe even her spontaneity.  All of it.

So he told her.

***

Their discussion had been long, deep, amusing, sad, thoughtful, energizing and Perfect.  After talking to Carrie, Ausin had suddenly felt ready to begin to take on Hercules.

She’d introduced herself first.  And even her name was as perfect as her shoes.

I’m Caroline Beatrice Johnson.  But Carrie could do.

What if I call you Caroline?

Just don’t sing it to me.

That made Austin laugh.  So he introduced himself.

I’m Austin James Parker.

Sounds like Texas Park Ranger.

That’s very far from the truth.

Ah, well, a girl can dream.

That was the beginning of a conversation.  In the following words Carrie had felt no need to be shy, and neither had he.

Austin knew that Carrie’s favorite color was orange and that her favorite flower was the daffodil.  She was allergic to shellfish and dragon fruit, she loved strawberries, and had a soft spot for orange juice.  She had no siblings or parents, only an uncle that had made her life by taking her in.  She, right now, had no cousins, although her uncle had gotten married recently.  She worked as a barista at a coffee shop, but she could never drink the coffee there.

In turn, Austin had told Carrie about himself.

He told her that his favorite color was blue. He didn’t really enjoy flowers. He had hay fever.  He had three dogs, each one stupid and dumb and very lovable.  He had a job that implied wearing a suit every day and being bored to death all his life.  He was trying to get out of his current life.  He was originally from somewhere else, but after quitting his job he’d packed up a few things, left his dogs with his sister, and went off on a spiritual journey.

Carrie seemed to love that, although he thought it was extremely corny.  So she decided to go on with him.

Tell me Park Ranger…

He smiled at the nick name.

How the hell does a guy in a suit end up creeping on people in the back of a twenty four hour coffee stop?

I was not creeping on people.

Indignant, you are.

I was merely creeping on the shoes.

Carrie laughed, and it was obvious she wanted an explanation.

You can tell a lot about people from their shoes.

Austin got her attention with that one.

After all, our feet are was take us to the places we need to go, and our shoes are what we use to protect them.  Shoes are important.  I find that you can find more about a person from their shoes than from their actual appearance.

Carrie looked thoughtful.

So what about me?

Austin grinned at her.

Without the shoes? You look perfect.  All put together fine with the proverbial white picket fence.

With them?

Well, with them, you are perfectly imperfect.

The rest of the night continued after that, but every few sentences or so, she could compare his shoes theory to everything.  The teenagers, Carrie told him, were definitely posers.  Because those chucks only looked battered cause they bought them that way.  The truckers were tough, but there were chinks in their armor, just like the soft spots they’d worn into the leather. Carrie told him it was probably cause they had a wife and kids at home, or maybe a brother or sister.  The waitress, Carrie said, was definitely not super rich, but probably wishing for it to come along.

And then the conversation turned to him.

You’re different…

Carrie said, smiling.  She pointed a finger down, as if to indicate his shoes.

Loafers.  They’re all wrinkled.  They look tired.  They look like maybe you should start looking for a new style.

Austin chewed this over.

Do you think that’s possible?

I don’t know, Park Ranger, it is your theory.

They didn’t revisit that topic for the rest of the night, although it had ended up coming back in the future.  Instead, they’d touched old topics, and then started on a new one.  The future.

So, Park Ranger, tell me how this shoe thing works in the future.

What future?

You know, let’s say I want to see someone again. And I don’t know anything but their shoes and their name. How does that work?

Well, I suspect you leave them something.

So, like a shoe? Or maybe a piece or two of their heart?

That one stumped Austin, but it also made him grin.  Carrie didn’t go on.  Instead she unlaced both of her chucks, and slipped her petite feet out of them. She’d placed them by his feet under the table, and she stood up.  She leaned forward and kissed each of his cheeks.

Take good care of them, Park Ranger.

It’d been six months, and Austin was still wondering if she’d meant her shoes or the pieces of her heart.

***

In the end, what she’d meant didn’t matter. Because right now they were standing in the parking lot of the coffee shop while Austin told her all the things he loved about her.  And about how he loved her herself.  When he told her, her sudden spontaneity and all of those things he seemed to love, were stripped away from her so that all he could see was the perfectly imperfect colors of herself.

Austin slipped down to the pavement, his new pair of chucks making a scratching noise as he lowered himself to one knee.

Marry me.

And it really was as simple as their shoes matching themselves.

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