A man of easy smiles

I was standing around with two friends, waiting. Well, one friend. I had only met the other girl once. But in our situation nearly everybody was called a friend. I disliked that. Melanie was nice and had potential, but at this point I refused to see her as my friend. None of the people we were waiting for was a friend of mine. Melanie and Andrea said they were their friends, but in my eyes the greater part was merely more to them than Melanie was to me and some were total strangers. I didn’t know what to expect of them, or whether it was better not to expect anything at all and I was rather bored of waiting for them. Why couldn’t they be on time? Being late had always annoyed me.
It was a fresh, but sunny morning. A promising start of day. Not for the first time I asked myself if I shouldn’t have stayed at home. I would’ve loved to stretch out in the sun with a good book. But that was what I always did. Andrea had asked me again and again to join them at this and that and it had always ended with the result of me not being there. I had given her the best reason to stop inviting me, but so far she hadn’t. Some part of me was afraid she would. Therefor I was here. And to prove to myself that I wasn’t as antisocial as I made people think I was.
Andrea was moving around impatiently. She wasn’t used to wait for others. It was always her people had to wait for. Then finally they seemed to have discovered someone in the crowd. The girls welcomed him with delight. And he greeted me as cheerful as the other two and seemed not to care that we hadn’t met before. Stunned I introduced myself as to remind him that we were unfamiliar with each other. The stranger gave me a big smile and told me his name was Charlie.
Something about Charlie captured my attention even after the other ones arrived. I only had met one other person before and unfortunately it was someone I hadn’t liked too much at first meeting. I couldn’t be annoyed by her appearance for too long, cause my mind was busy figuring out Charlie. His person seemed to be liked by everybody. No other person rejoiced anybody as much as he did. Shortly after departing from our place of meeting I got the chance to have a little chat with him. And even though our talk was nothing more than billions of other first talks I had had before, I felt some sincere interest in my personality.
I spent a good quantity of the day observing my companions. Stranger or none stranger. But Charlie was by far the most interesting individual of the group. I could tell that he was somewhat older than myself and most of the others. But then again a certain youth and energy was surrounding him. I questioned my idea of his age over and over again. It wasn’t really of matter, but I was annoyed that I couldn’t figure it out without asking him.
It took me all day to finally realis what made me like him in an instant. We were sitting in a pub and over my beer I was looking at Charlie, who sat on the opposite of me. He caught my look and gave me a smile. A beautiful smile. Honest and warm. That was it! His smile! It was different from all the other smiles. He was smiling a lot I realized. Always at the right time. I knew a lot of people who were full of smiles. But their smiles weren’t as honest as his. His eyes lighted up when he smiled to go back to a thoughtful melancholy as soon as the smile faded. This melancholy captured me. Where did it come from? Had it been there all day? I remembered at least one moment I had seen it. An expression that promised personality. There was more about Charlie than his easy but charming smiles.