Alexey

This year's winter was especially cold. Snow swirled in the air, settling on my eyelashes and hair. I stood outside a café on the main street, nervously adjusting my scarf and checking my phone for the tenth time.
"I'm already here. Look for the guy in the brown coat," came the message from him.
My heart was pounding so loudly it seemed like it could be heard across the entire street. We'd been texting each other for a whole year. For a whole year I'd known his voice in his messages, his thoughts, his jokes, his silence. But never the real him. He lived in another city, hundreds of kilometers away, and now he'd finally arrived.
I looked up and saw him.
White hair, slightly tousled by the wind. The high collar of a brown coat. A black scarf, covering almost his entire face except for his eyes—warm, slightly mocking, looking straight at me. He held a phone in his hand and walked slowly toward me, as if afraid to frighten the moment.
"Hello," he said, and his voice was exactly as I'd imagined. Slightly hoarse, calm.
“Hi,” I breathed out, and a cloud of steam rose between us.
He smiled—I could see it in the way his eyes narrowed slightly.
"You're even more beautiful than in the photo," he said simply, without any pathos, and extended his hand. "Shall we go? I know a place around here."