FLASH FICTION
Meeting for Coffee
A lovers’ story
‘Your hair suits you longer,’ I say, twisting an empty sugar sachet between my fingers. ‘You look well.’
‘Thank you.’ She cradles a coffee mug in her hands. With her elbows planted on the table, her arms form a shield as she sips. ‘So do you,’ she adds.
Her eyes flick towards the phone resting on the table. She’s looked down at it every few minutes or so since she arrived. Maybe she’s expecting a call or praying for some distraction? Maybe she’s waiting for the earliest possible time before she can say she needs to leave?
Whenever her attention is drawn to the phone screen, I take the opportunity to look over her face, to absorb it. She seems different, eventhough it’s only being a few months since we last saw each other. Her hair is longer, but that’s not it. Her features aren’t how I remember them. They’re softer, less tense. She’s glowing and she looks happy, which should make me happy too. Which it does, but also it doesn’t.
I know how selfish that makes me sound.
Conversation hasn’t moved on from asking after our parents, or if work is busy. It’s as if we’ve unlearned our time together. I know her, but now it feels as though I’m not allowed to. Which is confusing because we spent so much time together. Sharing everything. We slept together. Woke together. I wonder if she ever thinks about that; if she’s thinking about that now. We’re sitting so close that if either of us made the effort we could touch one another. Around us, the coffee shop is bustling, but I’m the only one who knows about the birthmark on the top of her leg. The only to have traced a finger across it.
Shouldn’t that count for something?
‘I’ll get us another,’ I say, standing up.
The chair legs scrape against the floor.
She goes to reply, maybe to tell me that she’s fine, that she has to go, or that she doesn’t have time, but I’ve already taken a step away from the table. ‘I’m having another anyway,’ I add. ‘You don’t have to drink it — ’ I shrug ' — if you want to get off, that is.’
I pause but she doesn’t answer. Did she notice that I said want instead of need?
Joining the queue of customers at the counter, I glance back at our table. She looks lost sitting alone. We have less than an hour together and I’m wasting some of that time queuing with a line of strangers.
She turns slightly in her seat to look out of the window.
The moment I knew that I loved her, we were in a coffee shop. One adjoined to an Art Gallery. She’d recently had her hair cut short into a tapered bob and the line from the nape of her neck to her shoulders was perfect. It was as if it had been captured by the stroke of an artist’s pen. It took me somewhere else. In that moment, I wanted more than anything to lean forward and kiss her neck, to brush my lips against her skin. And I almost did, despite the people seated around us.
But I didn’t.
I told her about that moment, when I realized the relationship was going further than a handful of dates, and she said that I should have taken the opportunity.
A customer leaves the queue ahead of me and I shuffle forward.
Spotting the pastries and cakes on display, I realise that I’m hungry. I’ve consumed very little apart from caffeine for days, and it’s putting me on edge. When I glance back over at her, she’s tapping into her phone; presumably letting him know she won’t be much longer. Or maybe she’s texting me to cancel her drink. I check my phone. Nothing. Maybe the reason she needs to leave is because she’s hungry? I decide to text and ask her if there’s anything she’d like to go with her drink.
But that’s not what I type.
I type: I wish I could kiss your neck.
Before I’ve fully registered what I’m doing, I’ve hit send, and the message has gone. A tick appears next to it. A heartbeat later a second tick appears. She’s read the message.
I shove my phone into my pocket and stare forward. The barista welcomes me from behind the counter, but his voice is muffled, as if it’s coming from another room. I flounder, staring up at the menu board blankly, my phone a hot coal against my leg.
‘Same again?’ the barista asks, rescuing me from limbo.
‘Er… yes, please.’
When I arrive back at our table, her phone has been put away and her gaze is fixed outside.
‘I’m sorry. That was stupid. I was… I mean, it was just a joke,’ I blurt out as I slide into my seat. Sugar granules crunch beneath the tray.
She blinks slowly but doesn’t avert her attention.
I sigh through my nose, ‘Look. I’m really sorry. I don’t want to…’ I feel my shoulders slump.
She finger-combs her hair, gathering it into a ponytail, and drapes it across one shoulder, leaving the other exposed.
‘That’s all I’ve ever wanted you to do,’ she says.
