He seemed like a ghost in the café, dark circles of exhaustion weighing down his eyes as his hands held up the menu that contained more than fifty kinds of beverages and desserts. And a few tables from him was her, the all too familiar goddess that had graced his heart with such feelings his tiny mind cannot fully comprehend. It baffled him so, how much she’d changed in the span of five years, six months, and eleven days. She wasn’t like this, and so, curiously, he watched her – from how she sipped her coffee with the sophistication that was an alien to him, to how she flipped her book’s pages like an old librarian whose life revolves around way too complicated words that he’d rather not know about. He had always resented his English subject back in high school, countering them the it’s language, we know it already and people shouldn’t make much of a deal out of it drama. And he remembered when she told him how right he is as her arms snaked its way to his chest from behind, whispering to him, giving him the warmth he had been unconsciously craving his entire life. Quite ironic, though, because then, as her eyes were glued to the pages of the book, he realized that she became everything she said she would never be.
The epitome of that was the coffee. Both of them hated that drink – they even teased it before, saying that it’s for grandpas and grandmas – but then he found out that she had been drinking some since she left, replacing the liquors that were ravaging her liver mercilessly with something milder and much more soothing. Oddly enough, he, too, found it quite calming that whenever she would order one, he would take out his old, worn out wallet and do the same thing.
He hoped she would at least turn her gaze to her left so that she may see him; his body bulkier than before, his auburn hair still the same but longer. He wondered when she’ll finally notice him, but then he knew for a fact that he’d hide his face behind the cardboard menu just so she wouldn’t. It was a maddeningly complicated feeling, and in addition to that were his indecisiveness, shame, and guilt.
So he thought and thought and thought till his mind began to thump alongside his heart as if they were harmonizing, competing with each other’s beats. But unfortunately for him, his heart was faster, fiercer than his pesky mind. So he stood, wearing his ecstatic heart on his sleeves like the pathetic young lad that he is, then he turned his eyes back to her who, apparently, didn’t need him anymore.
“Sorry I’m late,” a burly, blonde man said, kissing her cheek, and there was a sweet smile etched on her face, a sparkle in the finger beside her pinkie which he couldn’t believe he overlooked.
With tears blurring his vision, he turned on his heel.
