The café was small and unassuming,
tucked away in a side street neither of them had reason to visit. Yet, over the
past six months, it had become a refuge, a meeting place without an
appointment, for two strangers who were anything but.
She always arrived first, choosing the same table by the window,
her coat draped neatly over the back of the chair. She brought a book, though
she never read more than a page or two before he walked in. He’d spot her at
once, smile briefly, and order his coffee. He never asked to join her table,
but he always chose the one beside it, angled just so that they could speak
with ease if they wished.
They never used their real names. She was “Eleanor” here,
and he was “Daniel,” though they’d only exchanged those names after several
cautious conversations about neutral subjects—books, the weather, the quality
of the café’s croissants.
Eleanor knew who Daniel really was. The set of his
shoulders, the faint scar on his cheek, and the way he rubbed the bridge of his
nose when thinking—all of it was etched into her memory from a time long before
this. And Daniel knew her, too, though he pretended not to. He’d recognised her
laugh the very first time he’d heard it here, a laugh he hadn’t heard in years
but couldn’t possibly forget.
They spoke often, weaving stories about their imaginary
lives. Eleanor claimed to work in publishing; Daniel was a freelance
journalist. She invented colleagues and deadlines; he concocted anecdotes about
assignments abroad. It became their shared fiction, each seeing how far they
could stretch the façade. Neither of them acknowledged the truth, that they had
once shared more memories than either cared to admit.
Perhaps they were afraid of what would follow the
revelation. In this café, in these brief, stolen conversations, they could be
different versions of themselves—polite, curious, untouched by the pain that
had once consumed them. They both knew neither of them spoke the truth.
One rainy afternoon, Eleanor looked at Daniel a little too long. He noticed but said nothing. Instead, he sipped his coffee and asked her a question about the book she wasn’t reading.
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