“It’s not you,” she begins, hesitantly. Silence. She doesn’t finish. Instead, she grabs the latte, still steaming, takes a sip and then, wincing as the liquid burns her mouth, stands gracefully, turns slowly, calculatedly, and exits.
He sits, left behind, left alone. He sits and sighs. And then he grabs her uneaten danish and, taking a bite, turns the page of the newspaper sitting in front of him and begins to read.
There will be another. He swallows the bite of danish.
She’s watching him through the window, hoping he won’t look up. Hoping he might. But he doesn’t. More bites, more page-turning. A sip of black coffee, no longer steaming, cooling as the minutes pass.
She realizes she might look like it really was her and so this time her turn is definite and abrupt. She turns into a man passing by, whose arm catches her now-cooled latte and upends it.
And thus it really is her and she really is soaking wet, covered in the cup of coffee she only bought to buy another few minutes of futile frustration at the end of a benign courtship.
His lips curl up, but barely.