Coffee
a modern love story
“coffee”
She stared in disbelief at the one word text message on her phone.
It had been six months since she’d been in contact with him — contact in the form of a letter. It was a lopsided conversation. She’d poured out her heart in its entirety via email and was met with silence.
The letter was his suggestion following his refusal to see her in person. She had desperately wanted to speak with him face to face — to be able to read him and know that he understood — to have him see that she was sincere. She’d implored him to meet her to talk over coffee , but he refused. A meeting ‘“didn’t make sense,” was how he put it. If she thought there was unfinished business between them, he suggested she write him a letter instead.
Indeed, she did.
And so she wrote — almost 10,000 words worth according to Open Office — spilling her heart out and taking inventory of her feelings, every last one. She was a feeler and was unafraid to show him. She’d been determined to leave nothing left unsaid. She became an open book — the opposite of the closed thing she once was.
Totally exposed, she lay naked on the page.
Then, nothing. Silence.
She poured her heart out in excruciating detail and got crickets. She knew silence was one of the possible outcomes and accepted that, even if she was not so secretly disappointed. It wasn’t the worst of the possible outcomes she’d played out in her mind.
With a fairy-tale ending off the table, silence was almost a relief.
She marveled at how, despite six months passing, her heart felt more raw than ever.
She thought back to the letter as her thumb gently swept across the text on the screen. She cringed at her recollection of the bits where she was sure she crossed the line.
Then she thought of her closing:
“If you need a friend one day — I’d like to be that friend. Text the word ‘coffee’ and I’ll know to ready my army of one.”
And there it was.
“coffee”
She was suddenly aware that both hands had migrated to cover her mouth, now agape. She removed them, closed her mouth and promptly picked the phone up with her left hand — her right set to mindlessly twisting her hair. Adrenaline began to blur the screen before her eyes.
Freeing her right hand, she took a deep breath and wrote her response.
“Forces amassed. Coordinates?”
She stared at it for a moment, frowning, biting her lip — heart pounding — her finger hovering over the send button.
Spotify offered up Regina Spektor on the shuffle — The Call.
Regina always got her into trouble, she thought, the edges of her lips slowly curling into a smile.
A promise is a promise.
She hit send.
This is the first instalment in a series of fiction. Thank you for reading.
