Two Cups of Coffee

“Shall we go for coffee?”, I pinged her.

“Yeah sure”, she replied immediately.

That was our usual time for coffee, when we would discuss a lot about ourselves, random ideas, Quora answers, and most importantly our book. Yes, you have read it right!. My friend and I, both working in the same company, are writing a Sci-Fi book, which has a lot of ideas to brainstorm.

We were friends for less than eight months. But we had a lot of similar thoughts and imaginations. I had always wanted to write a Sci-Fi book, but then I needed a co-writer who would think alike. When I met her for the first time, I just said her a plain ‘Hello’. I never imagined we would become best friends. We realized that we are like-minded people, which was quite rare to find, and started discussing about our ideas and wishes. Our thoughts were very much in sync.

I went to cafeteria, where she was already waiting for me with her black coffee. I signalled her that I had come and went to take my cup of coffee. We then sat on the table nearby, and we both kept looking at our cups without lifting our heads up. That day was a bit different than the rest of the days. Usually we would not waste even a second sitting idle. We would have started our conversation even when we searched for a place to sit. Today, I saw her, but she was very reluctant to look up.

“How is the story coming?”, I asked her to break the ice. But there was no reply from her. She was holding her cup and looking downwards. “Is the coffee not that hot to break the ice”, I thought myself. But jokes apart! I even tried asking different questions like, “Did you see the answer for the question we had discussed yesterday?”, “What would happen if Voldemort visited Longbottom’s house first?”. Still there was no luck.

“How is everything going on?”, she asked me after a long time with her voice so low. This time I didn’t have answers, and remained silent for few minutes. During one of our previous conversations, we had discussed about how the changes in life are inevitable, and we should face it bravely. Though it was very easy to get convinced in a conversation, when it was happening to us, it was not. I was quitting the company and we won’t be seeing each other as often as we usually do.

For the past one week, we knew that this day would come, and were excited about our last day coffee, not knowing when we will go for our next one. As soon as I reached office, I opened the chat, not thinking about anything else.

“Shall we go for coffee?”, I pinged her.

“Yeah sure”, she replied immediately. I knew she would be waiting for this question.

Though we are not meeting in the physical world now, we will always be connected with our book world. We are planning to publish our book in January. Hope everything goes well.