I hope you know how much I miss those vanilla infused afternoons, in the backseat of your car. Your teasing fingers lingering over my dreams, like rain filled clouds over mulberry trees.

4th October ’21, when I saw you in a small crooked café on Hooke’s lane. The ugly antique clock on the wall struck 9 o clock of a sunny dull Monday morning. Wasn’t everyone at school? I saw your eyes flicker slightly to my direction as I entered the café, the tiny bell sweetly cutting through the silence that hung over your table. Uncomfortable, I adjusted my glasses like I always do when I feel watched, and headed over to the table farthest away from yours. I didn’t even have to look over to feel your shoulders tensing up at my pretense. Strangers at a café? Better that way.

The sun shifted to the window you were sitting by, illuminating your frame, almost trying to force me to look at you. Unnerved, I shifted around in the printed cushioned seat, my breathe refusing to slow down. Were you looking over?

And I hope you know that your puzzled breathe is the only piece that fits between my legs.

My hands clutched white around the unread menu as I asked for a rosemary tea with biscotti in the lowest voice I could muster. Your face was bent down to solve the Rubik’s cube you had on your lap, under the Diana table, except the movements didn’t fall in place with the algorithm. You were listening. Time had never ticked by so slow and loud ever before. I found my eyes completely on you. Unable to look away, now that I had finally done what I had been dreading to for so long.

I hope you still think about those moans you told me to never hold back, when you are trying to fall asleep at night.

But just as it seemed you were about to give up your futile efforts to pretend I wasn’t there, and look me in the face, the bell cut through the tension once again, and the glass let someone in. The spell broke. Pretending to be preoccupied, I closed my eyes and sipped my steaming tea. Snippets of conversation from a table close to mine wafted their way through the unbearable silence to my ears. It was a young waitress dressed in pastel and white, I saw from the corner of my eye. I too had worn that uniform once. She was talking to the guy who had just walked in. and even though her back was turned to me, I could hear her smile. The guy must have leaned forward to whisper in her ear “in the parking lot at 4, okay?”

The hand I had extended for the sugar bowl stopped millimeters short. And somehow from across the room the rough dragging sounds of your cube curtly broke off. There were no plans this time. No games. Just plain painful instinct as we both looked at each other at the same time, for the first time, that uneventful morning. You hadn’t changed much, your eyes still made me lose my footing in my own thoughts and your face was a perfect heaven. But not many would see your hands clutched tightly around the cube, stuck mid movement, almost afraid to move, afraid to cause the slightest disruption in a world that had already been turned upside down. Only me and the veteran café walls saw you gulp. And if you were to try to speak right this instant, I knew in my heart it would be your tears that would speak for you instead of trembling illusive words.

I hope you saw the mess you made of me everyday at 4, making me forget the dull thudding of the sun on the deserted parking lot, in exchange for your lips on mine.

I could feel a treacherous lump rise into my throat. A feeling I had known all too well in the past few months. Abruptly getting up, I fumbled to place the required bills by the unfinished cookies, a sniffle slyly slipping by. Pretending to rub my nose with the back of my hand to hide whatever I had not yet shown to you already, I turned around swiftly, only to bump into the waitress from before. “fuck excuse me” I spluttered in a low whisper, as I noticed she was on her toes about to kiss her friend. As if the very air of that wooden café was freezing solid every second, she slowly turned her head half-sideways. And I found myself staring in the ghostly eyes of my younger reflection. My breathe caught in my throat, I looked over, perhaps for the last time, horrified, to you, still sitting by the window seat, your unruly black hair glowing a rippling brown in the heat. The cube had fallen from your shaking hands, and lay forgotten on the ground. I traced your gaze back to where my younger smitten apparition leant up to kiss the ghost meant to be you.