Black Coffee

The smallest of things would remind him of her. Most of the times they would come unannounced. A small gesture by someone, a word spoken or the melody of an old song. Just about anything would make him think of her.
He kept fidgeting with his paper cup absent-mindedly. The black coffee lay untouched as he blankly stared at the mini ripples they created with his hand movements. The noise of the weekend food court was silenced by the song of old memories blasting inside his head.

He felt lost

He tried to remember how things had ended. He didn’t have a very clear picture of their last meeting. She yanked her hand off his as they entered her building complex. Far from the entrance gate where the building blocks were located, he could see a small gathering of people. Someone’s birthday was being celebrated by people in the building. I think you should leave now, she said abruptly as she pulled her hand away from his. He remembered being a bit puzzled and startled by the sudden change in her behaviour but he didn’t question her. As always, he listened to whatever she said. He stopped walking as he saw her walk away from him, towards the building. And after a couple of seconds he turned around and headed towards the gate.

That was all he remembered.

He wondered how her thoughts had come to him again that weekend evening as he sat alone in the crowded mall. Maybe he heard a laugh that reminded him of her. Or maybe it was a whiff of that lavender perfume of hers. He knew there was something in the air for her memories to come back flooding inside his head.
Despite being alone he never felt lonely and at times like these when her thoughts overpowered every other emotion inside of him, he felt all the more with her. It was almost as if she’d never left him for a day. He sat wondering what had gone wrong between them and why they parted ways but strangely he didn’t remember a thing. He tried hard to remember if he ever called her up again after that last meeting. As always he drew a blank. He took a sip from his paper cup and felt the bitterness of the coffee wash down his throat. He kept staring at the cup as he remembered her slender hands mixing two spoons of sugar into his black coffee. He had stopped having sugar in his coffee since that day. It just didn’t feel the same.

He didn’t realise how long he sat on that food court table that evening. The crowd had thinned out considerably when he got up from his chair. He shut his laptop as he got up. He hadn’t typed a single word of his supposed article which he was to finish that evening. So lost was he in her thoughts he had forgotten everything. He slung his laptop bag across his shoulder as he walked away from the table leaving the unfinished cup of coffee.

It was difficult for her to see him. Almost impossible. Never had she imagined she would meet him after all these years. A trip with her husband and children to her old city had been a sudden plan and it certainly did not involve bumping into him at a food court. Her husband and his friends laughed and chatted as she watched him walk away from her. She kept staring at his direction till he was finally out of her sight. She felt a tiny trickle trying to find its way out of the corner of her eye. She excused herself and got up.

As she passed his empty table she stared at the half filled cup of black coffee and left next to the cup, two sachets of sugar which she had been clutching in her hand the whole evening.

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