The WrongTable
803 Words
POV: Kathryn
The café that I stumbled into had exactly one free table, and a stranger reached it half a second before I did.
I'd been in London now for eleven hours. My feet ached from the flight, my coat was wrong for the wind coming off the Thames, and I had walked four blocks in the wrong direction before admitting I was lost. The last thing I had energy for was losing a chair too.
"That's mine," I said, before I'd even decided to speak.
He looked up like I'd interrupted something. He had on a dark coat, had dark eyes, and a jaw that looked like it had been carved specifically to be photographed from the side. He had the kind of face that made you angry just by looking at it, the kind that had clearly never once been told no and believed it.
"I don't see your name on it," he said.
"I don't see yours either."
A corner of his mouth moved, not quite a smile, more like he was recalculating something. "Fair point." He didn't get up.
Rain had started against the window, fine and grey. It was that annoying kind that didn't seem to fall so much as hang in the air and wait for you to walk through it. The café smelled of burnt espresso and wet wool, and somewhere behind the counter a machine hissed steam in short, irritable bursts that matched exactly how I felt.
"I've been awake for almost twenty hours," I said trying to sound patient even though I was booking inside of me. "I have walked in the wrong direction twice. I would like, very much, to sit down before I do something I regret."
"That sounds like a personal problem."
"It's about to become yours."
That got the smile the rest of the way out, quick and unwilling, like he resented giving it to me. He studied me for a second too long, a look that made my skin suddenly feel very aware of itself, and then he kicked the second chair out from under the table with his foot.
"Sit, then. Before you collapse and make a scene."
I should have said no out of pride. Instead I sat, because my legs had made the decision before my pride could weigh in, and because something about the dry amusement in his voice made the exhaustion in my chest ease half a degree.
"Thank you," I said, with as much grace as I could fake.
"You're welcome." He went back to the laptop in front of him, then, after a beat, looked up at me. "What brings you to London looking like you've personally fought the weather and lost?"
"Family business." I wrapped both hands around the coffee the barista set in front of me, grateful for the heat. "Complicated family business, not that it's any of your business by the way".
"Ouch! That hurts, though I must agree with you. Complicated family business is the only kind worth having," he said, and there was something underneath it, something tired that didn't match the easy line of his mouth. "Mine's that I’m in town for a wedding I'm dreading."
“I’m in town for a wedding I'm not invited to feel anything about," I said, before I could stop myself, and then immediately regretted how much truth had slipped into it.
He looked up properly then, really looked, like the sentence had told him something he hadn't expected to learn from a stranger fighting him over a chair. "That sounds like the better story."
"It's not a story I'm telling a man whose name I don't have." I retorted, already feeling mildly irritated.
"You didn't ask for it."
"I'm asking now."
He considered me for a long moment, rain ticking against the glass beside us, steam hissing behind the counter, the whole grey afternoon narrowing down to the small space between his eyes and mine. There was something behind his expression I couldn't name yet, something careful, like a man used to people wanting things from him and trying to work out, in real time, whether I was one of them.
"Another time," he said finally, and there was a promise folded into it that neither of us had earned yet. "I have a feeling I'll see you again."
I told myself, walking back out into the rain a few minutes later, that he was simply being charming the way rich English men in good coats are taught to be charming, and that I would never see him again, and that it didn't matter either way.
I believed exactly none of it.
I didn't even know his name but I was already certain I'd remember his face if for any reason I bumped into him in the nearest future.
- Writer
