Notes Left at Table Seven

7:06 P.M. There are seven empty tables in The Paper Moon. I know because I have counted them eleven times. Table One still has a coffee ring I forgot to wipe. Table Three wobbles whenever someone puts an elbow on the wrong corner. Table Five is beneath the air-conditioning vent and is therefore avoided by everyone with functioning nerve endings. And Table Seven— Table Seven is where I am currently being stood up by a man whose name I do not know. I look at the clock above the counter. 7:06. Six minutes. Six minutes isn't enough to call it being stood up. Six minutes is traffic. Six minutes is a red light that hates you personally. Six minutes is realizing halfway down the street that you've forgotten your wallet and having to run back. Six minutes is reasonable. I tell myself this while rearranging the sugar packets for the third time. "Mara." I don't look up. "Mara." "I'm busy." "You've organized those by color." I glance down. White. Brown. White. Brown. White. Brown. Fine. Maybe I am not busy. I lift my head and find Nina watching me from behind the espresso machine, one eyebrow raised. "Inventory," I say. "Of sugar?" "Very important resource." "Of course." She turns away, but not before I catch the beginning of a smile. I check the clock again. 7:07. Seven minutes. Of course. I hate that number. Which is unfair, considering none of this is the number seven's fault. It is just a number. A perfectly innocent number that has somehow become responsible for three weeks of terrible decisions, seventeen folded pieces of paper, one ruined paperback, approximately twelve lies of omission, and the embarrassing realization that apparently all it takes for me to become emotionally attached to a stranger is decent handwriting. Not even beautiful handwriting. Decent. Slightly slanted. Black ink. Capital letters too carefully formed, as though their writer doesn't trust them to behave without supervision. I know that handwriting now. I know he crosses his t's aggressively when he's annoyed. I know his words get smaller toward the bottom of the page when he's trying to fit too much into too little space. I know he sometimes starts a sentence, scratches it out, then writes something less honest underneath. I know he hates raisins. I know he once cried inside a grocery store because an old song started playing over the speakers. I know he calls his mother every Sunday. I know that when he was eleven, he wanted to become an astronaut until he learned astronauts couldn't simply decide to come home whenever they missed people. I know he believes there are some versions of ourselves that exist only in the memory of people we no longer speak to. I know he is afraid of waking up one morning and realizing that he has built a life he never actually wanted. But I don't know his name. That was the rule. No names. At first, there had been more rules. No phone numbers. No social media. No asking the staff about each other—which was particularly ridiculous in my case, considering I was the staff. No waiting around to see who picked up the book. No deliberately trying to find out who the other person was. And, most importantly: If either of us wants to stop, we stop. No explanation required. It had sounded sensible when we wrote it. Safe. Like drawing a fence around something before either of us knew it could grow. Then, somewhere between the first note and the seventeenth, we began leaning over the fence. 7:11. My stomach drops a little. I hate myself for noticing. Outside, rain streaks down the bookstore windows, turning headlights into long smears of gold and white. September rain has been falling since five, heavy enough that customers keep arriving with wet shoulders and apologetic expressions. Every time the bell above the door rings, my head snaps toward it. A woman with an umbrella. A father carrying a little girl. Two university students sharing a jacket over their heads. A delivery rider asking if this is 114 King Street. Not him. Whoever him is. I slip my hand into the pocket of my apron. The note is still there. I don't need to read it again. I've read it enough times that I could probably reproduce the exact angle of every letter from memory. Still, I unfold it. The paper has gone soft along the creases. M, I think I broke one of our rules. Actually, I think I've been breaking it for a while. There is a line scratched out after that. I spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to decipher it beneath the ink, but he had made sure I couldn't. Then: I don't want to be Seven anymore. And I don't want you to be M. Friday. 7:00 p.m. Table Seven. If you still want to know me, I'll be there. —Seven I had stared at those words for ten minutes when I first found them. Then I had spent the next two days pretending I wasn't terrified. Because wanting to know someone on paper is easy. Paper cannot disappoint you. Paper doesn't hesitate before answering. It doesn't look away when you've said too much. It doesn't hear your voice shake when you admit something embarrassing. You can write a sentence, hate it, cross it out, and pretend you never meant it. People are harder. People remember. I fold the note again. 7:18. The café has started to empty. Nina doesn't say anything this time. That's worse. I take the cloth from beneath the counter and walk toward Table Seven, even though it is already clean. It is always clean. It's tucked beside the fiction shelves, beneath the window that leaks whenever the rain gets ambitious. There is a tiny scratch across its wooden surface that looks like a crescent moon. One chair squeaks. The other doesn't. For weeks, this table had been nothing more than furniture. Then it became a mailbox. Then a confession booth. Then something I started looking at every morning before I even switched on the café lights. Tonight, there are two cups sitting on it. One for me. One for him. His is getting cold. I sit down. For the first time all evening, I let myself consider the possibility I have been carefully avoiding. Maybe he isn't coming. It shouldn't hurt. That's the humiliating part. I don't even know him. Not really. I don't know whether he is tall or short. Whether he wears glasses. Whether he has a scar somewhere. Whether he talks with his hands. Whether he says thank you to bus drivers. Whether he sleeps on the left side of the bed. Whether he chews the inside of his cheek when he's nervous. I don't know the face he makes when he's trying not to laugh. I don't know what his voice sounds like when he says my name. My actual name. Maria Rana Reyes. Not M. And yet this stranger knows things about me that people I've known for years do not. He knows that sometimes I pretend to be indecisive when I'm actually afraid of choosing wrong. He knows I reread old conversations even when I know they will hurt. He knows I have spent the past year congratulating people for moving forward while secretly wondering why I feel like I've been left behind. He knows that I am twenty-three years old and still waiting for the moment adulthood begins to feel less like wearing somebody else's coat. He knows I am scared that my life is becoming something I am merely watching instead of living. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe we told each other too much because we were strangers. And maybe strangers are easiest to love when they remain strangers. The bell above the door rings. My heart reacts before I do. I stand so quickly that my knee hits the underside of the table. "Ow—" I barely feel it. Someone has entered. For one ridiculous second, all I can see is a dark coat dripping rainwater onto the floor. Then the person steps aside. An elderly man walks toward the history section. My chest sinks. 7:24. I laugh. Not because anything is funny. Because apparently humiliation has nowhere else to go once it reaches the throat. I pick up the untouched cup across from me. Cold. "Okay," I whisper. The word disappears beneath the rain. I don't know who I'm saying it to. Seven. Myself. The empty chair. Maybe all three. I carry both cups back to the counter. Nina looks at me, and whatever she sees on my face stops her from asking. "I'm going home," I say. "I can close." "You sure?" She nods. I untie my apron. Outside, the rain is still coming down hard enough to erase the edges of the city. I don't have an umbrella. Of course I don't. I step into it anyway. By the time I reach the corner, my hair is plastered against my face and my sleeves are soaked through. I should run. Instead, I walk. The note is still inside my pocket. I consider throwing it away. I don't. Behind me, somewhere beyond the rain and the glowing windows of The Paper Moon, the clock keeps moving. 7:31. 7:32. 7:33. And at 7:34 p.m., seven minutes after I disappear around the corner, the bell above the bookstore door rings again. A man steps inside, breathless and soaked from the rain. His eyes immediately search the café. Then they land on Table Seven. Two empty chairs. No Mara. He closes his eyes. "Shit." But I am already halfway home. And it will be another three days before I discover that the stranger whose letters I had been falling in love with was never really a stranger at all.