2004-12-03
Broken Hearts and Coffee Shops
He stared down at her eyes so intensely, that finally, she was forced to look up from his reflection in the dark liquid in her coffee cup. She stared right back at him, her bright eyes growing wide as the saucer he balanced his cup on. Her look was wild and eager, yet hesitant and searching. The twinkle withdrew just a little as she pushed nervously at her stocking with her high heeled foot. Her gestures and her glance seemed to ask, "
Will this be the moment that I am finally found lacking? Will his eye rove mine and find that it is missing that which he had been searching for and hoped to have found in me?" A tear quivered in her eye as she imagined this possible, crushing reaction. The white china of her coffee cup chinked quietly in her unsteady grasp, but the rest of her was frozen as the ice on the windowpanes, her whole delicate self riveted by his soft, liquid eyes. He reached out his hand and pressed it against her trembling fingers, and mouthed something scarcely audible.
But the glint of his overflowing eyes spoke everything to her. She gave up her restraint and her eyes searched his freely, as he drowned himself in hers.
And so they sat by the window of the coffee shop, at a tiny table, oblivious to the flow of time around them.
A stray child went barreling by with a frazzled mother chasing after him as she clutched her steaming Styrofoam cup. An overweight businessman bustled through the door speaking too loudly on his cell phone.
And a small girl, golden locked, brushed past the familiar, spellbound man at the table, with a wistful, despondent tear in her brilliant blue eye.
But he didn't even notice her.