The Girl in the Coffee Shop

She had a book open in front of her, but she hardly glanced at it. Instead, she kept staring out of the window, occasionally leaning to the right to get a better view. I looked too, but all I could see was a short stretch of a busy street. What was she looking at? There was nothing that seemed to warrant that much interest.

She was pretty, but her posture was slouched, her hair was pulled back into a bun, and she wore no visible make up or jewelry. There was a backpack at her feet, instead of a handbag, so maybe she was a college student? But perhaps not - she didn't seem to wear the little air of self-consciousness that teenagers often do. Plus college students dress up more nowadays, don't they? Her face wore an intense, but abstracted look. What was going on in her head? And why was she sitting in a noisy coffee shop alone for over an hour?

Was she a writer, caught up in her inner world of imagination and plots? The open notebook and pen lent themselves to this theory. But then, why did she keep getting distracted by the street outside?

Maybe she was waiting for someone. When she wasn't staring at the street, she kept glancing back at the door. But the classic give away of one who waits is the constant fidgeting with the phone. 'Has he left yet? Is he late? Where is he now? What time is it?' Only the phone reveals the answers to these all-important questions - and she hadn't looked at her phone even once. Wait a minute, did she even have a phone? I hadn't seen evidence of one, and I was struck suddenly by how unusual that was. Perhaps she was one of those enlightened minimalists who feel called to live an unplugged life, to go back to simpler times. But for an enlightened, living-in-the-present-moment saint, she sure seemed pretty distracted and fidgety.

If she was expecting someone to walk in the door any second, she would probably look more eager or tense. Instead, she had a little furrow in her brow - either a thinking furrow or a worried furrow, or both, but occasionally a smile would flash across her face at a passing secret thought.

What was the secret of the girl in the coffee shop and why was she fascinated by the short stretch of road outside the window? Would I ever know, or would it be one of those unsolved mysteries that would haunt me for the rest of my life?

A few minutes later, she turned as the door swung open and a bearded young man in a blue checked shirt walked through. Matching smiles lit both their faces, as she jumped up, and they met in an embrace. That's when I noticed the rings on their left hands.

'Lovers', I thought, returning to my coffee. 'It's always lovers.'

A short sketch from my last visit to meet my fiancé. I had left my charger at home and my phone was dead. We had a pre-decided rendezvous point close to the hospital where he works, but he was in surgery, so for all I knew, it could have taken hours for him to finish. I wrote this sketch as I waited, from the POV of another customer.