Alison liked Tuesdays. At one o’clock the office emptied out, and she and her colleagues took the same corner table at the café downstairs, the one by the window.
Someone always complained about the coffee. Someone always ordered the same salad.
That Tuesday, while the others talked about a meeting that had run too long, Alison opened Instagram. The first thing she saw was Rebecca.
Rebecca laughing, a glass in her hand, fairy lights behind her, a table full of people Alison didn’t recognize.
“Best night with my favorite people,” the caption said.
It was Saturday. It was Rebecca’s terrace. Rebecca had organized it.
Alison and Rebecca had moved to this city together six years ago, with two suitcases each and a list of places they wanted to try. For the first year they had nobody else. Then Rebecca started a new job, the names in her life multiplied, and somewhere along the way Alison stopped being one of them.
A knot formed in her throat. She put the phone face down and laughed at something a colleague said. Inside, the questions had already started.
What did I do? Did I say something? When did she stop wanting me there?
One by one, the others picked up their trays and went back upstairs. Alison stayed, staring at her cold coffee.
So did Nola.
Nola was in her forties and worked two floors up. She sat at the same table every day, usually at the far end with a book, and in all these months they had exchanged maybe twenty words. Now she moved a few chairs closer.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Just tired.”
Nola nodded slowly. “You’ve been looking at that phone like it owes you money.”
Alison laughed, and the laugh came out wrong. Before she knew it, she was telling her.
The move, the six years, the party.
Nola listened without interrupting. When Alison finished, she turned her cup around in her hands for a moment.
“Can I tell you about a man I know? His name is Gary.”
Alison shrugged.
“Gary grew up in a family where Sundays were for family. Every week his parents took him to his grandparents’ for lunch. When he got older and moved out, he kept going to his parents’ every Sunday on his own. Nobody ever asked him to. It was simply how they showed they loved each other.”
“So when his son Luke moved out, Gary expected the same. Every Sunday he cooked, set an extra place at the table, and waited. Some Sundays Luke came. Most Sundays he didn’t. And every time, Gary cleared that plate away a little more hurt than the week before.”
“Did he tell him?”
“Never. He was too proud. In his head it was obvious. If Luke loved him, he would come. Then one day his wife got tired of watching him sulk and told him to pick up the phone.”
“And?”
“Luke had one day off a week. Sunday. It was the only day he got to spend with his kids. He had no idea how much those lunches meant to his father, because Gary had never said it. Once he understood, he promised to come every other Sunday. And Gary realized he had spent all those Sundays waiting for an answer he could have had with one phone call.”
Alison looked down at her phone.
“Gary was waiting for something he learned as a little boy,” Nola said. “To him it was so normal he never thought to say it out loud. And when it didn’t happen, he filled that empty chair with stories. My son doesn’t love me. I did something wrong. We all do it. When someone doesn’t do what we were sure they would, an alarm goes off inside, and instead of asking, we guess. And we almost always guess the worst.”
“And what if I ask and the answer really is the worst?”
“Then at least you know.” Nola shrugged. “Sometimes it goes like Gary’s story. Sometimes people grow in different directions, and that’s allowed too. Either way, life usually knows where it’s taking you, even if you can’t see it from where you’re standing right now.”
She picked up her tray and stood.
“See you tomorrow, Alison.”
Alison hadn’t realized Nola knew her name. She sat there for a while. Then she opened her chat with Rebecca. The last message was from three weeks ago, a meme neither of them had answered.
She typed a long message and deleted it. Typed another and deleted that too.
In the end she wrote: Hey, can we talk?
She pressed send. The two grey ticks turned blue.
A moment later, under Rebecca’s name, a single word appeared.
Typing…
