Table for Two
The first time she met him, he was sitting in her booth.
It wasn’t technically hers. She’d never paid rent on it, and there wasn’t a little brass plaque attached to the table with her name engraved on it, but she’d been coming to Marlow’s every Friday night for nearly three years. In that time, she’d grown rather attached to the last booth on the left, the one beside the window with the cracked red vinyl and the table that wobbled if you leaned on it wrong. Ruth knew to bring her coffee there without asking, and most of the regulars knew better than to leave their coats on the seat.
Apparently, the man sitting there hadn’t received the memo.
He was reading a paperback with a badly creased spine, occasionally reaching for a french fry without looking away from the page. His coat occupied the opposite bench, and beside his coffee sat a small tower he’d constructed from sugar packets. He seemed perfectly comfortable, which irritated her more than it probably should have.
She stood beside the table for several seconds before clearing her throat.
He glanced up. “Can I help you?”
“You’re sitting in my booth.”
He looked at the seat beneath him, then at the one across from him. “I didn’t realize these were assigned.”
“They’re not, but that’s where I sit.”
“Every time?”
“Every Friday for almost three years.”
He seemed genuinely impressed. “That’s a remarkable commitment to furniture.”
She stared at him, trying to decide whether he was deliberately being difficult or simply had an unfortunate personality.
“Look, I’ve had a long day, and I’d really like to sit down.”
“Well, I can certainly help with that.” He picked up his coat and moved it beside him. “There you go.”
She looked at the newly vacated seat. “I meant by myself.”
“Ah. Unfortunately, I was here first.”
From behind the counter, Ruth laughed.
“Just sit down, sweetheart. He’s been here an hour, and I promise he doesn’t bite.”
“That’s exactly what people say about raccoons before they end up in the emergency room.”
The man laughed hard enough that he nearly knocked over his little sugar-packet tower.
She should have walked away. There were other places to eat, and she wasn’t particularly interested in spending her evening with a stranger who thought he was funny. Unfortunately, the diner was crowded, she was hungry, and Ruth was already pouring her coffee.
With a sigh that she hoped adequately conveyed her displeasure, she slid into the opposite seat.
“Fine. But I’m not sharing my fries.”
He glanced at the generous pile on his own plate. “I think we’ll manage.”
Somehow, they ended up talking for nearly two hours.
It started when he ordered another side of fries and she informed him that potatoes shouldn’t count as a complete meal. He argued that they were vegetables, she argued that deep-frying something didn’t automatically make it nutritious, and within fifteen minutes they were debating whether cereal qualified as soup.
By the time Ruth brought the check, they’d moved on to whether ghosts should be required to pay rent.
“If they’re living in the house, they should contribute,” she insisted.
“They’re dead. What exactly are you expecting them to contribute?”
“I don’t know. Keep the other ghosts out?”
“So you’re suggesting a supernatural security service.”
“See? Now you’re thinking.”
He laughed, and she caught herself smiling before she could stop it.
When they finally stood to leave, he held the door open for her. The evening air was cool, and she could smell rain somewhere in the distance.
“Same time next week?” he asked.
She gave him a look. “Don’t get comfortable.”
“Too late. Excellent booth.”
She walked toward her car, shaking her head, and realized halfway across the parking lot that she hadn’t even asked his name.
It didn’t particularly bother her.
The following Friday, he was there again.
This time, his coat was folded neatly beside him, leaving the opposite bench empty. He looked up when she approached and smiled as though he’d been expecting her.
“You’re late.”
“You don’t know what time I usually get here.”
“I know what time you got here last week.”
“That’s a concerning amount of attention to pay to a stranger.”
“Would you prefer I forgot you entirely?”
“That would’ve been a promising start.”
She sat down anyway.
Ruth arrived with coffee, and the man looked far too pleased when she set the mug in front of her without asking what she wanted.
“See? Even the staff approves of this arrangement.”
“Ruth also thinks microwaved coffee tastes the same as fresh coffee. Her judgment isn’t flawless.”
“I heard that,” Ruth called from the counter.
They spent another evening talking about absolutely nothing important. He had surprisingly strong opinions about decorative pillows, while she believed anyone who left a shopping cart loose in a parking lot should be required to retrieve carts for an entire afternoon as punishment.
At one point, he asked what she did for work.
She hesitated, and he noticed.
“Never mind,” he said. “That sounded suspiciously like small talk.”
She appreciated that he didn’t press the question. There was something relaxing about sitting across from someone who didn’t need to know everything about her, even if she still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of him.
When they left, he asked whether she’d be back the following week.
“Maybe,” she told him.
He smiled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
On the third Friday, she arrived to find him waiting with a pen and a clean paper napkin.
“Before you say anything, I have a proposal.”
“If you’re about to ask me to invest in something, I’m leaving.”
“It’s not an investment.”
“That’s what people say right before they explain cryptocurrency.”
He laughed and pushed the napkin toward her. “I think we need some rules.”
She looked at the paper, then back at him. “For what?”
“For this. Whatever we’re doing.”
“We’re eating dinner.”
“For the third Friday in a row.”
“Congratulations. You’ve discovered a calendar.”
He leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. “I’m serious. I like talking to you, and I think you like talking to me, although you seem determined to make that difficult to prove.”
“You’re tolerable in small doses.”
“That’s practically a declaration of affection coming from you.”
She tried not to smile.
“What kind of rules?”
He turned the napkin toward himself and clicked the pen. “No talking about jobs, family problems, addresses, or anything else we’d normally feel obligated to explain to someone we’re getting to know. No ages, either. And no last names.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s a little strange.”
“Maybe. But think about it. We spent two Fridays talking for hours without knowing anything about each other, and we had a pretty good time. Why ruin it with all the usual questions?”
She considered that. There were plenty of things about her life she didn’t particularly enjoy discussing, especially with strangers. She liked the idea of leaving those things outside the diner for a couple of hours.
Still, she wasn’t completely comfortable with the arrangement.
“No real first names, either,” she said.
He looked amused. “Really?”
“I don’t know you. You could be a serial killer.”
“Wouldn’t a serial killer be more interested in finding out where you live?”
“Exactly why we’re making rules.”
He laughed and held up his hands. “Fair enough. Fake names it is.”
“Actually, I think we should choose each other’s names.”
He considered her for a moment. “All right. You first.”
She studied him, taking the task far more seriously than necessary.
“Bartholomew.”
His expression fell. “Absolutely not.”
“Reginald?”
“No.”
“Humphrey?”
“Do you want me to stop coming here?”
She grinned. “Fine. Eli.”
He repeated it quietly, as though trying it on. “Eli. That’s not bad.”
“You’re welcome.”
“My turn.” He studied her across the table for a few seconds. “Nora.”
“Why Nora?”
“I don’t know. It suits you.”
“That’s a terrible explanation.”
“You tried to name me Humphrey. I don’t think you’re qualified to criticize my process.”
She laughed and accepted it.
Together, they wrote their rules on the napkin. They would use only the names they’d chosen for each other, keep their personal lives separate from their Friday dinners, and never ask questions the other person didn’t want to answer.
At the bottom, he signed Eli in neat, slightly slanted handwriting.
She took the pen and signed Nora beneath it.
When they finished, she folded the napkin and tucked it into her wallet.
“Why do you get to keep it?” he asked.
“Because somebody needs to make sure you follow the rules.”
“I wrote them.”
“Which makes you exactly the sort of person who’d try to find a loophole.”
He smiled and reached for his coffee.
Neither of them mentioned that they’d just agreed to keep meeting.
They didn’t have to.
By the tenth Friday, Eli knew Nora took two sugars in her coffee, hated pickles, and considered people who watched videos without headphones a public nuisance.
By the fifteenth, Nora knew he loved old books, terrible puns, and the cherry on top of a milkshake, although he always let her steal it.
Their Friday dinners settled into a routine that neither of them acknowledged out loud. Eli usually arrived first with a paperback, and Nora usually arrived complaining about something she’d encountered on the drive over. Ruth brought their coffee, they ordered more food than either of them needed, and they talked until the diner began to empty.
Sometimes their conversations were ridiculous. Once, they spent nearly an hour discussing whether a vampire could enter a house through a dog door. Another night, Nora argued that ghosts should be subject to noise complaints, and Eli accused her of trying to establish a homeowners association for the dead.
Other nights, they talked about books, music, or the kinds of places they’d like to visit someday. They found ways to tell each other what they thought about the world without revealing the details of their own lives.
Nora liked that.
She spent enough time answering questions and explaining herself during the rest of the week. At Marlow’s, she didn’t have to be anything more than a woman drinking coffee with a man who made her laugh.
One evening, Eli interrupted an argument about haunted houses with a short coughing fit. He turned away from the table, covering his mouth with his elbow.
“You all right?” Nora asked.
He nodded and reached for his water. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“You’d better not be choking on a french fry. I don’t know CPR, and Ruth would make me fill out paperwork.”
He laughed, took another sip, and informed her that her lack of emergency preparedness was deeply concerning.
By the time their food arrived, they’d forgotten about it.
Winter arrived with snow piled against the diner’s windows and salt tracked across the tile floor.
On their twenty-sixth Friday, Eli drew a little house in the condensation on the glass while Nora was taking off her gloves.
She leaned over to inspect it.
“That’s terrible.”
“It’s a cottage.”
“It looks like a toaster.”
“It’s supposed to be rustic.”
“Rustic toaster. Got it.”
He wiped away the drawing with his sleeve and shook his head. “You’re impossible to impress.”
“Have you considered getting better at things?”
He smiled into his coffee. “Frequently.”
There were moments when Nora caught him looking at her in a way she couldn’t quite explain. Usually, she’d been laughing at something he’d said, or telling a story that had gotten increasingly ridiculous as she’d gone along. When she noticed him watching, he’d smile and return to his food.
She told herself it was nothing.
They were friends. Strange friends, perhaps, considering she didn’t know his real name or what he did between Friday nights, but friends nonetheless.
A few weeks later, she noticed that his coat seemed a little big on him.
“Did you lose weight, or did your coat get bigger?”
He looked down at himself. “I’m hoping the coat got bigger. That would be much more interesting.”
“Imagine how much money you could make selling self-expanding clothing.”
“Probably less than I’d make selling clothes that actually fit.”
She laughed, and the conversation moved on.
It was the sort of thing she wouldn’t remember until much later.
By spring, Ruth had stopped asking whether they wanted separate checks. She’d also stopped pretending she believed they were simply two strangers who happened to enjoy the same booth.
“You two are worse than my parents,” she told them one evening after listening to an argument about the proper way to load a dishwasher.
“We’re not married,” Nora said.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“We’re not even dating.”
Ruth glanced at Eli, who was quietly stealing a french fry from Nora’s plate.
“Whatever you say, sweetheart.”
Nora rolled her eyes, but Eli looked down at his coffee with a small smile.
Later that evening, while Ruth was wiping down the counter, Nora caught him watching her again.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m listening.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“That’s why it’s so peaceful.”
She threw a crumpled napkin at him.
He laughed, and she found herself wishing, not for the first time, that Friday nights lasted a little longer.
As the months passed, Eli occasionally seemed tired when she arrived. Some nights he was quieter than usual, content to listen while she talked. Once, he leaned back against the booth and closed his eyes for a moment while she was telling him about a particularly terrible movie.
“Am I boring you?” she asked.
He opened one eye. “Immensely.”
“Then I’ll stop.”
“Don’t you dare. I want to hear how the possessed washing machine gets defeated.”
She laughed and continued the story.
He listened, smiling occasionally, and when she finished, he told her it sounded like the worst film he’d ever heard of.
She considered that a compliment.
Their fifty-first Friday arrived with steady rain and the sort of damp cold that made Nora regret leaving her house.
She pushed through the diner’s door, shaking water from her coat, and found Eli waiting in their booth. He’d already ordered her coffee, and a slice of lemon pie sat beneath a glass cover on the table.
“You’re spoiling me,” she said as she slid into her seat.
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Too late. I’ve developed expectations.”
He smiled, although he looked more tired than usual. There were shadows beneath his eyes, and when he reached for his mug, she noticed how thin his wrist seemed beneath his sleeve.
“Long week?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“Well, you’re in luck. I’ve got enough complaints for both of us.”
“I was counting on it.”
They spent most of the evening talking about ridiculous inventions. Nora wanted a refrigerator that announced its contents in a judgmental voice, while Eli suggested a toaster that apologized whenever it burned bread. They argued about whether either invention would sell, then decided they’d probably become millionaires if they combined them.
At some point, while Ruth was refilling their coffee, Eli asked a question that seemed to come from nowhere.
“Do you think people can miss something they never had?”
Nora looked up from her pie. “Absolutely.”
He seemed surprised. “Really?”
“Of course. I’ve never owned a beach house, and I miss it every summer.”
He laughed, shaking his head.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Imagine waking up every morning with the ocean outside your window. No responsibilities, no neighbors mowing their lawns at six in the morning, just me and my imaginary beach house.”
He watched her for a moment, smiling.
“That does sound nice.”
“See? Now you miss it, too.”
He glanced toward the window, where the rain was running down the glass.
“Yeah,” he said. “I suppose I do.”
She reached for her coffee. “Why? What are you missing?”
He thought about it for a moment before shrugging.
“Nothing I can do much about.”
She could have asked what he meant, but she’d learned to recognize when he didn’t want to elaborate. Instead, she pushed the last bite of her pie across the table.
“Here. This’ll make you feel better.”
He smiled and accepted it.
They stayed until Ruth began stacking chairs on the other side of the diner. Nora was gathering her things when Eli held out his hand.
“Give me your phone.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Why?”
“I want to steal your identity and open several credit cards.”
“At least buy me dinner first.”
“I bought you dinner.”
“Then you’ve clearly been planning this for months.”
He laughed. “Come on. I want a picture.”
“Of what?”
“Us.”
She stared at him. “Since when do we take pictures?”
“Since now, apparently.”
“I look terrible.”
“You look fine.”
“You don’t even know what I look like in pictures.”
“That’s why we’re taking one.”
She handed him the phone, still complaining, and he leaned across the table until their shoulders touched. She made a ridiculous face just as he pressed the button, and he laughed before taking another.
“Let me see,” she demanded.
He handed the phone back.
The first picture showed them both grinning at the camera. In the second, Nora was laughing with her eyes half closed, and Eli was looking at her instead of the lens.
“That one’s awful,” she said.
“I like it.”
“Of course you do. You’re not the one who looks ridiculous.”
He smiled. “Keep them anyway.”
She slipped the phone into her bag, promising herself she’d delete the second picture later.
Outside, the rain had slowed to a mist. They stood beneath the awning for a moment, watching the occasional car pass along the wet street.
“Next Friday makes fifty-two,” Nora said.
Eli looked at her.
“A whole year of you stealing my booth.”
“And you stealing my fries.”
“We should celebrate.”
He smiled, but there was something thoughtful about his expression.
“Yeah. We should.”
She was about to make another joke when he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her.
For a second, she was too surprised to move. They’d never hugged before, and she hadn’t expected him to be the one to change that.
Then she slipped her arms around him.
He held her close, his cheek resting briefly against her hair. She could feel him breathing, slow and steady, and found herself wishing they didn’t have to let go quite yet.
When he finally stepped back, he looked at her with that familiar crooked smile.
“Take care of yourself, Nora.”
She laughed. “You’re acting like I’m leaving the country. I’ll see you next Friday.”
He nodded.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Eli.”
She watched him walk toward his car. Before getting in, he turned and raised a hand.
She waved back.
Later that night, lying in bed with her phone balanced against her knees, Nora opened the photographs he’d taken.
She smiled at the first one.
Then she enlarged the second.
For the first time, she really looked at the expression on his face. He wasn’t smiling at the camera or laughing at whatever ridiculous thing she’d said. He was looking at her with a softness that made her stomach flutter.
She thought about the way he’d hugged her, how naturally she’d fit against him, and how much she’d wanted him to stay.
Somewhere during the past year, she’d fallen in love with a man whose real name she didn’t know.
She sat with that realization for a long time, feeling both foolish and strangely happy.
Next Friday, she decided, she’d tell him.
They could laugh about their ridiculous rules, exchange real names, and finally have dinner somewhere other than Marlow’s.
She fell asleep imagining how he might react.
The following Friday, Eli didn’t come.
Nora arrived at eleven seventeen, as usual, and found their booth empty. She ordered coffee, checked the door a few times, and told herself he was probably running late.
By midnight, she was mildly annoyed.
By one, she was disappointed.
“Your friend must’ve gotten held up,” Ruth said while clearing the table beside her.
“Probably got into an argument with his alarm clock.”
Ruth smiled, and Nora tried to do the same.
She left shortly afterward, deciding that something unexpected must have come up. It was irritating, especially after she’d spent the entire week rehearsing what she wanted to tell him, but people missed dinners sometimes.
She’d ask him about it next Friday.
The second Friday was different.
Nora arrived early, hoping to find him already waiting with some ridiculous excuse.
He wasn’t there.
She ordered coffee and tried to read a book, but every time the door opened, she looked up.
“Has he been in at all?” she asked Ruth.
“Not that I’ve seen, sweetheart.”
Nora nodded, trying not to look as worried as she felt.
She wondered whether he’d been in an accident or gotten sick. Maybe something had happened to someone in his family. She considered trying to find him online, but the thought was almost laughable. She didn’t know his real name, where he worked, or even how old he was.
She’d spent nearly a year sitting across from him every Friday, and she had no idea how to find him.
For the first time, their rules felt less like a game.
By the third Friday, her worry had turned into irritation.
She’d spent two weeks imagining terrible things, and she was beginning to feel foolish for it. Surely, if something had happened, he could have found a way to let her know. He knew where she’d be every Friday night.
Maybe he’d simply gotten tired of their arrangement.
Maybe she’d imagined the way he’d looked at her in that photograph.
Maybe she’d been the only one who thought their dinners meant something.
She hated how much those possibilities bothered her.
“You’re awfully quiet tonight,” Ruth observed while setting down a plate of fries.
“Just tired.”
Ruth glanced at the empty seat.
Nora sighed. “Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
Ruth gave her a sympathetic smile and returned to the counter.
Nora picked at her food, growing angrier with herself for continuing to show up.
On the fourth Friday, she decided she was finished.
She walked into Marlow’s determined to have a perfectly normal dinner without spending the entire evening watching the door.
If Eli wanted to disappear, that was his business. She was done worrying about him, done making excuses, and done feeling ridiculous for falling in love with someone who apparently couldn’t be bothered to show up.
Ruth brought her coffee.
“Just one tonight?”
“Just one. And please don’t ask about him.”
Ruth nodded and left her alone.
Nora stared at the empty seat across from her, irritated by the fact that she still expected to see him there.
She’d even worn the sweater he’d once told her he liked. Realizing that made her angrier.
“Idiot,” she muttered.
Ruth looked over from the counter.
“Me?”
“No. Him.”
She took a sip of coffee and reached for the newspaper someone had left on the table. She needed something to occupy her attention, preferably something that didn’t involve thinking about the man who’d disappeared from her life.
She flipped through the local news, skimmed the sports section, and paused briefly over an advertisement for a furniture sale.
Then she turned another page.
Near the bottom was a photograph of a man with dark hair, kind eyes, and a familiar crooked smile.
She recognized him immediately.
For a moment, she simply stared, confused by the unfamiliar name printed beneath the picture.
Benjamin James Whitmore, 39.
She read the first few lines, then went back and read them again.
Benjamin James Whitmore, beloved son, brother, uncle, and friend, passed away on Thursday, May 28, following a courageous battle with cancer.
The date was the Thursday before their fifty-second Friday.
Nora felt suddenly cold.
She read the obituary again, searching for something that would prove she’d made a mistake. Maybe it was somebody who looked like him. Maybe there were two men with the same smile and the same eyes.
But the photograph was unmistakable.
It was Eli.
His name was Benjamin.
He’d been thirty-nine years old. He’d worked as a high school history teacher, loved old books, and had two nieces who adored him. His family had delayed his memorial service so relatives living overseas could attend, and it would be held that Sunday.
Nora kept reading, but the words began to blur.
Cancer.
He’d had cancer.
She remembered the coughing, the way his coat had started hanging loosely from his shoulders, and the evenings when he’d seemed too tired to argue with her.
She remembered their final dinner, the photograph he’d insisted on taking, and the way he’d held her outside beneath the awning.
Take care of yourself, Nora.
Her coffee mug slipped from her fingers.
It hit the edge of the table and shattered against the floor.
Ruth looked up at the sound.
“Nora? Honey, are you all right?”
Nora tried to answer, but her throat had tightened so badly that she couldn’t get the words out. She stared at the newspaper, her hands shaking.
“No,” she whispered.
Ruth hurried around the counter.
“What’s wrong?”
Nora shook her head. Tears were already spilling down her cheeks, and she couldn’t seem to stop them.
She turned the paper toward Ruth.
Ruth looked at the photograph, then at the words beneath it.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Nora covered her mouth, trying to hold herself together, but the sound that escaped her was nothing like the quiet crying she might have expected from herself. It was raw and ugly, and once it started, she couldn’t stop.
Ruth slid into the booth beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“He didn’t leave,” Nora managed between sobs.
Ruth held her closer.
“He didn’t leave me.”
She thought about how angry she’d been only moments earlier, how she’d promised herself she never wanted to see him again.
She’d spent four Fridays waiting for him, and he’d been gone before the first one had even begun.
“I didn’t know,” she cried. “He was sitting right there every week, and I didn’t know.”
Ruth didn’t try to explain it away or tell her everything happened for a reason. She simply stayed beside her while Nora cried, one hand resting against her back.
At some point, someone swept up the broken coffee mug. The diner grew quieter as customers finished their meals and left, but Nora barely noticed.
She sat in the booth holding the newspaper, staring at the photograph of the man she’d known as Eli.
She had finally learned his name.
And there was no one left to answer when she said it.
On Sunday afternoon, Nora stood outside a funeral home with a folded napkin in her hand.
She’d taken it from her wallet that morning. The paper was soft and worn from being carried for nearly a year, its creases beginning to tear at the edges. There was a small coffee stain near the corner, and the handwriting had faded where she’d folded it.
She’d read the rules so many times over the past two days that she could have recited them from memory.
Inside, photographs of Benjamin lined a table near the entrance.
There he was as a little boy with missing front teeth, wearing a graduation cap, standing beside two laughing children, and holding a birthday cake with candles leaning in every direction.
She stopped in front of a photograph of him wearing an awful Christmas sweater.
He looked so happy that it hurt.
A woman standing nearby noticed her looking.
“He hated that sweater,” she said with a small smile. “My sister bought it for him. He wore it every Christmas just to make her laugh.”
Nora smiled weakly.
“That sounds like him.”
The woman studied her for a moment. “You knew Benjamin?”
Nora looked back at the photograph.
“Yes.”
“From school?”
“No. We had dinner together.”
The woman waited, but Nora couldn’t think of a way to explain what those dinners had meant.
How could she tell someone she’d spent nearly a year falling in love with a man she didn’t really know? That she knew how he took his coffee and what kind of books he liked, but hadn’t known he was dying?
“He was very kind to me,” she finally said.
The woman nodded, her eyes filling.
“He was like that.”
Nora thanked her and moved farther into the room.
When she approached the casket, she stopped several feet away.
Benjamin lay in a dark suit, his hands folded neatly. He looked peaceful, but the stillness was wrong. Eli had always been moving, tapping his fingers against coffee mugs, rearranging sugar packets, stealing fries, and laughing so hard that his shoulders shook.
She wanted him to open his eyes and say something ridiculous about how long she’d taken to arrive.
Instead, she stepped closer.
“Hi, Eli.”
Her voice trembled.
She looked down at the napkin in her hand and carefully unfolded it.
“I brought our rules.”
The handwriting was faded, but she could still make out the names they’d chosen for each other.
Nora.
Eli.
She ran her thumb over his signature.
“I think we can break them now.”
She swallowed and looked at his face.
“My name is Eleanor Rose Bennett. I’m thirty-two years old, and I work at a bookstore downtown. I grew up about forty minutes from here, and I moved away when I was twenty-one because I thought I needed somewhere bigger.”
She paused, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“I have a little brother named Thomas. He calls me every Sunday, and I always pretend he’s annoying me, but I look forward to those calls all week.”
A shaky laugh escaped her.
“I hate driving in the rain. I love old houses, even when they’re falling apart, and I cry at movies with happy endings. I still sleep with the television on when there’s a thunderstorm, and I absolutely refuse to eat pickles.”
She smiled through her tears.
“You already knew that last one.”
For a moment, she could almost hear him laughing.
She looked down at the napkin again.
“I wanted to tell you all of this. I was going to tell you next Friday. I was going to ask you to have dinner with me somewhere else, somewhere we could use our real names and talk about our lives.”
Her voice broke.
“And I was going to tell you that I love you.”
She took a breath, but it didn’t steady her.
“I love you, Eli. I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know if it was the first time you saved me a piece of pie or one of those nights when we sat there arguing about something stupid until Ruth practically threw us out. I just know that somewhere along the way, you became my favorite part of every week.”
She wiped her eyes again.
“And I wish I’d told you sooner.”
For a while, she stood there quietly, remembering the way he’d looked at her during their last dinner.
Do you think people can miss something they never had?
She’d laughed about a beach house.
Now she understood what he’d been asking.
She missed the mornings they’d never share, the birthdays they’d never celebrate, and the ordinary evenings they’d never spend together. She missed knowing his real name before she’d found it beneath a photograph in the newspaper. She missed the chance to discover what he was like outside that little booth, to meet the people who loved him, and to build a life that existed beyond Friday nights.
She missed a future she’d only just begun to imagine.
“Oh, Eli,” she whispered. “I understand now.”
She bent forward and placed the napkin beside his hand, smoothing one of the worn corners before letting go.
Then she stepped back.
She wanted to stay, but there were other people waiting to say goodbye, people who’d known him much longer than she had.
She looked at him one last time.
“Goodnight, Eli.”
The following Friday, Eleanor returned to Marlow’s at eleven seventeen.
Ruth looked up when she walked through the door. Neither of them said anything at first, but Ruth gave her a small, understanding smile and reached for the coffee pot.
Eleanor slid into the booth beside the window.
She placed her phone on the table and opened the photograph Eli had taken on their last Friday together.
There they were, sitting shoulder to shoulder. She was laughing with her eyes half closed, and he was looking at her instead of the camera.
She remembered complaining that the picture was terrible.
Now she couldn’t imagine ever deleting it.
Ruth approached carrying two mugs.
She set one in front of Eleanor and placed the other across the table, where Eli always sat.
Eleanor looked at the empty seat for a moment before lifting her coffee.
“You know,” she murmured, glancing at his photograph, “I still think pancakes are dessert.”
She smiled a little, remembering how fiercely he’d argued otherwise.
Outside, cars passed along the wet street, and somewhere behind the counter, Ruth was laughing with a customer. The diner smelled of coffee and fried potatoes, just as it always had.
Eleanor sat there for a long time, letting her coffee cool while she looked at the photograph.
For fifty-one Fridays, she’d had someone waiting for her in that booth. Someone who remembered her order, listened to her ridiculous stories, and made her laugh when she’d forgotten she needed to.
She’d thought there would be more time.
Eventually, Ruth came by to refill her cup, and Eleanor moved her phone aside to make room.
“Another slice of lemon pie, sweetheart?”
Eleanor looked across the table at the empty seat.
Then she nodded.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “And could you bring two forks?”
Until next time,
-Destiny 🖤
