He ordered an espresso he didn’t particularly want and sat at the bar with his back mostly to her and tried to read his library book. He read the same paragraph four times. Outside, the canal was dark and rippling under the drizzle, a pair of cyclists crossing the bridge with their heads down.
Serena watched the door. Renato was seven minutes late, which was unlike him. She was aware of Ewan at the bar with an acuity that felt unfair — the particular way he held a book, spine barely cracked, as if reluctant to damage it. She’d teased him about that once. He’d said books were objects of trust. She’d said that was pretentious. He’d agreed immediately and laughed.
She hadn’t thought about that in months.
She was thinking about it now.
When Renato arrived — apologetic, shaking rain from his coat, genuinely lovely — she smiled at him and meant it. He sat down and ordered and began to talk about the department seminar he’d just come from, and she listened, and some part of her was listening to the café sounds behind her, the particular quiet of someone not turning a page.
Renato was mid-sentence when he paused and said, gently, “You seem somewhere else today.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m here. Tell me.”
He looked at her for a moment — patient, perceptive Renato — and then he said, “Is there something I should know before I say what I came to say?”
The question landed quietly and opened up a great deal of space.
At the bar, Ewan was not reading. He was looking at the espresso he’d finished ten minutes ago and thinking about Edinburgh, about the way leaving had felt like the right answer to a question neither of them had fully asked. He’d thought about Serena in the abstract, the way you think about a chapter of your life that ended well enough. He hadn’t accounted for Amsterdam. Hadn’t accounted for seminar rooms and green jackets and eight days of careful avoidance that had apparently led him directly here.
He heard her voice, low, behind him. He couldn’t make out the words.
He should go.
He put his hand on his library book and didn’t move.
Serena looked at Renato and felt the specific weight of a moment that required honesty. He was watching her with that open expression he had — the one that had made her trust him in the first place — and she understood, with sudden clarity, that he already knew something was off. He was kind enough to ask instead of assume.
“There’s someone here,” she said quietly. “At the bar. Someone from before.”
Renato turned, briefly, and turned back. His face shifted in a way that was not quite hurt and not quite unsurprised. “Before meaning —”
“Yes.”
A pause. Outside, a canal boat moved slowly past the window, its engine a low thrum.
“And is ‘before’ finished?” Renato asked. Not unkindly. Genuinely.
She opened her mouth. Closed it. “I thought it was,” she said. “I’m not sure I was right.”
Renato nodded slowly. He picked up his coffee and held it with both hands — the same gesture she’d made earlier, she realized — and he looked at the canal and then back at her. “I appreciate you telling me,” he said. “I mean that.”
“Renato —”
“I’m not going to pretend I’m not disappointed,” he said. “But I’d rather know now.” He gave her a small, real smile. “Go talk to him.”
She sat still for a moment after he left — watched him pull his coat on, exchange a brief and gracious nod with her, and walk out into the drizzle without looking back. She felt the complicated mix of gratitude and guilt that comes from being let off a hook you didn’t realize you were on.
Then she stood up and walked to the bar.
Ewan heard the stool beside him scrape back. He looked up.
“He left,” Serena said. It wasn’t a question.
“I noticed.”
“You were listening.”
“I was trying very hard not to.” He put the library book down. “Serena, I didn’t come here to —”
“I know you didn’t.” She sat. Outside, the rain had softened to almost nothing, and the canal was going silver in the returning light. “That’s actually the part I keep thinking about. You didn’t plan it.”
He looked at her. “Neither did Edinburgh.”
WhatsApp
Telegram
Email
Categories
- AI & Technology
- Contemporary
- Corporate Control
- Creepypasta
- Crime Thriller
- Cyberpunk
- Dark Fantasy
- Enemies to Lovers
- Fairy Tale Retelling
- Fantasy
- First Contact
- Forbidden
- Genetic/Body Horror
- High Fantasy
- Monster Hunter
- Mythic/Folklore
- Paranormal
- Portal/Otherworld
- Post-Apo
- Post-Collapse Society
- Psychological Thriller
- Romances
- SCI-FI
- Second Chance
- Slow Burn
- Space Combat
- Spacepunk
- Surveillance State
- Survival Thriller
- Thrillers
- Time Travel
- Treasure Hunter
- Urban Fantasy
- Witchcraft/Curses
Tags
10min stories atmospheric atmospheric fantasy atmospheric fiction contemporary romance Creepy creepypasta crime thriller dark fantasy debt dystopia emotional fiction enemies to lovers ensemble cast epistolary fantasy female protagonist first person forbidden romance framed narrative high fantasy love story magic Memory mystery Paranormal psychological horror psychological thriller romance sci-fi second chance second chance romance short fiction short story slow burn space station speculative fiction supernatural Survival survival thriller suspense thriller travel romance witchcraft workplace romance
Leave a Reply