He watched her through the glass, steam settling against the nigh-invisible pane and slowly obscuring her from view. Rain poured down, catching on his cap, splashing against his mangy jacket, running down and soaking his tired leather boots. He hardly noticed the water – his pale blue eyes fixed on the girl in the café. As the rain picked up and the heat inside rose, she grew more and more distant behind the condensation. It didn’t matter. He stood across the street, staring in at her, his eyes tracing over her beautiful young shape. Luscious brown locks tied back behind her cap, a dark green apron with the Starbucks logo emblazoned on her chest. She was so beautiful. The old man continued to stare until the steam finally obscured her from his vision. He cursed aloud, startling a woman walking past him. The pretty young girl was gone, and all he had now was blurry glass and wet feet. Muttering to himself, the man spat on the floor and sulked away. The next day, there she was again. Gorgeous, even more so than she’d been the day before. He eagerly stared again from his hidden vantage point, knowing she couldn’t see him across the street, sat still on a bench that let him look through at her while she served coffee and wiped tables. Oh, how she pleased the patrons of that shop. They didn’t even deserve her. He watched longingly as she pulled cups from the counter and placed them on tables, smiling and giggling with her customers. How he longed to go inside. He wanted nothing more than that smile to meet him, to hear the sound of her laughter. She was so beautiful. For weeks it continued: the old man would find his seat across the road and watch her. From what he could see, she was gorgeous; polite, happy and a little bit flirtatious. He loved everything about her, even though he’d never heard her voice. He stared and stared, day by day daring himself to go inside and talk to her. He wanted to hear her voice, to see her face close up with his old eyes. From his vantage point across the road, he sometimes struggled to make out details. He craved those details. As the weeks rolled into months, he was maddeningly desirous. All he wanted, all he’d ever wanted was to see her face close-up. As he sat there, day after day, week after week, month after month, his mind began to wander. Rolling back, across memories and a past too painful to endure. He watched the waitress through the window, but his mind struggled backwards – recalling his long spent youth. He remembered her as clear as day. There she was, his woman. She’d been so beautiful then. They’d met at a dance, one of those fancy affairs that people don’t bother with nowadays. She’d been wearing an amazing white dress that reminded him of the girls in glossy magazines. Her long brown locks dangled, spilled across her shoulders and enchanted him towards her. He remembered cracking jokes, desperately trying to win her over. It had worked. They’d spent that night dancing away, glorious in their youth and beauty. Neither of them had yet seen their twenties. He’d asked her name and she’d told him, a gentle smile on her ruby lips: Lily. It was a name he’d sign himself to forever. From the first kiss, stolen under the stars after that dance, to their marriage, a pleasant but humble church wedding in a small village– they’d been so in love. Their first home was a bit of a fixer-upper, the old man remembered his displeasure when he first moved in. He chuckled to himself, on the bench across the road from the waitress. Oh Lily, he thought. If only he’d realised how special that ramshackle home was. As the months went by, Lily and the man had spent their days working, loving and living together. They would lie in bed and she’d stroke his back with her gentle fingers, telling him how special he was. The old man remembered with a glint in his eye how proud they both were when Lily’s stomach swelled with their first child. The old man wiped away tears as he sat on the bench. He continued watching the waitress with the brown hair serving her customers. His mind, however, painfully remembered Lily. He recalled the moment the doctors had warned her. The moment they’d both laughed nervously about it and brushed it aside. How stupid he felt now, remembering the way they’d agreed to just have the child anyway, whatever the risk. It was too much of a price to pay, in the end. He remembered Lily’s hand squeezing his own for the last time. Tears rolled down his face down as he sat in the street. He could see Lily’s beautiful face, the face he’d loved for years, crunched up in agony. Their child came into the world, but Lily left it. The waitress glanced up, and for a second it seemed she was staring at him across the street. Does she see me? He thought. Does she know I come to watch her? Then, her head turned away and he relaxed. He wiped away the moisture from his face, drying slowly in the still autumn sun. Lily, he remembered, she was his everything and then she was gone. The rest was a blur. He remembered holding his baby daughter, staring at her and feeling nothing but disgust. She had robbed him of his Lily. This child had taken away his only love. He remembered hitting the bottle, the whiskey and rum washing away the pain and the years. The child was taken from him before its first birthday. That birthday, the day that also marked the end of Lily. He was glad the baby was gone. Sat on the bench, the man dropped his head into his hands. What a fool he’d been. What an ignorant, childish fool. His daughter. His. He’d given her up for a lifetime of guilt, sadness, mourning and regret. It doesn’t have to be like this, he thought. He stared across at the brunette waitress, straining his old eyes to try and see the details of her face. I bet she looks just like Lily. He’d tracked her down after years of searching. He wasn’t so sure why, when he saw her smiling face and realised she was doing fine without him. He’d wanted to leave right then, the first time he’d seen her through the glass. Instead, he’d lingered on, watching her for months. Daring himself to go inside. To order a coffee, chat with her, see her face up close. He wanted to know if she looked like Lily. He had to know. This is it, he thought, clambering to his feet. His old bones ached as he stood up, eyes fixed on the coffee shop. He was going in. He was going to explain how sorry he was, how much he wished she’d been in his life, how much he loved her. He began to walk, moving across the road at his slow pace, staring intently at the door. Does she look like Lily…I wonder if she wi- His thoughts were interrupted by the bus horn blaring, tons of metal crashing into him, sending his brittle body flying forward into the road and his soul away from Earth. Sarah looked up, startled out of wiping the table as a bus horn blared and people in the street screamed. She dropped her cloth and ran to the door, throwing it open to see an old man lying in the road, blood pouring softly onto the concrete. An ambulance siren sounded in the distance and people crowded round, blocking the poor soul from view. She hung her head and headed back inside, tears running down her cheeks. She wondered who the man might have been. Whose grandfather, or father, or brother he was. She wondered what his last thought had been. Poor man, she thought to herself.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 11:31:16 +0000
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