Emma Judge Lit

Eyes closed, I entered an alternate universe. A universe where the ifs that occupy my conscious mind take off, wings fully expanded, and fly free.

I’m in a coffee shop. The sun is shining, the air warm and breezy, not too warm. Because where I am it’s perfect weather all year long. I immediately recognize the coffee shop. I haven’t seen it in a decade. But I could never forget that place, the place where I spent so many idle, exciting, and casual moments of my youth.  

I’m sitting in a very used love seat with a mug in front of me, a mug that is mismatch from every other one scattered around the place. The beauty of this place was always how it felt like a living room, aesthetically unencumbered. The walls on all sides are covered in bookshelves filled with books that have been well loved. A guy with an acoustic guitar is setting up on the little makeshift platform near the front. A soft chatter fills the place, like a buzzing background sound. I would usually tune into conversations, try to piece together what is happening in the lives of the strangers around me. But I’m too nervous. Upon approaching me, all the noise transforms into a buzzing white noise.

I haven’t seen you since we were kids. I spent years wondering if I should apologize, try to make things right. Wondering if you’d want to talk to your childhood love and former best friend again. I finally did it. I’m here, in a place I no longer live, waiting in a coffee shop I know so so well. I’ve missed it, this living room of a coffee shop occupies such a happy place in my brain. But I can’t think about how nice it is to be sitting here again. My leg keeps shaking. The person in the seat next to me trying to read keeps glancing over at my jiggling leg. I stop moving. Looking into the distance, through the windows to the street, I start tapping my nails against the coffee table. My reading neighbor glances sideways again. I apologize.  

It’s agony, these minutes that feel like weeks, days even. I don’t know how to feel. Each second a wave of conflicting emotions passes through me; excitement, nervous, anxious, unsure. I don’t know if we’ll ever have what we once had, or if we’ll even ever talk after this. Will you sit, make small polite conversation, update me on your life, finish your coffee, wish me well, and then disappear again? Not to be seen or heard from for another ten years. I feel the table moving, it takes me a minute to realize that I’m shaking my leg again.  

And then I stop, because you just walked through the door. And it’s the first time I’ve seen your face in ten years. The first time I’ve seen your face outside of a screen, and whatever happens after this, this moment is enough for me.