In Our Next Lifetime
There's a coffee shop in the middle of a rural town. Quiet but not desolate. It's the kind of quiet that promises answers to questions you've yet to ask.
One of the tables is occupied.
A "first" date.
The blond wrings his hands, not from discomfort but to control himself from reaching out.
The brunet has his hands on his lap, playing with his ring finger as if an invisible weight was on it. As if there used to be something wrapping around it.
The blond speaks first.
He dreams, he says. Of tired eyes crinkling from mirth as they lay down on something soft. He describes the scent of coffee and motor oil, the taste of sweat. He wonders aloud. "I keep dreaming and when I wake up, I feel like I'm grieving of a love I haven't even found yet.
"I feel like I forgot something. I forgot something on the road. There's this sudden lightness on my shoulders as if a weight had been lifted off that I can't understand. And it’s so light that... it hurts". His voice is pinched at the end, a phantom pain he feels in his heart.
The brunet speaks for the first time, his brown eyes wide and searching.
"Who are you dreaming of?"
There's a silence that keeps on stretching then.
The blond's eyes flit to the brunet's, perhaps looking for his own answers in those orbs and then he takes a breath.
"You."