Bola had been sitting at Cafe Mone forty minutes, She nursed a cup of ginger tea and pretended to read.. She wasn't reading, she was watching the couple sitted by the window.
They had walked in together, the man came in first, He was tall, he woore a burgundy jacket that hung off one shoulder ,it looked like the jacket was trying to escape, the woman followed him, She was pretty but she seemed lost in thought, they didn't look at each other when they sat down, that was the thing Bola noticed about them.
They just sat there not saying a word, the man looked out the window, the woman stared into her coffee cup, Bola kept watching them, she wondered what was going on with the them.
The man and the woman just seemed distant even though they were together, they didn't seem to be connecting, Bola thought about her last relationships she had been in before, the couple and their silence ,all of it seemed familiar.
The man , Ebuka, she would later hear ordered without asking, two Americanos and a croissant to share, delivered with the easy confidence of someone who had made this order a hundred times before, but the woman stared at her phone like it owed her an apology.
"You didn't have to come if you didn't want to," Ebuka said at last, his voice low, controlled, It was not an accusation, It sounded worse, like a door being quietly closed, the woman, Naomi.... put her phone face down on the table, "I wanted to come."
"You have said four words since we left the car.", "I am saying some now," she replied, Her voice carried no edge, that was the strange thing, she sounded tired in the way that had nothing to do with sleep.
Bola shifted in her seat,she kept telling herself that she was not going eavesdropping, merely sitting too close in a cafe that was too quiet, the ceiling fan turned slowly overhead, doing nothing useful at it went.
Ebuka broke the croissant in half and placed Naomi's portion in front of her without fanfare, it was such a small , automatic thing.
Naomi looked at it for a moment the way people look at something they once loved and are not sure that they still do.
"See i am not angry at you," she said suddenly.
"I know"
"I just don't know how to be here right now"
Ebuka wrapped both hands around his cup, "Then tell me where you are, not here ,tell me where you actually are."
Naomi looked up at him, from where Bola sat, she could just see the exact moment something shifted the way Naomi's jaw had softened, the way she exhaled like she had been holding it for a long time.
"I am just scared," Naomi said quietly,
"That we keep showing up and there is less of us each time."
Ebuka did not answer immediately,
He picked up his cup, set it back down, then reached across the table and covered her hand with his not dramatically, not like in films, just placed it there,steady.
"There is still enough ehn...," he said.
Bola looked away then because she felt bad for watching, she looked down at her book really looked at it, she could not remember one word that was on the page.
When she got her things to leave she looked over one time, Naomi was eating a croissant, Ebuka was talking, he was talking softly with a lot of energy and Naomi was smiling a little bit at what he said , She was smiling like people do when they find something that is still nice and warm.
Bola walked out into the sun, Thought to herself love is not always happy sometimes love is when two people decide to stay together quietly without making a big deal about it, it is like when people choose to stay in a room, with each other.
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