The Stranger

It started with comments at first and then, on the profile page, there was an email address. They exchanged emails and, after a while they would chat into the late hours; in the same city but different spaces and because she didn't like to drink alone, they shared a glass together though far apart. She remembered how her fingers had passed so quickly over the keyboard in those days, earphones in, cut off from her real world. She remembered the excitement of opening her mail in the morning, and again before bed; how each and every day would start and end with him.

She fell in love more than once during those months. She fell in love with the prose and his humour, with his softness and kindness, with his thoughtfulness and the way he could make her laugh out loud. It felt like love, the excitement of it, the constant thinking of him through every waking moment; this stranger with whom she had shared so much but had never met.

One evening in November he had suggested that they meet, just for a coffee, what harm could come of it?

On Monday the 8th of December at 9.30am, in a mostly empty cafe they sat opposite each other and she fell again as she watched his long slender and slightly freckled fingers hug his coffee cup for warmth.