There is this coffee shop. And a girl. She is sat directly in my line of sight, a few steps ahead of me. From my table to hers would be six steps. I have positioned myself here so I can look at her. She is in profile. And now she is obscured behind a pillar, sitting back against the wall. She is writing. I can tell. I’m perceptive like that. She glances intermittently up towards the window.

Her glances pull no weight. They don’t even make it halfway across the room, before running out of juice and dropping back down to the screen. She is seeing without looking. Up in there she is conjuring worlds. Her notebook is open on the desk, red pen scrawled on top of black pen. A coffee mug is vying with the keyboard for her finger’s affections, but isn’t doing very well. 

She can’t see me. She could if she turned I suppose but she isn’t. She has on no makeup. The kind of face you’d have no trouble imagining old. Her nose is curved a little at the bridge, her eyes burn lazily. No laughter lines. Sweet little shadows under her eyes. Her hair is blonde with streaks of brown and is lapping on her left shoulder like the folds of a renaissance robe.

Her left leg is crossed over her right but still touches the floor easily. Undistracted she types, and deletes, and types, and pauses, and glances, and types, and deletes. Going backwards to go forwards like a rugby ball. Her laptop is now resting on her knee, stuttering arrhythmically under the pressure from her fingers on the keys. Making the light skit off the screen towards me in some blinking Morse code. Tap, tap.

I wonder if I sat here long enough, years perhaps, if I could work out what she was writing just from studying her.

I can make anybody like me. Except clever people. I wonder what we’d say to each other. Thoughts would do more work than words. They always do dickhead. Yeah but even more so with her. We’d give our tuppence worth on long walks on Wimbledon Common. We’d gas about the manner in which things show themselves to us. I’d take no pleasure in agreeing with her. Our sameness wouldn’t interest me.

She smiles at her own internal monologue. She’d be close to her mother. She’d take ages to give of herself. She lets silence speak. She lost big once. Tap, space, tap, tap, tap, tap, space, tap, tap, tap.

I’m not sure this girl cares enough about me. She’s been gone behind the pillar for ten minutes. She doesn’t care. Meet me halfway. I’m leaving now. I won’t ever see her again. People appear in your life just like that, and just as quickly as they come they’re gone again. If I see her again i’ll…

I swear i will.

Does anyone ever sit and write about me. What story do they make up, how far does it diverge from what I am, which me would I prefer.