I'm pretty lazy about posting on my blog regularly. I've decided I needed to post something besides book reviews. So I've started Short Story Sunday. Every (or every other) Sunday (or Saturday) I will post a short story I wrote. Sometimes it will be based on a picture and other times I just came up with it on a whim.
Enjoy my short story!
I found this picture while just scrolling through my feed on Pinterest. It really intrigued me. The angle of the photo makes it seem that somebody might be looking in at her from across the street. There is just something about a girl in a coffee shop, writing in a journal, that made me think of me (or what I should be doing: writing.)
Photo credit: Pinterest
Irreplaceable Words
There she was across the street in the coffee shop. She was the girl he had seen yesterday at the park.
He had been walking by on his way to work when he saw her. She had been pacing around, talking to herself, while scribbling in her notebook. He had stopped and watched her; curious at what she was doing. She had seemed to be acting out an intense scene between two characters. She had suddenly stopped. He had then realized that she had spotted him watching her. He had held her eyes for a moment before turning and walking quickly away. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her.
And today he could hardly believe it when he spotted her across the street in the coffee shop.
She had her chin in her hand and was writing in her notebook. Her red hair fell over her shoulder and a few strands seemed to dip into her coffee cup. She didn’t seem to notice.
Before he knew what he was doing, he ran across the street and entered the coffee shop. The strong, sweet smell of coffee and caramel greeted him. He kept glancing over the where she sat. He saw her take a sip of her coffee and continued to write in her notebook as she did so.
She accidentally sat her cup down too hard and not quite upright. The cup tipped over. She was able to set it upright before all of it came out. But dark brown liquid had already spilled over her notebook and down the front of her.
Without thinking, he grabbed some napkins from a nearby table and rushed over to help.
“Oh it’s ruined!” she exclaimed, staring down at her notebook. She didn’t seem to care about her clothes or the coffee burns she had on her hands. She was only concerned about her notebook and the words she had written down in it.
“Here, let me help.” He quickly handed her some napkins and together they tried to salvage what was left of the notebook. They were able to mop up most of the coffee in around the notebook, but not before the notebook had absorbed the rest of it.
She gingerly lifted up her notebook. Drips of coffee spilled out. He saw tears in her eyes. She must have been working on something important, but now it was lost to her. She sat the notebook down back on the table and turned to him.
“Thank you for helping me.”
“You’re welcome.”
She looked at him curiously with her large green eyes. “Weren’t you the guy that was watching me in the park?”
He gave a sheepish grin. “Guilty as charged.” She smiled rather sadly back. She kept glancing over at her notebook. He suddenly had an idea. “Can I… buy you a new coffee? And maybe a new notebook?”
She looked back at him. “A coffee would be nice, a new notebook would be nice, but I can never replace those words that were lost.”
COPYRIGHT: MERCY RAY SCHWISOW, 2014
