From:    Greg Thorpe

To:        Leticia Reynolds

I had been waiting for long enough that the ice in my coffee had melted, topping my drink up by the amount I had already consumed – around thirty milliliters – and cleverly hiding the fact that I preferred to be half an hour early rather than on time. The condensation coalesced on my plastic cup and slid down its length, reminding me that any minute you would appear, your downcast eyes always in search of somewhere innocuous to land, probably starting with my coffee, inspecting the infusion of slow-roasted arabica beans with a dash of milk and, by that point in the cafe sojourn, the by-products of dissolved ice cubes.

Your form materialized on the other side of the street, slow steps weaving around other pedestrians equally frazzled by the rain, umbrellas being whipped from weak grips, grips that couldn’t hold on to what was dear no matter how hard they struggled, grips belonging to weak-willed people who had long since given up on attaining what should be theirs or reaching for something they could only fathom…

As you entered and a gust of wind chilled my cheeks, reminding me that I was no different from the pedestrians floundering outside, uncertain in my steps and lacking even minimal grace, I tried to form words which ultimately would refuse to escape my lips, which I couldn’t voice no matter how much I tightened my fists, took deep breaths and recited the elements of the periodic table.

Since you left between Europium and Gadolinium, my hand still stretching but never reaching my fifteen degree drink – which was looking less appealing by the minute – the words died in my throat and my only recourse was to record my thoughts and emotions of the day and send them to you in the hopes that, through the written word, I might be able to get an answer to the question that burns within my heart.

From:    Leticia Reynolds

To:        Greg Thorpe

And yet you still haven’t asked me any questions. Is this about my coffee cup? I told you, you can keep it.

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Word count: 354.

I loosely based this on a prompt from Writing Prompts.