An Unremarkable Conversation.

14.02.2026

As I do every week, I went in that Friday in the late afternoon at the same time as always. I ordered a chocolate croissant and a strawberry tea. I don’t know why I still do it. I should stop, but some absences linger at the table longer than people do.

I took my usual seat by the wall, where I could see the room.

As I was cutting the croissant in half, careful not to let the chocolate spill onto the plate, the door opened and a couple walked in.

They took the table by the window. Before they had properly settled, she instinctively smoothed the collar of his shirt, adjusting something familiar. He smiled and brushed her hand lightly. The gesture was easy, unforced.

I watched them with quiet pleasure.

They leaned towards one another, speaking more softly than the others around them. Their glances needed no reassurance. When their tea arrived, he moved her cup a little closer. She answered with a faint smile.

Their phones lay on the table. Hers beside her cup, face down. His near his plate, face up.

She began telling a story with animation. She laughed midway through a sentence, returned to certain details, reshaping her words as though she wanted everything to sound exactly as it felt.

He listened. At least, that was how it seemed.

For a while his phone was nothing more than a dark rectangle. Then, for a second, it lit up silently. A brief message that vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

His eyes dropped almost reflexively before returning to her. He gave a small nod, as though nothing had disturbed his attention.

She did not slow. The story continued, widening, branching into new threads, and she sank further into it with each sentence.

A moment later the screen lit up again. This time he looked more quickly, as though he had been expecting it. His jaw tightened for a fraction of a second. His fingers shifted against the edge of the table, as if to draw the phone closer, but stopped halfway. He withdrew his hand. Swallowed.

The smile came afterwards.

He did not touch the phone; hers remained face down.

Her sentences grew longer, as if she were trying to hold silence at bay. At one point she paused.

He took a sip of water. Nodded.

And that was when I knew.

I was sitting opposite something that was still happening and yet already absent. One of them was still trying to keep the conversation alive; the other was quietly settling into his own retreat.

They paid and left side by side.

I watched the door swing shut and knew the absence had begun much earlier, in the moment they stopped being curious about one another.

Because an ending rarely looks like an ending.
More often, it looks like a conversation that went on too long.