Some Unspoken Words

The café in the middle of the town was actually a local getaway in disguise. It was swarmed by people every evening despite of being just an ordinary café, serving economical and not-so-bad food. Every day one could see excited children waiting for their muffins, old women chit chatting over their black coffees and tired workers post their nine-to-fives. Nobody noticed that old man in his mid-40s, who was a daily customer of the café, dropping by for his cups of coffees or sometimes for that rare bite of a pie.

She knew him because of the tips he left for her. He was just a small consolation to her watering job. For some strange reason she always treated him like a mere customer. She knew that he stared at her, sometimes even smiled when their eyes met. But she had a strong heart which could resist these random gestures of interest. All he did when he was in the café was write in his maroon diary. Maroon, such a peculiar color for a diary maybe that’s why one could remember it so vividly. She somehow knew that he was alone because a man who regularly came alone to a café, completely lost in himself, uninterested in the people around or the football games on TV, just proved that he had a detachment with the world. Maybe, he dwelled in an inner world of dreams, thoughts and desires only he knew about.

Just like any other day, he finished his second cup of coffee. For a change, a different waitress had brought him the bill although one could clearly see that his eyes were searching for her. After hesitantly paying the bill, she saw him leave through the door and in a split second the maroon diary fell from his pocket. She quickly made her way towards the door but he had already boarded a cab. With a little hesitancy she decided to keep the diary with her so that she could personally return to him and maybe earn something extra on her tip.

That night, she found it impossibly hard to keep up with an imposition of not opening that diary. But after that second glass of wine, she promised herself that only a few pages shall be read. After a few pages, she was sobbing. The pages of that diary were full of days of her life. He somehow knew the days when her boss had scolded her, when her mother living in the suburbs was ill. It was like he read her eyes every single day and wrote his unspoken words to her in the diary.

It was hard for her to go on reading so she kept the diary aside and the last page opened up. In faded ink a line read, “If only she knew…”

She decided not to invade further more into this man’s emotional privacy because now she wanted to meet him and talk to him. After ages she could sense a love so pure, that a part of her finally felt alive.

She waited for him to walk in through the café’s door again. But he never came. Perhaps he somehow knew that his words had been read and his secretive affection had been exposed.