Table for Two (8 page)

7

The café isn’t
quite
deserted tonight, Mandy notices. There is a couple at the table beside her: the
girl has poster paint splotches and cheese stains on her white blouse, and the
boy is teasing her affectionately—something about a blind date and
Jagermeister shots and a guy named Jack. The girl makes a face and slaps his
shoulder, and they both laugh. Near the entrance, there are two guys and two
girls. One girl is showing off her wedding ring and talking about a honeymoon
weekend in Greece while her husband keeps a hand behind her back and sips his
iced latte and smiles. The other girl and the other boy seem shy and a bit
guarded around each other, like they aren’t officially together yet, or like
they were officially together once upon a time and are just on the verge of
being officially together again. And then there’s that boy by the
window—Mandy thinks,
Okay, I guess he’s sort of cute—
who beat her to her favorite spot where she used to
stay and wait for her ex-boyfriend, Tristan. The seat across from him is empty.

The café isn’t
quite deserted tonight, and Mandy wonders what story each person in the room
has to tell. She wonders how different these stories are from each other, and
she wonders if these stories happen to intersect at any point. The couple at
the table beside her and the group near the entrance, they all seem to have
found something raw and real and right in one another. At this moment, Mandy
can’t help feeling alone. She thinks,
How many people find each
other every day?
There
are a thousand possibilities, a thousand ways that could have led her to
someone. A thousand chances for her to meet a good guy, to clear up some space
for him in her life, and maybe fall in love with him.
Mandy wonders how many she’s
missed.

8

Lucas catches Mandy
looking at him. She instantly drops her gaze and blushes a full-on blush, the
kind that probably went all the way up to her scalp and down to the tips of her
toes. He feels sorry for her, but he can’t help it—he laughs. He laughs
because he understands what he
can
do and what he
will
do; it seems so simple yet so daunting. He laughs
because it might just help him feel brave. The seat across from him is empty.
It doesn’t have to be that way anymore.

Is he ready? No, probably not. But
his readiness is irrelevant, because action and inaction are posing equal
risks. Everything hinges on this moment. It might not come again any time soon.

9

Mandy should probably
get back to her novel, but she is anxious and embarrassed and can’t seem to
focus. This boy is a distraction, and she’s not used to being distracted. She
is always attempting to be productive, whether she’s finishing her reading or
picking out books for her shop or driving somewhere or talking to clients on
the phone or checking things off lists or figuring out how to make the people
in her life get along. She’s not used to being distracted, but it actually
feels kind of nice. Maybe this is what really matters: that she fills her days
with a steady stream of productivity so that when the quiet, tender moments
come in between, she can learn to pause, and feel, and be grateful that they
exist. She rarely has moments like these, and perhaps she should breathe them
in.

Everything hinges on these
moments, these moments that might not come again any time soon. Mandy checks
her watch. It is almost midnight.

10

When you think
about it, everything is fleeting.
Every second of every minute of every hour. The race and the rush and the
choices and the chances. The love that grazed your fingertips, possibilities that
brushed past you on your way out to work or play or save the world, a happy
ending you may have believed in with a faith beyond anything you could have
imagined you were capable of. We shove each other for space, we lament the loss
of time as we scatter it throughout the vast landscape of our lives. When we
count the broken pieces, we realize that we will not be here forever, so we
chase after these moments, seize them, and try to make them last and last and
last. But maybe the best we can do is to understand that there is one thing in
particular that should always come first.

Lucas stands and walks towards
Mandy. He stops. She smiles. They are catching fragments of their stories one
by one, fragments that may have escaped in the distant and not-too-distant
moments behind them. It is time to take these fragments and string them
together. It doesn’t matter how many possibilities they’ve
missed—thousands, millions, billions—what matters is
this
possibility, right here and right now. A new day
begins with purpose, and with promise.

About the Author

Marla is always
trying: Trying to read more books, trying to cook dinner, trying to paint her
tiny toenails (sometimes while cooking dinner), trying to learn better time
management (so she doesn’t paint her toenails while cooking dinner), trying not
to eat Cheetos late at night (hence the cooking), trying not to be a Mean Girl,
and trying to make fetch happen. She also tries not to quote random movie lines
all the time. But some things come naturally, like third-wheeling on her
parents’ dates, guzzling coffee (her brother Timo makes the best lattes),
guzzling…water with her fierce friend Ed, being an awesome
Ate
to Marcy and Macu, walking hand in
hand with her nephew Cisco, and staying young (sort of) by writing for
Candy
magazine’s lifestyle and
entertainment pages every day. She lives on Earth with her fellow Earthling.