Sneak Peek. And Still, You
2 min read
It had happened by accident. One of those coincidences that felt insignificant until much later.
Sara had been in a café in the city. Nothing special. Coffee. People. The usual movement of a weekday.
She had been waiting near the counter when she saw him. David. For one suspended second, her brain didn’t understand what her eyes were seeing. Then it did.
Her heart reacted before the rest of her. There he was. After all that time. Real. Close. Unexpected.
David saw her too. There was no possibility of pretending otherwise. He approached. Sara smiled. Automatically. He greeted her. There was a kiss. Brief.
Familiar enough to confuse her body for half a second.
But something was wrong.
She noticed almost immediately.
David seemed nervous. Not shy. Not simply surprised to see her. Uncomfortable.
There was a tension in him Sara couldn’t place. His movements. His expression.
The way he seemed simultaneously pleased to see her and desperate not to remain there too long.
Sara tried to understand.
Had she done something? Had she missed something?
She searched quickly through the history between them.
Nothing.
She hadn’t contacted him. Hadn’t chased him.
Hadn’t appeared anywhere she wasn’t supposed to be. Hadn’t interfered with his life. Hadn’t demanded explanations. Hadn’t asked him for anything.
If anything, Sara had done what she always did. She had disappeared when she understood she wasn’t wanted.
So why was he looking at her like that?
They exchanged a few ordinary words. How are you. Fine. Work. Life. Nothing that mattered.
Then David glanced toward her coffee.
And almost casually, as though the sentence hadn’t been waiting somewhere inside him, he said it.
“I’d invite you to have that coffee with me, but honestly…”
He hesitated. Sara waited.
“I’m afraid of you.”
For a second, she thought she’d misunderstood.
“What?”
But he’d said it. He was afraid of her. Sara stared at him.
There are sentences that hurt because they’re cruel. Others because they’re true. And then there are sentences that hurt because they make you question something about yourself you had never thought needed questioning.
That was worse.
Afraid of me?
Sara felt something sink inside her. Not anger. Not yet. Confusion first. A horrible, immediate confusion.
Because fear implied danger. Fear implied threat.
Fear implied that there was something about Sara from which David needed protection.
And she couldn’t understand what that something was.
What had she done to him? When? How?
Her mind began searching for evidence against herself before it even occurred to her to question the accusation.
That was the part she would hate most years later.
Her first instinct had been to investigate herself.
Did I say something?
Did I do something?
Was I too much?
Did I make him uncomfortable?
Did something happen that I don’t remember the way he does?
She looked at David. There was something else underneath his nervousness. Something she couldn’t identify.
As though an entire story had taken place during their absence from each other’s lives and somehow Sara had been assigned a role in it without ever receiving the script.
[…]
She walked out of the café carrying a sentence that had belonged to him.
And somehow, without realizing it, made it hers.
From And Still, You
Based on a true story. Coming soon ❤️
