Storm out

You can’t sit with it any longer. The three names, the months of rejection, the calm way Tanya delivered the truth, all of it piles up too fast. You push the chair back hard enough to scrape the pavement, mutter something about needing air, and walk away from the table without waiting for Tanya to respond.

The street outside the coffee shop feels too bright and too ordinary. You move with no real direction, hands shoved in your pockets, the anger and the shock still rolling through you in uneven waves. Pedestrians pass. A bus pulls away from the stop. None of it registers properly.

You almost walk straight into someone coming the other way.

“Whoa, easy,” a familiar voice says.

You look up and stop. Alice. Blonde hair cut shorter than the last time you saw her, still carrying that sharp academic energy, and yes, still possessed of the most stunning breasts you have ever seen. It’s been a long while. University friends, then the gradual drift that happens when lives move in different directions. She looks at you properly and the easy smile she started with fades.

“You look like someone just hit you with a truck,” she says. “What’s going on?”

She doesn’t step aside or offer the usual polite exit. She simply stands there on the pavement, reading the state you’re in with the same quick intelligence she always had, waiting for an answer.