The coffee cup was chipped on the rim. Emma noticed it before the woman sat down.
"Is anyone—?"
"No, please." Emma moved her bag.
The woman settled in, phone already out, fingers moving before she'd even taken off her coat. Emma returned to her book, but the words kept sliding away. Something about the woman's profile. The angle of her jaw. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear.
I know you.
The thought arrived fully formed. But from where? The grocery store? The gym she'd quit going to? A party, years ago, someone's flatmate whose name she'd never learned?
The woman ordered in English, her accent placing her somewhere Nordic. Emma's Spanish had improved enough to catch the barista's slight hesitation before switching languages.
Not here, then.
She tried to reconstruct a context. University? No. Work? She'd been freelancing for five years now, mostly from this exact table. Maybe that was it—maybe this woman came here often, had become part of the furniture of Emma's routine without her conscious notice.
The woman's phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen, and something passed across her face. Not quite sadness. More like the moment just before sadness, when you're still deciding whether to let it in.
Emma knew that look.
She knew it because she'd seen it in the mirror two months ago, standing in a bathroom at her sister's wedding, trying to compose herself before going back out to the music and the dancing and the relentless, beautiful joy of people who still believed in forever.
The woman set down her phone. She picked up the chipped cup, noticed the flaw, turned it so the damaged part faced away from her lips. Then she took a sip and closed her eyes, just for a moment.
This is what surviving looks like, Emma thought. We rotate our cups to avoid the broken parts. We keep drinking.
The woman stood to leave. As she passed Emma's table, their eyes met. There was a flicker of something—recognition? acknowledgment?—before she was gone, already putting her earbuds in, already back in the current of the morning.
Emma returned to her book. The words came easier now.
#flashfiction #Barcelona #strangers #moments