Seventeen
Seventeen
I got you a fresh coffee.”
Ellie looks up from her place at the window seat and sees a smiling Jonah, his white shirt now stained with several noticeable brown drips, just like her jeans. The table is empty, other than a silver caddy full of expected coffee shop provisions—sugar packets, a glass jar of honey, some scraps of paper and golf-size pencils meant for the creatives who camp out in places like this all day. Above her, a cascade of viridescent stems and leaves hangs. Her lips settle into a straight line. She accepts the cup and double-checks that the lid is secured tightly this time.
“Thanks,” she tells him and then waits. She has no idea what will happen—what either of them might say—next. She decides to let him lead.
Seated this close to Jonah, Ellie notes the uncharacteristic rash of brown stubble across his typically smooth chin and cheeks. In their real life, the only days he fails to shave are on Sundays or when he is sick. When they were younger, back in their early thirties, he’d sometimes let it go now and again. A little bit of laziness does, in fact, look handsome on certain men. But that habit quickly came to a halt when Maggie was a child. She always told him it felt too scratchy, and he obediently listened, never wanting to sacrifice a single second of snuggling with her cheek to cheek.
Now, Jonah slides into a black metal chair, places his own coffee on the table. “I realized after you left yesterday where I recognized you from,” he recalls, and Ellie sees a glimmer of something in his eyes.
From our home? From our wedding day? From our daughter? From this past weekend? From the more than two decades of life we’ve shared together?
“Hmm ...?” she poses, an open-ended sound for him to complete.
Jonah points with his bear-claw-size hand at the window. “There.” He extends a finger, pointing directly at it. “The bookstore.” His pink mouth curves into an understated smile. “You work there, right? I’ve seen you through the window sometimes, coming and going.”
Ellie joins his gaze and stares through the glass at that pretty, white-painted brick facade. “I do.” She inhales, her breath reaching way down to her toes before she slowly releases it again. “Work there, I mean.” She laughs to herself. “At least, that’s what they tell me.” She smirks.
Jonah nods, not sensing anything off about Ellie’s comment. It’s just a joke, a charming throwaway. “How’s the coffee?” he asks while gesturing at her cup. “It’s the new breakfast blend,” he says and redirects his finger to the sidewalk sign. “They’re really pushing it. It’s good, right?”
Ellie lifts her cup to her mouth, enjoys another small sip of what tastes just a teensy bit like normalcy. “It is,” she agrees.
Jonah enjoys another mouthful of his own beverage. “You know, I tried to call you a few times last night,” he admits, and when he does she sees that his stubbled cheeks turn a pale shade of red. “About your car,” he quickly adds, so as not to suggest anything otherwise. “And the mechanic. I—I need to make sure to give you the right amount of money for that.”
Ellie bites her lip. “We’ll figure it out,” she says, unfazed by this nothing of a problem, not in light of everything else. “Anyway, I don’t have my phone right now.” She briefly closes her eyes, huffs. “I lost it.” She opens them again. “I’m currently completely off the grid.”
“Off the grid, huh?” Jonah nods his head to show his understanding. “That’s not always a bad thing.” He smirks. “I’ve been feeling a bit off the grid myself recently,” he adds, though she doesn’t quite understand what he means.
In the last few months of their marriage, Ellie and Jonah completely stopped sharing moments like this. A simple cup of coffee. A casual conversation to break up the day. But why?
“Have we really never met before?” Ellie asks Jonah now, and when she does he turns. Their eyes catch, a hook to a fish. For a split second, Ellie observes the way he peers at her, as if the inner workings of his mind are piecing together an important equation. “Never anytime before that car crash yesterday?”
She wants to ask him if he feels it. This sense of déjà vu. Her heart beats in her chest like a caged bird, her palms simultaneously hot and cool from sweat. She feels like she’s been here before with him in this exact same moment and this exact same place, because in another life—one that exists here and yet does not—she has been with him at this same table, back before they were a couple, long before they described themselves as an “us” or a “we.” They were just two individuals, not yet a unit, not yet anything, really. They were only at the beginning then and taking their first steps toward getting to know each other, no clue what joys and sadness their future together might bring.
“Not before yesterday’s crash.” He reaches into the metal caddy and pulls out a scrap of paper and a miniature pencil, on which he absently scribbles a series of lines that don’t look like they’ll add up to much of anything. He tilts his chin at her ever so slightly, like he’s afraid to look her in the eyes again. “I feel pretty certain that if we had met some other time before that accident, I would have remembered.”
Her cheeks flush from both his words and the many mixed emotions she’s felt on this very unusual day. She doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t want to get up and leave, for this unexpected coffee date between husband and wife—between strangers—to end. She wants to tell him she’s stuck here—somehow living in the wrong timeline—and that he is, too. But there’s no right way to say something like this. Instead, she follows in Jonah’s footsteps, picks up a sheet of paper, and begins to doodle on it, just to extend the moment.
Ellie is not—nor has she ever been—a good artist. She’s a mom artist, all her drawings dating back to the ones she’d draw over and over and over with Maggie during her preschool years. A silly jack-o’-lantern. A happy butterfly. A smiling flower. She’s not even thinking about what she’s creating, these witless illustrations she makes arriving to her in such an instinctual fashion. She feels her fingers sketching out the circle of the sun—the classic picture she and Maggie drew together so many times—and the triangle rays that extend off it.
From inside Jonah’s pocket, his phone rings. He looks annoyed by the sound—the interruption—of it, but he slides it out regardless so he can take a peek at the screen.
“I’m really sorry,” he says, and he looks like he sincerely means it. He briefly silences the device. “I think maybe I should take this call.”
Ellie sets down her pencil on top of her unfinished drawing. Through the picture window, she sees another pair of customers walk into the shop— her shop—across the street. “It’s okay,” she tells him. “I should probably get going, anyway.”
Jonah stands and then starts to walk away. Before he makes much progress, he quickly turns back. “Hey,” he says. “About that whole accident. If you don’t have your phone, what’s the best way for me to get in touch with you?”
She’s the one who points her finger at the glass this time. “You’ll know where to find me.” Her tone is brushed by flirtation. “I won’t be far.”
Before they part, Ellie takes one last long look at his face. She recalls their conversation from the other night in her parents’ spare Floridian bedroom when she asked him what he thought it might be like if they had the chance to meet again for the first time. She’d meant the question purely rhetorically, not ever imagining a world in which they’d have the chance.
I’d like to think that we’d at least notice each other, he’d said. Maybe say hello or something like that.
Jonah’s phone vibrates in his palm. He presses a button on the side of it and slides the device away, deciding that whoever is on the other end of the call can wait one more minute.
“It was nice talking with you,” he says as a quick flash of realization spreads across his face. “Ellie, right?” he poses. “That’s what you put in my phone when you typed it in, I think.”
She nods.
He extends a sturdy hand. She lifts her own to meet it, the two of them briefly joined, if only for this quick second.
“Jonah,” he says, by way of an introduction. “Jonah Baker.”
Ellie smiles, unsure which emotion waits right behind it. Laughter? Tears?
“It’s nice to meet you, Jonah Baker,” she says.