Seat Facing the Door
He gets there ten minutes early because early feels like competence. The host leads him to a two-top by the window; two waters arrive, identical, sweating like they’ve been told to behave. He puts his phone face down, then face up, then decides honesty is less obvious: face up.
Their last messages are a neat staircase:
You still good for 7?
Yep! See you soon 😊
On the app her green dot is present-tense. Active 2m ago. He reads her bio again—two lines about spicy food and a dog named after a poet—and tries not to audition his laugh for a room that isn’t here yet.
The server asks, “Are we waiting on one more?” the way you ask about weather you can’t control.
“On their way,” he says, and he believes it enough to order fries “for the table,” as if making a table could make a person.
Seven becomes 7:08. The app shows the three dots, then nothing, then the dots again like a heartbeat that forgets itself. He types No rush at all—text me if you need a different time and lets his thumb hover over send as if posture could be etiquette. He doesn’t send it. He doesn’t delete it either. It waits in the unsent place where polite hope goes.
Couples arrive with the choreography of people who didn’t rehearse and don’t need to. A woman squeezes past his chair and says “sorry” in a way that belongs to another table. The other water grows a circle on the wood like a calendar with one meaningful day.
7:14. He opens maps without meaning to and watches a cartoon car on a street he knows she doesn’t live on. He checks her profile again and sees a new photo he hasn’t seen—a dog at a beach, blur of joy, horizon so straight it could be drawn. It feels like walking into a room you’ve tidied and finding the painting slightly tilted: proof of life and of nothing.
The server returns with the kind of smile service workers learn for moments like this. “Want me to leave the extra place?”
“Yes,” he says. “Please.” It sounds like prayer because it is.
He chews two fries that arrived too hot to be a decision. Salt makes a case for staying. 7:23. The app pushes a notification shaped like help: Boost now—more local matches in the next 30 minutes! He silences it with a thumb he wishes were kinder.
He drafts a new message—All good if tonight’s rough. We can reschedule—and watches the app suggest confetti replies under it: You got this! Be yourself! Say something nice. The algorithm is a friend who talks too loudly at the wrong time.
7:31. The green dot goes gray. The chat slides downward a millimeter as if the whole thing took a breath and decided to be archive instead. He doesn’t get unmatched; he gets later, which is braver and somehow worse.
The server returns with a small mercy disguised as a question. “Do you want me to box these up?”
“Not yet,” he says, which is honest. He wants five more minutes with the idea.
At 7:40 he pays. He tips like someone who has needed a gentle exit and gotten one. The extra water leaves a ghost ring on the table when the server clears it; he watches the wood drink the evidence until there’s nothing to point at.
Outside, the evening is absolutely fine. A bus decides to be a bus. A kid negotiates with a dog about a stick. He stands under the awning and lets the door shut behind him without catching it, just to see if the sound feels like anything. It doesn’t. That hurts, which is data.
His phone vibrates: How did your date go? The app offers buttons: Great, Good, Okay, Not great. He scrolls past them and finds a smaller link: They didn’t show. It’s the only option that doesn’t rate him back.
He taps it. The app thinks for a long, polite second and replies: Thanks for the feedback. Want to try again nearby? Somewhere inside a server rack, hope is inventory. He puts the phone away because not answering is, for once, the right-sized reply.
On the way to the train he buys a single lemon because he’s out of lemons, and because carrying something makes your hands agree you’re going somewhere. In the window of a dark shop he sees himself twice—glass and reflection—two people arriving on time. He isn’t the story where someone walks in breathless at 7:52 with a good reason. He’s the story where the chair stays empty and the world continues, unpunished.
On the platform, he sets the lemon on the bench beside him and watches it not roll. The train arrives exactly when it says it will. He gets on, the city chooses a tunnel, and his phone stays quiet the whole way, which is also an answer.
