He stepped out of the Café, coffee in one hand briefcase in the other. A cold breeze greeted him as he tucked his chin further into his coat and quickly checked his watch.

“8:57” he thought “Great I´m going to be late again.”

He should have woken up earlier, but yesterday’s weariness kept him in bed for a while longer. Maybe he should’ve skipped his morning coffee, but then he would have had a grueling migraine. He chuckled to himself.
“There used to be a time when you hated coffee, with a passion. That was a long time ago, back when she-” He stops himself, and takes a long shuddering breath “Back when you were in college.” He shouldn’t think about the past, it came and it went and it brought nothing but pain. But his heart still lived in the past, his heart, still stuck in the remembrance of walks in rolling hills, hand in hand with-

“STOP. That was a long time ago, you’re over her.” but as much as he wanted to believe it he knew it was a lie and began to feel an all-too familiar ache. He began to whistle, to cover up the pain in his heart. He let his eyes wander across the street looking for something, anything, to distract him from the memory.

And then he saw her

He didn’t know what clicked first, then he realized, the eyes. It was her eyes that he noticed when he saw her the very first time and it was the eyes he first noticed now. Those ever-laughing hazel eyes...with a touch of green that was what she used to say. She had the same mole under her left-eye, the same lips the same walk. She had changed her hair though, it used to be curled and short, not in a ponytail. But it had the same pin, a gift from her mother.

‘Oh God it really is her’ he gasps as the memories he’d held back and suppressed for five long years suddenly burst out. He remembered meeting her at Dillian’s party, pushed on by his friends to ask her out. She had said yes. He remembers the dates, the long walks, the talks. He remembers the fights and the making-up. He remembered her voice, her bubbly laugh. He remembered the first kiss and the last. Under their tree, where he had carved their initials just a year beforehand, where they had said goodbye. He remembered everything. He remembered the heartbreak and the long painful process of stitching it back together again, knowing it would never be the same. That heart, was now ripped open like an old wound. And for the first time in five years her name found a way out of his lips.

The horn of a car brought him out of his thoughts. He found himself two steps onto the road, walking towards her. He took a step back and looked at her again. The hair wasn’t the only thing that changed. Holding her hand was another man, a tall, bearded man who walked with the kind of assurance he could never have, and on her finger, a ring.

“She has moved on. She’s a different person now.” he thought ruefully. Then he looked down at his briefcase and his now-cold coffee.

“And so have you”  He walked away, and began to whistle.