The Same Café, Ten Years Later

She almost turned around. The café had changed its name and its chairs, but the corner table by the window was still there, and so was Daniel, older and greyer, reading the weekend paper exactly as he had every Saturday of their four years together.

He looked up. His face did several things at once.

'Sofia.'

'Daniel.'

It had ended at this table, ten years ago, with raised voices and a spilled cup and her walking out into the rain. She had been thirty and certain of everything. She was forty now and certain of very little.

They talked for an hour, carefully. He had married and divorced. She had moved abroad and come back. He had learned to cook. She had learned to apologise, which, she told him, was the harder of the two.

'I was impossible,' he said.

'We both were.'

They walked out together into a bright, cold afternoon and along the river, the way they used to. Their hands brushed once, then again, and the third time he took hers and held on.

At her door he hesitated. 'I don't want to make the same mistakes.'

'Then make new ones,' she said, and pulled him inside.

It was different. Slower. They knew each other's bodies and yet did not; there were new scars, new habits, new places that made each of them gasp. Afterwards, lying in the late light, he laughed softly.

'What?'

'I still have your yellow scarf,' he said. 'Ten years. I couldn't throw it out.'