It’s five o’clock and I check the clock, I already know the time, but anxiety makes you a slave to involuntary movements. It’s a December afternoon darker and colder than usual, or at least that’s how I feel it.
«The weather makes no sense,» I think out loud and my voice blends with the noise of the restaurant.
I think I can perceive everything, even the subtlest movements, smells, and sounds. I consider myself an observant and attentive person, but today I’m especially sensitive to what happens around me. I hear spoons clinking against plates and cups. I smell coffee or the strong citrus tones of the woman’s perfume who is two tables away from ours; every five counts her heel hits the leg of her table, occasionally coinciding with the cash register bell at the back of the room. I feel the wind hitting the windows. A shiver runs through me, it’s the weather, it’s adrenaline… I can feel everything.
They’re talking to me! I try to focus my new superpowers on the voice addressing me, but it’s a muffled sound, like when someone speaks underwater. Is it my name? followed by a «Can you hear me?», «Can you hear me?». I try to focus my concentration on the words and not on the sounds that distract me, on the wobbly entrance table that creaks when someone steps on it. I try to remember what was before the «Can you hear me?».
My most primitive instinct tells me to flee from there. My body prepares with an extra flow of blood, which goes down to my legs ready to run, but reason ties me to the chair. I’m cold, but it’s worse outside… I think. I’m going to get sick; I feel that strange dizziness that warns me that something is wrong.
I react by moving my head, nodding, even though it’s a lie.
I surround the coffee cup with my hands to try to get warm. I feel his hand brush mine and quickly lift the cup. Again, I tell myself not to let him get close. I take a sip of coffee and remember the «I don’t love you anymore» that was before the «Can you hear me?».
Mixpov 