Creative Writing: An Empty Cafe Seat

That Empty Cafe Seat

"Finally here..." I sighed when I saw the cafe shop in the distance. I tucked my phone back into my jacket pocket and sped up a bit towards it. School had ended just a few minutes ago. After saying goodbye to Lina and Jason, I made my way to the cafe as usual. When I got there, I held the door and waited a few seconds for an old lady to walk in before stepping inside. The heat from the store made me shiver. "Thank you.” the old lady said. I smiled and pulled my hood down. After about 10 minutes of getting raspberry iced tea and conversing with a couple classmates that were there as well, I walked up the stairs to the 2nd floor. I looked around before my eyes landed on an empty seat at a table where a boy sat. Hello again… Taking in a breath, I made my way to that table and the empty seat diagonally across from him.

A while back, I had discovered this small cafe/book store near my Vietnamese school, Our Lady of Lavang. The cafe is called “Mimi” and is really hidden so not many people know of it but the students of my school do. Their bubble tea and little pastries are some of the best. Mimi is a small two-story building that is painted soft solid colors and has wooden furniture. The first floor is the coffee bar area while the 2nd floor resembles a miniature library. It has book shelves and a couple tables in front of a large floor-to-ceiling window looking down at the traffic below. After finding this quaint cafe, it became a habit of mine to go there every Sunday afternoon either to eat something or simply sit back and do homework. And every Sunday when I go there, I always see a boy from my class. Aiden Vo. He’s always there. White Beats headphones on, backpack on the seat beside him, a hardcover ...

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...onversation during those 30 minutes had absolutely changed my opinion of him around. Then, I remembered the black book. That every time I saw him, the sketchbook would be in front of him but he would rarely ever touch it. Subsequently, I asked him about it and he replied, “You wanna look in it?”. I nodded and he handed it to me. Inside this black book I saw beautiful, life-like sketches and the last image I saw that he most recently drew was of a girl holding a door open for an old lady but both were faceless. Isn’t that… Something clicked in my mind and I asked him who it was.

He answered, “A girl that sits in an empty seat by me every Sunday. An empty seat that somehow is always reserved just for her.” That empty seat allowed me to sit by him and enter his life without the both of us knowing. It made me realize that Aiden Vo wasn’t the person I thought he was.