Three years after losing my wife in a car crash, my best friend set me up on a date I didn’t want. But the moment I met her, something about her felt… hauntingly familiar. I called it a pause, though honestly, it was silence.
Three years without Emma felt like a long Missouri winter road — flat, gray, endless. The kind where your radio crackles and the heater only blows on one foot. The air in the house was thick with unspoken ‘if onlys’ and the sharp scent of guilt.
I’d wake up, wash the same coffee mug, check twice if the stove was off, and drive to the garage where I could hide behind the smell of oil and someone else’s broken stories. Folks around here say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Thing was, I was broke all over and I didn’t dare touch it. I still remembered the sound of screeching tires.
The way the sky went white, then black. I survived, and that word alone kept me up at night. I survived.
She didn’t. Every time I tried to sleep, the images played back, soundless and cruel. If only I’d driven slower.
If only I’d hit the brakes sooner. If only I hadn’t looked down at the damn radio. “Jack,” Barb from the local diner snapped her fingers in front of me.
She had been waitressing there since disco was cool, and she knew everyone’s sad story by the way they drank their coffee. “You’re starin’ at that coffee like it’s gonna talk back. It’s been dead for ten minutes.”
“It’s fine,” I muttered.
“Cold’s honest.”
“You turning into a poet now?” she smirked, sliding a slice of cherry pie my way. “Eat somethin’, sweetheart. You look like a ghost that forgot to haunt.”
Then came Mike — loud, messy, grinning Mike.
He was the one guy who still showed up, rain or shine, and refused to let me stay completely buried. He dropped onto the stool beside me and stretched his long legs. “Man, you hear me?” he said, elbowing me, his voice cutting through the diner’s easy noise.
“I know this is a sore subject, but three years is three bad years. You gotta start livin’ again.”
“Come on, buddy,” he said, waving at Barb for another coffee. “You come in, stare at your reflection, pay, and vanish.
You used to laugh so loud, the jukebox gave up. What happened to that guy?”
“He had Emma next to him.”
The air went still. Even Barb turned down the music, pretending to wipe a clean counter.
Mike took a sip of his beer, softer this time, letting the silence settle. “Listen,” he said, lowering his voice. “I ain’t sayin’ forget her.
I’m just sayin’ she wouldn’t want you rottin’ away like this. And… I got someone I want you to meet.”
“No.”
“Relax. She’s not some party girl.
She’s a vet — runs the small animal clinic on Maple. Real sweet, kind-hearted, kinda shy. She lost someone too.
Different story, same hole in the heart. Just coffee, Jack. Ain’t nobody talkin’ marriage.”
I rubbed the back of my neck.
The thought of sitting across from another woman made my stomach twist, but something in the quiet urgency of Mike’s voice stuck. “What’s her name?” I asked finally, the word dry on my tongue. The name landed somewhere deep, stirring a strange warmth I hadn’t felt in years.
Mike grinned, a genuine, hopeful look replacing his usual bluster. “So? Tomorrow at six.
I already told her you’d call.”
I sighed, half-laughing at the inevitability of Mike’s interference, half-dreading whatever was coming. I didn’t know it then, but that one coffee date—that one yes—was about to turn my whole world upside down. He raised his mug.
“To second chances, buddy. Sometimes they look nothin’ like you expect.”
Mike had been right about one thing — Claire wasn’t like anyone I’d met before. When I walked into the diner, she was already there, sitting by the window with a cup of tea instead of coffee, tapping her spoon like she was keeping time to some tune in her head.
She looked composed, neat, like she had successfully folded all her worries into perfect squares. “Jack?” she asked, standing up. Her smile was small but warm, the kind that didn’t try too hard.
“That’s me,” I said, scratching my neck. “You must be the brave soul Mike talked into this disaster.”
She laughed. A low, musical sound that hit me like a memory I couldn’t place.
“Well, he knows me too well,” I muttered, pulling out a chair. “Hope you like awkward silences, ‘cause I’ve got plenty.”
“I work with dogs all day. Silence is a luxury.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle.
It’d been a while since I’d done that. We ordered pie — her choice, apple with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I watched how she cut it carefully, like she was scared to break something.
Her hands were delicate, a tiny scar tracing across one knuckle. She noticed me staring and smiled. “Cat bite.
Occupational hazard.”
“So you actually like what you do?”
“Love it. Animals are easy. They don’t hide their pain.”
I looked down at my plate.
“People do.”
She nodded, taking a sip of tea. “You’ve lost someone.”
I froze. She didn’t say it like a question — more like she just knew.
“Yeah,” I finally said. “Three years ago. My wife.”
Claire didn’t rush to fill the silence.
She just looked at me… understanding. “I’m sorry. Loss never really leaves.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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