They were back in that same little café on the corner of the old quarter—Emily and James.
She was a tall, elegant woman with stubborn strands of dark hair that never quite obeyed, always escaping from hair ties or clips as if to remind everyone she was alive and real.
He was a sturdy man with tired yet warm eyes, the kind of soft wrinkles in the corners that come from laughing wholeheartedly, without holding back. Silver had begun to streak his temples, but it only made him look more distinguished.
They sat across from each other as if time had stopped. He carefully stirred two spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee—just how she liked it. She twisted a paper napkin between her fingers, rolling it into a tight little cylinder, just as she always did.
They fit together so naturally, as if they’d never been apart. But I knew better—behind those glances lay an entire lifetime of choices, pain, uncertainty, and… love.
“Emily, tell me, how did you two meet?” I once asked, unable to resist.
She glanced at James, as if asking for permission. He nodded.
“I’d just started working at the bank back then,” she began, lowering her gaze. “Everything was new, terrifying… And he—” she chuckled.
“And I was the insufferable department manager,” James cut in with a smirk.
Emily shook her head. “He was unbearable. All the girls in the office would go quiet when he walked in. Expensive suit, perfect posture, that stare… But he only ever looked at me.”
“In that navy blue suit with the dimple in your cheek,” he added softly. “You laughed like the whole room lit up.”
Emily smiled, fingers brushing her cheek without thinking.
“And then… Then he asked me to dinner. Got drunk. Told me he was married.”
Silence hung heavy between them. The memory weighed like a stone. James gripped his cup. Emily stared somewhere into the past.
“I decided right then—there was no future in it. I wouldn’t be ‘the other woman.’ But he wouldn’t give up. Flowers, books, trips… Because of him, I went to the theatre for the first time, the opera… I felt alive.”
“Why didn’t it work out?” I asked carefully.
“He offered to leave his wife. I said no. Because I was afraid. Afraid he’d regret it. That I wouldn’t be the woman he thought I was. That his family would never accept me. I was scared of love.”
“And I wasn’t ready to destroy everything. The kids, the life we’d built… I was scared of the responsibility,” James added.
Emily took a deep breath.
“Then I met someone else. Everything happened so fast—engagement, wedding… I ran. Didn’t even say goodbye.”
“I would’ve asked you to stay,” James murmured, almost too quiet to hear. “But not then. I understood too late.”
“Years later, we bumped into each other here, by chance. I was getting divorced. He said he was happy for me. I lied. And he knew.”
James touched her hand.
“You always lift your shoulders when you lie,” he whispered.
They fell silent. Eyes locked. Everything in that look—what they’d lived, what they’d left unsaid, what they’d let go.
“Now we’re friends,” Emily smiled. “Or almost friends.”
“We just know how to love. In our own way. Without demands or promises,” James said.
And I thought—the miracle isn’t just meeting someone. It’s keeping the warmth inside you even when things fall apart. Holding onto someone in your life, no matter what.
An ordinary miracle. But isn’t that the realest kind?
