"Just what I said. I'm leaving today, with some friends." She held a cigarette in one hand, while with the other she arranged sliced cheese and sausage on bread.
"Leaving... with friends?" he frowned, setting two cups of coffee on the table — black for himself, the one with cream near her.
She didn't answer, just pushed the sandwiches towards him, picked up her coffee, and curled up on the chair, legs tucked under her. In all the time they'd been together, their morning coffee had long become a familiar ritual. Each had their role: he made the coffee, she made the sandwiches, and they both were silent. He liked to think they both enjoyed it — just the morning, just the coffee, just the two of them.
But today, she had broken their usual mutual silence with the announcement that she was packing her things and leaving him.
"Is that all you have to say?" she asked finally.
"It's a shame."
"Just a shame?"
He chewed his sandwich, looking sullen, trying to come up with a more appropriate response for the occasion. But the truth was, he really did feel only a sense of shame. No hurt, no bitterness, no sorrow.
He tried to figure out why. Had their time together really left nothing behind but this simple regret? He remembered how they met. A pretty brunette standing in front of his photograph at an exhibition, looking at it with such a touching, childlike wonder she didn't even try to hide.
He'd approached her. "Do you like it?"
"What?" She'd turned her gaze to him. That's what he'd loved most about her back then — that distracted, dreamy quality. What followed was just a formality, one that time had already erased from his memory.
By the next morning, they were drinking coffee in his kitchen, silent, just looking at each other. No one else in his life had ever been silent with him, or looked at him, quite like she did. Today, though, she was looking out the window, where the weak autumn sun was trying to cut through the grey gloom of the morning.
All this time, she had been waiting for him to finally leave this city, sick with concrete, and take her to that wonderful world. The world that beckoned to her from all his photographs, taken during his wanderings across the globe — searching for the perfect shot, as he used to call it.
But with each passing day, it became obvious he wasn't going anywhere. He was perfectly content with this morning, this coffee, her silence. She looked at him questioningly again.
Feeling even more irritated by the shame of having nothing more to add, he finally answered:
"Yeah... just a shame..."
