The sun was hot against the coffee shop’s windows, mirroring the tempest brewing inside Raya. Across the small table, Olly’s hazel eyes, usually sparkling with mischief, were clouded with a strange, almost desperate sincerity.
“Raya, he said, his voice a low hum that barely cut through the cafe’s murmur, “I… I have to tell you something.”
She knew. She’d known since the first stolen glance years ago, since the lingering touch of his hand when he’d helped her reach a high shelf. She’d known, “Go on,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady.
He took a deep breath. “I love you, Raya. I do.”
The words hung in the air, heavy and intoxicating. She wanted to reach across the table, touch his cheek, to tell him she felt the same. But a cold dread, a phantom limb pain from a love she hadn’t fully confessed to herself, held her back.
He continued, his voice gaining momentum. “I don’t want to be with Maeve anymore. I don’t. I haven’t been happy for months. She’s… she’s good, but… it’s not real. I don’t love her. I haven’t for a long time.”
Raya nodded, a tight knot forming in her stomach. This was it. The moment
He ended things with Maeve, a messy, hurtful break-up that left Raya vaguely guilty despite her soaring happiness. They explored the city, hand in hand, their laughter echoing in parks and museums. He wrote her poems, filled her flat with sunflowers, and made her feel like the only woman in the world. For a brief, blissful six years, Olly was hers.
Until he wasn’t hers anymore, three weeks ago, he’d met Sarah. Sarah was everything, and when Sarah looked at Olly with an undisguised adoration that mirrored, almost, Raya’s own.
He hadn’t said anything, not explicitly. But Raya saw the shift in his eyes, how his attention strayed, his lack of attention and how his touches lost their warmth. She knew.
And now, here he was, six years later, the sun still blaring against the windows and across the same small table in the same coffee shop, confessing his love to someone else.
“Raya,” he said, his voice laced with the same desperate sincerity she remembered so vividly. I need to tell you something. I’m with Sarah, and she’s… wonderful.
Raya, a quiet art student with a kaleidoscope of colours in her hair, looked at him with wide, trusting eyes. Raya wanted to scream with frustration. “Don’t you see? This is a pattern! This is your script!
She’s just the following verse in your song but couldn’t. She was stuck in a vortex of her past mistakes, the echoes of “I love you, Raya still ringing in her ears.
Olly reached across the table and took Raya’s hand. “Raya, I love her. I do.” Raya wondered if this was the same speech he had given Maeve
Raya knew this pattern; it had been used on her, and she knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the core, that the cycle would continue. Olly, moving from woman to woman. Olly feels the love at the time but soon gets bored,
whispers the same hollow promises and leaves trails of shattered illusions in his wake. The echoes of his lies, one broken promise at a time.
Raya had become Maeve and was about to be replaced, but Raya would never show how disappointed she was. But she knew how Maeve felt now and was sorry she had hurt her by being with Olly. Raya knew she should have just walked away when Olly shouted his undying love from the rooftops.
The story’s moral is to be careful who you let your guard down for and who you let in your life; you may regret it.
Thank You for Reading
Deborah C Langley
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