Exchanges Over A Tablecloth

         He had already picked a table when she arrived. Outside, close to the street, but not close enough for distraction, and secluded, but not the secluded that arouses suspicion. She came sweeping in, as she always used to, and floated into her seat opposite him. 
         “How long have you been here?” she asked, dryly.
“About fifteen minutes,”
“Ah, not long then.”
“Good journey?”
“The two minute walk was quite lovely, yes.”
The snide pleasantries that had become a staple between them bored her, so she lit a cigarette, knowing how he hated it. She exhaled a little grey cloud harder than was necessary.
“How is she?” she began.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Why wouldn’t you know?” she asked innocently.
“Don’t play games with me, Hannah.”
“I thought she loved you.”
“She does.”
         “Then,” she said, leaning forward, “how is she?”
His exasperated sigh encouraged a pang of guilt in her she, unsuccessfully, tried to suppress. Through the grey wisps that separated them she could feel his blaming gaze.
“She left me four days ago. The day after you…” he motioned towards her with his hands, then brought them up to his face. As they dragged across onto his cheeks and his eyes became visible, she became aware of the moisture that had accumulated there. Her voice became soft, quiet.
“I did nothing you didn’t give me permission to, Simon.”
His eyes flashed up at her with immediate anger, and he rose up in his seat, his right hand thrown down onto the table.
“I didn’t ask for you to tell her about us! I didn’t ask you to tell her that we were still together the night you and I met! You really think I wanted her to know I was unfaithful? You think it was for the best?” Growling, he leant back again. “I didn’t give you permission to ruin everything like this.”
He scoffed and shook his head, his hurt and anger silencing him. Having kept her eyes on the checked tablecloth through his outburst, she raised them to look into his as she spoke again.
“You gave me the power, the reason, and more than enough motivation.”
“You-!” he spat, before pausing, realising she might be right. He leant back, rain his hands through his hair and motioned for her to carry on, his locked jaw reminiscent of their countless other arguments.
“Darling, you left her, more or less for me, then after a few months you grow a tail and let it swing between you legs as you run away, refusing to speak to me again. I call the wrong number two months later, and I hear your voice. You tell me you’re patching things up with her, that you’ve moved on, that you don’t want me. A week later you drunkenly bring me back to your house and tell me that you still care for me, that she bores you and you’re only going back to her because she is familiar. A few days later and you’re with her again. Then, five days ago, I overhear you and her telling my friends things I’d rather not repeat, about me, about us, all of it utter rubbish!”
         Her voice had become fast, uncontrollable. She paused, took a drag on her cigarette and, without exhaling, bent her head towards his and spoke into his face.
“I tried to be good. I tried to let you be, let you get on with your life, but hearing those words coming out of your mouth, to my friends, was all the justification I needed to spoil everything you had worked for. I worked for us, and you spoiled that. I only told her to ask you what she should already know. So, tell me, what exactly did I do that was unreasonable?”
In the same way his anger had halted his defence of himself, she had silenced him. He looked out into the golden-lit street, and sighed again.
“I must have seemed confused.”
“You weren’t.”
“I was-”
“You weren’t,” she cut in. “You loved her, not me, you always did. You looked into my eyes and told me you loved me, every time replacing my face with hers. I’m not the idiot you took me for, Simon, I knew you still wanted her.” She tossed her cigarette to the floor and sighed. “I just thought I could wait it out until you wanted me instead.”
For some long minutes, neither spoke. Her stormy eyes turned wet, and she forced back the tears before he could see how he had hurt her. While she lit another cigarette with shivering hands, he held his head in his, staring into the checked tablecloth. Looking up, he saw her looking back at him. They remained like that for the remainder of those long minutes; trying, despite their pride’s best efforts, to root out any feeling they still harboured for one another.
He broke the eye-contact first. He squeezed his shut, as if waiting out a pain.
“Han, I truly am sorry.”
“It can’t do any good now can it?” she tried, but her voice broke and tears were loosed to splash onto her hands. “We did so much crying, didn’t we?”
“It’s a wonder we didn’t drown each other,” he laughed dryly.
“Perhaps we did,” she replied, hushed. 
He flicked his gaze back to her. For a long time he looked at her.
“Perhaps we did,” he repeated, finally, in the same whisper.
Her sad smile cut through him like it was the first time he had seen it.
“We’re too proud, you and I,” she said, her voice steadied to a slight chuckle. “You’re a man, and I’m Northern.” Again, she paused, looking down. “But it was never boring, was it? Tumultuous, yes, but never boring.”
“You’re right there,” he sang with a sad laugh.
He noticed, like he had that first night, how the light soaked her skin and hair, turning her at once glowing and translucent, as if he could almost see her fire through her alabaster shell.
“Do you think we could…” he started, and faltered.
She smiled.
“No, sweetheart.”
         The realisation that she had grown able to say no to him crashed over him in a way not dissimilar to that of a tsunami.
         “But, I want to be with you, you’re wrong to say I don’t care; I do, I really do, Hannah. I had been with her for three years, she was all I knew-”
“And I will always be second best.”
She stood up and packed away her cigarettes, all the while with her sad smile. Coming to stand beside him, she leant over, and put her lips to his forehead. He felt the tears begin again, but she didn’t break contact. When she did, she replaced her lips with her wet cheek and held his head in her hands.
“You could give yourself to me on a plate, but her memory will always haunt you,” she whispered into his hair.
She stood up, newly composed. She left her hands draped over the side of his face, and he was surprised to find tears in their place when she removed them.
He watched her shivering, stolen, simple form walk away until she was nothing but a delightful dot at the far end of the street.
His eyes drifted to the checked tablecloth, and the pool of unexpected, unnoticed salt water that had amassed there. She now was, as he had seen, just a delightful dot on an uncertain horizon.
He felt a lesson learned as he stood, and took the scenic route home.