I frown, glimpsing you through the café window. Easily ten years older than your profile picture, what does that make you? Vain? Sentimental? Insecure?

Smiling wide, you wave me over.

Snippets of our countless conversations swirl around my head, reminding me of what’s important, and I push open the door.

Laura Besley writes short fiction and squeezes her writing into the bookends of her day. She has lived in Holland, Germany, and Hong Kong, but now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea. Her flash fiction collection, The Almost Mothers, was published in March 2020. She tweets at @laurabesley.