[:::: Authors Note ::::]
I'm posting this more as a draft than a full story. It's self-edited, and has a lot of mistakes, but I think it's an interesting read. Built on a few random thoughts that came together in words. I've been taking a break after publishing 'The Red Suit' and have needed to stop for a while.
This will be my first story for 2025, enjoy.
[:::: Friday Coffee ::::]
I watched him as he navigated his way through the tables and chairs, not easy with the stroller and rambunctious two-year-old boy. There was just an early morning crowd, a few people who looked to him, and then the young boy who was more interested in his buttered piece of toast than anything around him.
I smiled as I watched him approach my table and sit down on the chair to the left of me like I knew he would, as he always had. Then, he arranged the stroller in front of him so he could give attention to my son for a few moments.
A doting dad, I smiled as I watched him fuss over Charlie, the little boy smiling and giggling as David cleaned him of crumbs while teasing him just a little.
I sighed and looked out at the sky. Sitting outside the café, we had an uninterrupted view of the car park, but looking up past the tops of the paperbark trees that dotted the car park edges, it was a blue sky with lazy white clouds drifting along slowly in the early summer morning.
David and I have sat here every Friday morning since we were thirteen. We were next door neighbours before we were boyfriend and girlfriend, lovers before we were married.
Yet rain, hail or shine, we had sat at this very table for more years than I could count.
I looked over at David. For a man in his late thirties, he has held his age well. Being a parent agreed with him. Yes, he had lines on his face that were not there a few years ago, bags under his eyes from the constant sleep deprivation of those late-night nappy changes, and he was starting to get a few greys to become prominent in his lustrous black hair.
But even with the toll of parenthood, he looked good. His body was well toned from time spent at the Gym, and he still moved like the athlete he was in high school, even though I know he worried about the Big Four Zero coming in a couple of years.
Yet it was his eyes, that held my attention as we both sat, they were so alive, so full of life. David had a way of looking at the world, even when things went wrong that drew you to him. There was only that one time when Charlie was born that his eyes dimmed, and I was worried for a while that the light would not return.
The café attendant came out and brought two coffees, one in front of David and one in front of me. David thanked him, and I smiled. He was always so courteous to everyone around him, making me laugh.
He looked over my way as I looked back out to the sky, I wish...
"You know,"
I said absentmindedly.
"I think the weather is going to be hot this Christmas. Charlie might like a trip to the beach."
David picked up his coffee and took a sip, looking out at the same urban horizon.
"What do you think Charlie, fancy a trip to the beach?" He asked.
I smiled, and I enjoyed listening to him talk.
Then, I felt more than I saw her coming, and I automatically stood.
"Hey there, good looking," she said, sitting down and picking up the coffee. "Have my boys been good today?"
David poked a face at Charlie, and the boy poked his tongue back, his lips still covered in crumbs from the toast.
David looked over at Stephane and smiled, picking up his coffee and waiting.
The new arrival smiled back, picked up the coffee that had been placing while I was sitting and laughed as they 'clinked' coffee cups.
I smiled, joining them and feeling sad at the same time.
I walked around the stroller and kissed my son on the forehead. Right before I did he looked up, looked me in the eyes and giggled.
"Shh," I told him, putting my fingers to my lips. He repeated the motion.
"What's up, Charlie boy," David asked.
"Mum," he said, pointing into the air at me.
David frowned.
"It's all right, babe," Stephane said, putting her coffee down and leaning across the table to place a hand on David's arm. "He's two, he never knew Sarah."
For a moment, the eyes of the man I loved dimmed. I hated that.
"I know," he said, sighing, and he smiled. 'He's said that a few times recently, but never at you."
Stephanie smiled big and lovingly at him. I felt a wince of envy, but it passed quickly.
"It's okay if he never does," she told him. He's not my son."
"Not mine either," David said, the brightness of the life in his eyes almost going out entirely.
I swung into his lap and wrapped my arms around him. Phantom tears escaped and vanished from existence as they struck David. He never noticed.
"It was not your fault," Stephanie and I said simultaneously. Of course, David could only hear her.
I got off his lap and crouched down beside him.
"It was never your fault," I told him, aching to be able to touch him, to hold him omen last time, to tell him how sorry I was and how much I loved him.
I touched his face and ran my hand up and through his hair. For David, it was like a breeze passing through his brow. It wasn't much, but it brought him out of his mood.
David and I, were a couple in love. We had life by the hand, and nothing could stop us. David worked as a fitter and turner for one of the local manufacturing firms. I was a teacher at a special school for high needs children. We were young and going to take the world by storm.
That was until, they entered my life.
David never knew; he was blissfully ignorant. But I started an affair with two of my fellow teachers. Both of them were so different from my David. One, Grant, a PE teacher, was big and strong; he would take me without heed of my desires. Phillip, an English teacher, was so thin and wiry, yet he knew how to push my buttons.
And then there was David, my David, the other half. You could put Grant and Philip together every day of the week, and they could not hold a candle to David.
So why the affair?
I wish I knew. It started on a night out with the facility. We had some drinks, and I ended up dancing with Phillips and feeling his manhood pressing against me. But at the end of the night, I had enjoyed making him groan and making a mess in his jeans.
We played, and eventually, I caved and let him take me to bed. The guilt I had nearly overwhelmed me, and I would have ended it and confessed if Grant hadn't blackmailed me, having found out about Philip and me.
When I found out I was pregnant, I found myself lost. I had no idea who had gotten me pregnant. But David, being such a loving, ignorant fool, comforted me, figuring my mood swings over the past couple of months were the early stages of my pregnancy.
I called an end to my affair with both Phillip and Grant, praying that my baby would be David's.
While I kept both men at arm's length and tried to be the wife I should have been to David, I was fooling myself.
I was a week from my due date when it all went wrong. It was my last day of work before I went on a year's maternity leave, and David was to pick me up when Grant came charging into the staff room, Phillip hot on his heels.
"I don't care, dumbass," Grant was almost yelling as the door to the room shut behind him. "It's my fucking kid, and I'll be taking care of her."
"No, it isn't shit for brains," Philip restored. "I've done the math, and it's mine."
It didn't take me being a rocket scientist to figure out what they were talking about, and I stood to end it all when they saw me, ignoring the others in the room.
"Sarah," Phillip pleaded, "Tell this thumping idiot that it's my kid, not yours. This fuckwit should go back to fucking farm animals."
"I..." was all I got before everything went blank.
The next thing I knew I was screaming in agony, I was in the midst of labour. I had never felt a pain like this before. I had expected neither my region to hurt. But not my head and neck.
I heard a voice.
"She's awake," I heard a voice say. Then, a hand grasped mine. "Mrs Other, stay with us. You're in labour, and you're injured."
I drifted in and out. I felt pain and pressure. Then I heard a cry: Charlie was born. And I closed my eyes.
When I next opened my eyes, I was standing beside Charlie, and I knew I had not made it.
My son was a good-looking, pink, and healthy boy. I looked out of the nursery and saw my husband, David, sitting there with his head in his hand, sobbing.
In listening to everyone talk over the next few days, I learnt that as I stood to confront my former lovers, Grant had taken exception to Philips' farm comment and grabbed a ceremonial sword that the French Teacher had brought in to show the class. Grant grabbed it and, in a rage, without thinking, swung away.
The sword all but took Philips's head off, and I happened to be in reach, and it dug deeply into my own neck.
Philip had died there in the staff room, and I had managed to hang on until my son was born.
Grant was arrested and would spend the rest of his life in prison for the double homicide.
It took two months for David, my beautiful David, to sort out the mess. He looked after Charlie, and as the details of my affairs came to light and doubt that Charlie was not his crept in, he never once treated Charlie differently.
When the results came back that Charlie was Philips's son, not his, he never caused a stink and never did anything more than cry when he thought no one was watching.
Me, I was there through it all. I had no idea what I was: a ghost, a spirit. I never saw anyone else. I didn't sleep, but I had times when I was 'resting'. I never interacted with anyone except, for some reason, Charlie. He could see me, hear me. But that was it.
I took to singing to him and telling him stories about David and me growing up. I called David his father because that was what he was. I followed David and Charlie everywhere because I had nothing else to do.
When David met Stephanie, I was immediately jealous. How dare another woman try to take my man. By then, Charlie was a year old, and I had been dead for a little over twelve months. Stephanie was a beautiful woman--an accountant with a bubbly attitude and plenty of curves. When she started staying over, I stayed with Charlie, ignoring the sounds coming from my once-bedroom in favour of singing to my son.
But over time, she won me over; she would never be as stupid as I was and never put herself into a situation where she could be tempted. David's parents loved her, my parents loved her and I admired the woman.
Back in the moment, I smiled at Chalie and pointed at Stephanie.
"She's going to be you're Mum," I told him. Charlie looked between myself and Stephanie not understanding. David and Stephane thought Charline was being cute.
