“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a community writing project that Ben Wakeman organized as a practical exercise in empathy. The premise is simple. A group of writers anonymously contribute a personal story of an experience that changed their life. Each participating writer is randomly assigned one of these story prompts to turn into a short story written from the first-person point of view. The story you are about to read is one from this collection. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release. Enjoy the walk with us.
Cold Coffee (2886 words © Linnhe Harrison 2023)
Cold Coffee
Note to American readers, as I am aware there is a SoHo in New York; Soho is an area in Central London with origins dating back to the 16th Century. It is the centre of the British film industry and a hot spot for nightlife and entertainment.
I was a runner at one of Soho’s larger post-production houses. I delivered Starbucks and tidied the edit suites. I was young, beautiful and before too long, infatuated.
He was a film producer. He knew everyone that needing knowing and had little time for those that didn’t. He had piercing blue eyes and the right amount of grey hair. He was twice my age. He played the saxophone and wore expensive linen shirts. When he kissed me, my stomach turned upside down and my toes fizzled.
Was I in love? Yes, with star spangled bells on.
Did I know he was married? Yes.
Did I care? No.
It was less about apathy and more about the liberating naivety of youth – I filed ‘wife and family’ as an irrelevant fact, alongside other immaterial information such as ‘it rained yesterday’. It wasn’t difficult. Not when you’re 20 and having the time of your life.
I was engulfed by the indie film scene and drawn - like a bee to honey and a moth to a flame - into Soho’s sizzling square mile of all that was hot, happening and hedonistic. I raced through ’95 and the tip of ’96 in a glittering swirl of professional achievements, chemical highs and multiple orgasms.
I jumped up the ladder to assistant editor, then junior editor. A runner would bring me my Starbucks and tidy my edit suite. We cruised between launch parties and wrap parties, film festivals and film premieres.
He rarely asked me for my opinion on anything – whether that be work or pleasure or an intricate entwinement of the two. For the most part, he communicated by fusing charming monologues with flirtatious eye contact. His life was a biopic, and I was a starlet for fourteen glorious months of it.
The opening chords of Don’t Look Back in Anger soar out of the coffee shop’s excellent sound system, ripping a hole through the space time continuum and catapulting my heart back to 1996.
I drop two sugar cubes into my cappuccino. Two cubes, two eyes. With my spoon, I carve an upside-down smile. A tear falls into the face, sinking through the cocoa leaving behind a darkened halo of emptiness. I stir the chocolately mess into a tepid swirl of middle-aged misery. And then just sit there, looking at it.
‘Sonia?’
I look up. A man, my age or thereabouts. Well-built to the point of being cuddly. Charcoal wool jacket, mustard scarf. Round glasses with transparent frames, the lenses steaming up in the heat of the coffee shop. He takes them off to give them a quick wipe, and I grab at the limited opportunity to not look so utterly dreadful. I scrunch my palms into my eyes – as if it was possible to push tears back in – and reposition my jumbo yellow hair clip to snap up straying curls.
‘Kwame?’
He holds his arms out to me. I stand and shuffle my chair backwards in two or three awkward jerks. Fall into his hug. And start crying again. That’s the problem with not being done with your sadness before you are interrupted. It is still there, it still needs to come out.
Kwame holds me closer. A proper bear hug of a hug. ‘Hey hey… sweetheart. What’s up?’ Gently, he pushes me away and stoops a little to look into my eyes. My shame heightens further under the well-meant scrutiny. ‘Nothing, it’s fine. I’m fine. Bloody Oasis.’ I point at the speakers, which means nothing as the song has already moved on. Kwame squints at me, the corner of his mouth lifting in a puzzled smile.
‘I could join you for coffee?’
I nod, grab at my phone. He puts a hand on my arm. ‘No, I’m buying. What was this tragic effort supposed to be…’ his index finger circles the air over my cup of deflated foam. ‘… a cappuccino?’
‘Decaf, please. Sorry.’ I didn’t know why I was apologising for the lack of caffeine. Maybe because, another lifetime ago, we would down double espressos at midnight. Bending time to meet impossible deadlines set by non-creative people playing at being creative.
By the time he returns, I’ve recomposed myself and I’m looking forward to the coffee, a big step up from ten minutes ago. ‘So.’ He shrugs his jacket onto the back of a chair and takes the seat across from me. ‘Wow.’ He rests his hands on the table, one either side of his cortado. ‘Where do we start?’
I point at his left hand. ‘Married?’
He grins. A Cheshire Cat grin. ‘Yes. And you too, by the looks of it.’ His turn to gesture at a wedding ring. I smile, not quite at Cheshire Cat level but a decent effort. My mind fumbles through its back catalogue of years, trying to fit names to faces met in fleeting moments.
‘Connor…?’
Kwame laughs. I’ve missed his laugh. ‘Bloody hell that’s going back some, no. He was a knobhead. A good looking knobhead, I’ll grant him that. But still a knobhead.’ He reaches into his coat pocket and brings out his phone. Unlocks it with Face ID and flicks through Photos.
‘Tristan.’
He shows me a wedding snap, in which Kwame has his arm around a large cuddly man beaming the same I’m-just-loving-life smile as his new cuddly husband. Behind them, the grounds of a stately home sweep into a topiary bejewelled vanishing point.
‘That is so lovely.’ Lovely – trite. Predictable. Too often used as a throwaway comment. But it was just that. So lovely.
Kwame turns the screen to face him, his grin growing wider still as he relives the big day. ‘Thank you. I’m really happy.’ He puts the phone face down on the table and takes a sip from his cortado. ‘Shit that’s good coffee. Your turn. Are you still working in post?’
I drop two new sugar cubes into my new cappuccino and address the cocoa dusting rather than the man sitting opposite me. ‘No no. No. I packed all of that in after... So I er…yeah. I work at a community arts centre now. Marketing, admin. Bits of video editing here and there. Workshops with kids and that.’
‘That’s great sweetheart. The arts is a lifeline to so many. That’s really great.’
His tone is sincere, genuine. He doesn’t see the failure I assumed I had become. What a wonderful feeling.
‘Thank you.’
‘What does your husband do?’
I can feel where this is going. Iron bands flex and tighten around my heart. ‘He’s a teacher, primary school. We’ve been married seventeen years now, together for nineteen. And it’s good, yeah. Comfortable.’
‘Comfortable.’ I can’t decide if Kwame’s expression is one of pity or solidarity. ‘If you’d said that back in the day, I would have told you comfortable was for slippers.’ He knocks back the rest of his coffee, placing the little cup delicately onto its little saucer.
‘Kids?’
Here we go. ‘Er, I have a son…. he’s 15…’ I flip open the case on my phone, get the passcode right on the second attempt, show him a photo of a gawky teenager wearing red Beats headphones and looking suitably unimpressed with life. And then I blurt out ‘I’ve a daughter too’ and the backs of my knees dig into the wooden seating. An invisible, coffee shop friendly version of ‘brace brace’.
‘Oh that’s sweet. How old is she?’
My armpits and chest flush hot and sweaty. I could bail. I should bail, make something up. But I don’t. I hear myself tell him that she is 26 but soon to be 27 and that it’s her birthday next week and I can see his eyes widen as he does the maths and I open What’s App on my phone and shove the screen in his face.
I’ve shown him a selfie of a beautiful young woman. Light brown skin, large brown eyes, long black hair braided with hot streaks of fuchsia pink. The temple of Machu Picchu poses in the background, and she holds up two fingers on her free hand. Peace.
The silence between us stretches out, unbroken, unchallenged. The coffee machine hisses. Beans grind. Bryan Adams tells the baristas about his first real six string. But our little world is on pause.
‘Shit’. He says, eventually.
‘Shit’. He says again. ‘I mean holy shit, wow. She is the best of both of you.’
The tears start to fall again, quicker this time. I bury my face in my hands. My left arm receives a gentle squeeze. I shake my head, my shoulders shaking on their own accord. ‘I’m sorry Kwame… I’m sorry…’
‘He… he doesn’t know, does he?’
I shake my head again and check his face for judgement. Or shock. I just see concern.
‘I was only 21, I panicked… I left him, moved back to my parents. They helped with my baby but insisted I had nothing more to do with him. They said a man who could shit on his own family had no right to another...’
Kwame’s lips tighten in a half grimace, and he gives me a slight shrug. ‘I’m sure your folks meant well, but… well… life is never that linear, is it.’
A touch prickly on behalf of my late parents, I frown at the on-trend plywood tabletop. They had only ever done their best for me.
‘They weren’t wrong, though... I worshipped the ground he walked on, but I was just a pretty piece of nothing to him. I was so bloody naïve... I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times the bastard asked me how I was.’
‘Oh sweetheart, but he never asks that of anyone.’ A handkerchief arrives in my limited field of vision, and I pull at the soft folds of cotton. ‘He assumes we all have the same spoon bending amount of confidence. If something needs saying, he’ll just say it, and he expects the same from everyone else. Infuriating, yes. Hell yes. But uncaring, no. No no no.’
I feel young and stupid and middle-aged and harrowed all at once. My life and the perceptions that had steered it shift under me. It had not occurred to me that transcendent levels of confidence and glacial indifference could look the same on the outside. I was emotionally too young when I was with him. And as a vulnerable new mum I had indoctrinated myself into my parent’s simplistic, protective version of events.
‘Shit… I… I don’t know what to do with that…’
Kwame takes my hand in both of his, waiting for me to gather my spiralling thoughts.
‘… I guess I kept thinking I’d get better at this thing called life, you know? I try so hard to keep the past behind me, but it’s just getting harder. I’m now nearly fifty, with a messy head full of buts and maybes and what ifs. And now that mess is in an even messier spin…’ I force a small laugh, which manages to sound even sadder than my sobs of earlier.
He holds my hand a little tighter. ‘Please don’t be so hard on yourself, sweetheart. Our decisions, and the hearts behind them, are what have brought us to the here and now. We need our mistakes and our wins. We wouldn’t be human without them.’
Those sobs of earlier do a swift u-turn and I bite my lip.
‘Big mistakes though.’
‘Big wins though.’ He leans forward, his eyebrows knitting into anxious angles. ‘Own them, sweetheart. Own. Them. They are a part of you. Not one of us…’ he tilts his head towards our fellow coffee drinkers, and I do that thing where you look even though their appearance is irrelevant to the conversation ‘…gets through life with a clean slate.’
I draw my hand from between his own. I rest my elbow on the table, dig my fingers into my hair and lean into my palm.
‘God dammit Kwame. You were always good with your words.’
‘Ha!’ A very welcome guffaw breaks into some of the tension. ‘My husband might disagree with you. But seriously sweetheart, we can’t live the lives we might have had. We are living this one. The one that put me in the same cafe as you, after who knows how many years.’ He gestures towards my abandoned beverages. ‘The one where you collect cold coffees.’ I flush with embarrassment and start to apologise.
He flashes a grin – just joking sweetheart, just joking. And then says ‘do you ever think about contacting him?’
I freeze for a second or two. The toes of the young woman buried within me fizzle.
‘Sometimes… but what would be the point? I was just a fling to him. Another pretty little thing to hang on his arm. I was a cliché… hah…’ I sit back in my chair, and now I am laughing - a release of nervous energy ‘…we both were I guess...’
‘No.’
Kwame interrupts me, shaking his head.
‘No. There wasn’t anyone else. Other than his wife...’ He pauses, awkward for once, aware of how wrong the last four words sounded. ‘…but she left him soon after you did. The man was a total mess for a couple of years.’
I say nothing because I don’t know what to say.
He takes my phone, holds it out for me to unlock, opens Contacts and taps in a name and number. Taps Save Contact. Passes the phone back to me.
‘Do yourself a favour, ping him on What’s App. You don’t have to go in all guns blazing. Just say hi.’
It is about as strange as I imagined it to be.
Returning.
For over a quarter of a century I had made a superhuman effort to avoid Soho, and the nostalgia that steeps through its historic brickwork into the narrow streets. I am surprised to see that ‘my’ post-production house is still here, now pouting brushed iron lettering and smoked windows. This world had kept turning.
I turn left off Wardour Street, and head down Brewer Street. I see the neon fizz of Harry’s Bar ahead, on the right.
I’m walking at a fast pace, speeding up as I approach the flickering blues and pinks. If I dared to slow down or contemplate, I would lose the momentum I needed to get through the door.
I go through the door.
Harry’s Bar is a confident establishment that refuses to bend to stylistic peer pressure – holding up two fingers to copper light fittings, marble tabletops, cocktails garnished with dry ice. It has therefore, with a dash of arrogance, become one of the hottest spots in the city. I wouldn’t have expected anything different.
It is 9pm on a Friday night, and hells bells it is busy. I press through the people-filled bar area and head to the back room, towards the suave sounds of saxophone and double bass. Here there is a smidge more space, a token stage adorned with a jazz quartet, and small groups of beautiful people gathered around small circular tables.
There is one old man sitting alone. He is facing me. White hair, white beard. Both sharply styled, a hipster cut. Expensive linen shirt. He leaves his seat and walks my way, briefly a silhouetted figure cut against the stage lights, briefly a younger man.
He stops a foot or so short of where I stand in a nervous puddle of hope, fear and heart palpitations. Close enough for me to be caught in those piercing blue eyes.
I realise, with a sharp slap of mortality, that he must be closing in on 70. Twenty-seven years to a 42-year-old is a steep climb.
He smiles and I melt a little bit. Damn him.
‘You came. I wasn’t sure if you would.’
‘I… I nearly didn’t.’
Behind him, the quartet count in their next number. Louis Armstrong. Skies of blue. Red roses too. A couple of couples fondle their way onto the scuffed area of 80s parquet that identifies as the dance floor.
He offers his hand. I return him his smile.
Thank you for reading Cold Coffee. You can read Wilson - another Same Walk, Different Shoes story - here.
My other Stack is a steampunk / dystopian serial story, with new episodes published every Friday. If this piques your interest, you can find out more and subscribe at The Incredible Machines of Thinkery.
Beautiful story. I love how it moves from past to present, with the past still very much present. The reveal of her daughter was both surprising and inevitable. Her emotions around aging and regret are treated with deftness and care. I enjoyed the many turns of phrase, e.g. this one: "sharp slap of mortality". Bravo!
The way you encapsulate so much in such a short amount of space, which allows us to understand her parents, her lover, her child, her friend and her regrets is so incredible. I feel like I understood each of her choices, and why she would have chosen the harder path of raising her daughter alone. I love that we end back in the present, where two people who haven't seen each other in 21 years are about to have their lives completely changed.