The café smelled exactly the same.
Fresh ground coffee. Butter from croissants. A faint note of vanilla from the candles that lined the window sills. Amrita hadn't come here in months—not since before the silence, not since the days when Tushar would steal her fries and rewrite her sentences on napkins.
It was their café.
Or at least, it had been.
She sat at their usual corner table, the one by the glass where the light poured in during the golden hour. The waitress recognized her and gave a warm smile.
"Hot chocolate?" she asked.
Amrita nodded. "Extra cream."
"And your friend?"
"Not today," she said, smiling gently.
The chair across from her felt louder than it looked—its emptiness a sound only she could hear. But she didn't move. Instead, she pulled out her notebook.
The cover was soft leather, the pages creamy and unspoiled. She hadn't written a word in it since Tushar left for Vienna three weeks ago. But today, something in the light or the silence or the memory of laughter sparked a need to write.
She began slowly.
"There's an empty chair at our table today.
Not because you're gone,
but because you're becoming."
The pen moved more easily now, the weight in her chest lifting with every word.
She paused to sip her hot chocolate and glanced around. A couple at the next table was arguing in hushed tones. An old man read the newspaper with thick glasses and a frown. A little girl pressed her nose to the glass, watching pigeons outside. Life was busy being itself. And that made her oddly happy.
Her phone buzzed.
Tushar: You're at the café, aren't you?
She grinned and typed back.
Amrita: Empty chair's behaving itself. Not stealing my fries.
Tushar: Give it five minutes. It'll start humming old Kishore Kumar tunes.
Amrita: Then I'll have to throw coffee at it.
Tushar: Cruel. Even for you.
She laughed out loud. The waitress glanced at her curiously and smiled. Amrita shrugged, "Friend texted a bad joke."
More messages came in.
Tushar: Played the Vienna piece for the team today. Guess what?
Amrita: They cried? Offered you millions? Offered me millions?
Tushar: All of the above.
Amrita: Really?
Tushar: Not the millions. But they loved it. They said it felt like home.
Her heart fluttered. Not from the praise, but from the fact that Tushar was slowly becoming himself again. Bit by bit. Chord by chord.
Then came another message.
Tushar: I named it 'Amu's Window Seat.'
Her breath caught.
She typed slowly.
Amrita: That sounds a lot like a memory I never want to forget.
Tushar: That's exactly why I wrote it.
She looked out the window. The sky was beginning to pinken. Somewhere far away, he was probably staring at another skyline, sipping bitter European coffee, making music that sounded like pieces of their past stitched into melodies.
She closed her notebook and stood up.
The chair across from her remained empty.
But it no longer felt alone.
As she walked out, she left a note under the sugar jar at their table.
"Reserved. For stories that aren't over yet."
---
Moral of the Chapter:
True friendship leaves space—space for presence and absence, for growth and stillness. Some chairs may be empty today, but they hold the promise of return, and that is enough.