The Town and Old Percy

At this age, a mug of coffee doesn’t do much to warm one’s hands anymore. Thick, cold fingers can fold themselves as tightly as reduced mobility allows, yet the warmth from the ceramic isn’t quite enough to penetrate the weathered surface of frozen, old skin.

Old Percy had been nursing this particular mug of coffee for a while now. The rich taste of it coated his mouth after just a single sip of the hot drink. He ran his tongue over his teeth and smacked his lips. It was still too hot to drink; it’s harder to tell when one’s hands have grown numb like this. He had made the mistake of sipping too early, and his tongue blistered with a faint tingling sensation.

He was a regular customer at the little street-side café. Frequenting every Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday: never missing a day, arriving exactly three minutes after opening each morning. Early enough that there was always a small chill in the air and the sky wasn’t properly blue yet, a soft shade of periwinkle, something touching just a bit more purple than blue.

There were few other customers just yet, although the morning rush was bound to start soon. People would come pushing through the door to grab their mandatory caffeine shot before hurrying to work, the tiny bell above the doorway ringing with reckless abandon as people shoved their way in, careless of manners if it put a few less minutes between them and an overfilled cup of coffee.

Occasionally, Old Percy would get a few greetings sent his way from other customers; polite waves and smiles, or the cheery “morning ol’ Percy!” From the nice young man who worked down at the farm shop. He would help Percy pack his groceries into plastic bags, knowing he had trouble with grip. However, Percy never quite remembered if his name was Jesse or Johnny, not that the young man ever noticed that Percy never said his name in the small exchanges they had from time to time. He was probably the only person left in this small town with a bubbly personality.

Apart from that young man, Percy assumed those other townsfolk only greeted him from pity. He was a lonesome old man sitting by himself in an almost empty café. Everyone here knew each other, it was a small town after all. What’s not to pity about a decrepit old man living on his own in the middle of nowhere? They knew family didn’t visit him. They didn’t know, however, that Percy didn’t even have any children to visit him in the first place.

Percy tentatively tried another sip of his coffee. It wasn’t quite drinkable yet, so he lowered it slowly back down onto the table. His hands shook a little, and a few drops overflowed, trickling down the side of the mug.

He glanced briefly around the café, watching the few other people who decided to come here this early. Three older women sat on the round table by the window, nattering with their heads close together over what was probably baseless village gossip again. Percy thought they looked like a cluster of noisy birds chattering on a fence, nodding their heads and clicking their beaks in a truly engaging conversation about boring, trivial things.

Across the room, the only other customers were a young couple, looking to be in their early twenties. They shared a little cake between them, the girl leaning over the table to receive the little piece the boy offered from his own fork. They were all conserved little smiles and quiet giggles, wholeheartedly, fully absorbed in their own little world: their own personal bubble in the corner.

Old Percy watched as the boy reached over with a napkin, gently wiping the crumbs from her mouth. Puppy love, certainly. They were young lovers; deeply, irrevocably in the throes of their honeymoon phase, like they would wither and wilt like plucked roses should they be even three feet apart from each other.

Even the air around them seemed to sweeten, sweet in the puckering way, dipped like hot pastry into a bowl of fine sugar. Love like that was enough to make anybody jealous, the kind of public displays of affection that would get eye-rolls, or the over-dramatic gagging of teenagers or little kids that weren’t old enough to have learned to hide their reactions yet.

Something like grief ached behind his eyes. The faint whispers of an old feeling slowly bubbling to the surface, something that had been tucked away and trapped like a letter in a glass bottle, long since thrown into the sea.

A blurry image of a face flickered in his mind; burnt black and white photos offered gingerly from the hands of Time. As if it were gently asking, “do you remember her?”

The beige café walls warped around him, and like he had accepted Time’s offer to remember, everything began to wind backwards.

He had met her in the blistering heat of summer almost sixty years ago. It was the kind of summer where the sun was too hot on your back, where it burned uncomfortably no matter how long you went outside. Even the indoors were sweltering, there was no hiding there. It was the kind of summer where lemonade glasses sweated in your hand and windows were never clean, where the grass yellowed and dried out.

Freshly nineteen, Percy was someone who chased freedom like a house-cat. He would take any chance to be outside, roaming the town around him with boundless curiosity. He would meet anyone and everyone, see everything there was to offer, be away for hours at a time. Yet at the end of the day, he would always trail back, taking refuge in the comfort of his own home. It was like no matter what he found out there, no matter how much he loved it, nothing was ever enough to pull him away from home. A buoy that could only wander so far, pulled back by its own anchor when the waves became too strong.

He was free, but only in this town. He didn’t care much for what was outside it.

Until Thea, of course.

Beautiful, witty, as brash and graceless as the wind. Silly and charming, chatty as a starling and as breathtaking as the glitter of sun through glass. She thrummed with crackling energy, bouncing from one place to another tirelessly, yet always taking time to admire it all.

She crash-landed into his life like a bomb, blowing his peaceful wandering to smithereens. She wasn’t from his town but was visiting relatives for the summer. He met her in a pub one evening. It was busy, everyone sat outside chatting over pints and relishing in the cooler temperature the late afternoon bought.

Percy had been sat on his own, meticulously thinking about what he’d do tomorrow when someone had swung themselves into the seat opposite him. He had looked up to see a young girl around his age, beer glass in hand. She had grinned at him, her fluffy auburn hair curling around her neck, stopping just short of her shoulders. She had instantly engaged him in conversation, nosey and curiously natured.

They had clicked immediately.

There was something unnameable about her. Something so brilliantly exciting and new. She was so easy to talk to, easy to understand. She was so effortless to love.

They had met up the day after, his earlier plans for that day forgotten. He showed her all the places he’d been to, at least those worth showing. She had shared her knowledge and her whimsy. Percy had met a lot of people, but that sort of company never stayed. Thea did, because they met the next day too, and the day after that.

Mundane, boring things were always interesting with her. She could turn the bleakest place or activity into something fun. It was contagious, how she shined a bit of light onto everything. She was a person that glowed, whose very skin could reflect the sunlight like the moon. She was the first and only thing that ever got Percy to pull away from home. She began to cut the string that tied him down, and she encouraged him to let the waves carry him away.

He was quick to fall. Tumbling head over heels in such a cliché way. He had never wanted anything more than her. Overwhelmingly sweet, he had never experienced it before. He wanted to be with her, he knew that. He knew that very much.

Forever, if it were with her, was all he needed. He didn’t think there was anyone else he would want to spend his life with. He had never felt this way about anyone, and he was sure he never would again. It was fast, striking him from behind where he hadn’t seen it coming. Love was unexpected in all factors, and it snuck up on him like a shadow.

She knew, of course, when he had fallen for her. She simply laughed, took his hand in her own pretty ones, and pressed a sly kiss to his knuckles. She was a stunning dream come to life, and he was enamoured.

They danced around the town together, dragging each other through streets, alleys, and trees. He chased her eyes like a moth; they were his favourite thing about her. Glittering, alight with the colours of summer, deep and brown like dark coffee and stained wood. He would watch her run through the streets, buzzing with liquor, willowy limbs swaying like branches, her hair bouncing like fire. She would turn and look at him, her smile bursting from her face like dazzling sunlight.

He wanted her forever. He could live this life with her, here in this small town, eternally. First love is as delightful as daylight, but dangerous like loose sparks. One wrong move, and it all goes up in flames. That’s another cliché, and he turned his head to ignore it. Of course Thea would stay if he asked.

However, he hesitated. Percy was someone, while adventurous, was always looking behind him. He could see everything the world had to offer and be perfectly happy staying in one place. He was someone who second-thought everything. He wandered like a free spirit but always returned to the comfort zone of his small hometown, never leaving the boundaries he built for himself. He was comfortable, unable to live without a safety net.

He was scared to tell her to stay. They loved each other, most certainly, but when those brilliant, fiery months passed and the weeks slimmed to days, he realised it wasn’t enough. Eternity began to shrink.

Her eyes had been teary when she told him, the usual light in her gaze had petered out. She loved him dearly, more than anything, but she wasn’t going to stay here for him. She was leaving anyway, but as much as she cared, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life here, she wouldn’t come back just for him. She pointed towards the horizon. “My future is out there.” She had said. “I’m not going to be tied down to this place. There’s so much out there, but here…” She trailed off. “… There’s nothing here. I can’t build a life here, Percy. And you’re certainly not going to leave this place, not for me.”

She had been right. Percy didn’t know or care for the world outside. He was perfectly content to spend the rest of his life here, unmoving, satisfied, cradled in the swaddle of his comfort zone. It didn’t matter how much he loved her. He wanted her to stay here, but he wouldn’t leave for her.

She had left the next day, back turned, bags packed. He had watched her go, regret eating away at his stomach, his heart like a rock in his chest. The sun was too hot, his shirt stuck uncomfortably to his back, and the humid air burned his lungs.

Subconsciously, he knew what he had lost that day, but it would be years later when he never found someone he loved like that again that he realised what he had let slip away. He never saw her again, because she never came back, and he never left.

Sat here now, alone, at the café, he had no idea where she was now. Had she started a family of her own? Danced brilliantly into the big wide world like leaping fire, taking whatever she could and flying far into the sky while he stayed tethered to the ground? He didn’t know.

The town had, over so many years, changed around him. He had mellowed out in his old age, but whilst the town and its people had come and gone and morphed before his eyes, he was the only thing that hadn’t changed one bit.

He slowly lifted the mug to his wrinkled lips, drinking a sip of the coffee. It had gone cold now, the flavour dull and brittle. He placed it wearily down once more and gazed around the room.

The young couple was gone now, the only remnant of their presence was an empty place of crumbs, which a waitress briskly walked over to clean up.

He watched her carry it away, and stared at the empty table, left to wonder what could have been, but in the end, he had lived and would die here, in this very same town. Rigid, unmoving, and alone.