Nathan looked outside the cafe window to see the rain hit the pavement softly, regretfully. Was this god's way of laughing at him, or laughing with him?
It had been six years since he had last seen Zoe. A few more tattoos, a Pinterest-approved mohawk, a cut above her lip from a bar fight. But that smile, often used to buy her time for a playful riposte to whatever moderately clever nonsense had just come out of Nathan's mouth, that smile hadn't changed. Was there a time when I knew Zoe but didn't love her, Nathan asked himself. He knew the answer.
"So? What's your answer?" asked Zoe. "We down for hiking next week?" Six years in the urban shithole that is Detroit had done nothing to quell Zoe's love for the outdoors.
"I'm down for whatever, lady. You know that." The two shared a small laugh, then silence. He gently grabbed her hand. "Zoe, I.. I've missed you. I've missed you more than I can really put into words. And now that you're here, you're back, I feel that we can try again. Like we can start over."
Right before Zoe started choking to death on her sandwich she nodded in agreement with Nathan. She, too, had felt her return to Seattle was a chance for her to start her life over. While she did not love Nathan as much as he loved her, Zoe could see herself dating him again. At least, she could have. Before she started choking. To death. On a sandwich.
Her face turned from red to purple to blue, like a grotesque parody of the blueberry scene from Willy Wonka. She grabbed her neck as she fell to the ground and began to claw at her throat and face. Shortly after the capillaries in her eyes burst she began bleeding from her nose.
"Zoe! Zoe! Someone help, please!" Never in his life had Nathan felt more powerless. Despite each heave and squeeze and pull he could not get Zoe to spit out the food lodged in her throat. She was going to die in his arms. The entire small cafe had flown into a very polite panic, with various customers calling 911 and offering disingenuous aid to Nathan and Zoe, each person frantically surveying the room as if to look for someone to blame.
At the table adjacent to Zoe and Nathan's was an older woman. She had come alone, a light book about the decline of silent pictures in the 1920s resting unopened by her coffee. Much like her fellow patrons the old woman's eyes were transfixed on the scene unfolding right beside her, a woman's life dashed for the most asinine of reasons in front of a man with much mourning ahead of him. In spite of absorbing the entirety of this tragedy the woman had not put down her menu. She flagged a nearby waitress.
"Excuse me miss," said the woman, only now turning her head away from the grief stricken Nathan. "I'll have what she's having."
