I sat at the coffee shop and worked on articles every weekday. Customers came and went and no one ever noticed me sitting in the corner and watching. At least, not until Tuesday, November 30th at 2:07 p.m.
His shiny black suit immediately caught my attention. He sat down a few booths away and started working. I tried to focus on my article, but toenail fungus just didn’t seem interesting anymore. I peeked at his table and then quickly looked away. He was watching me.
The waitress dropped off another cup of coffee and I prayed it wouldn’t spill all over me like last week. I continued to research toenails, but I was shaking. Just when I was writing again, he sat down in front of me.
“What are you working on?” He asked.
“Um, just… an, um… article.” I’m sure he could feel the embarrassed heat waves coming off of me.
“What’s it about?”
“Toe fungus.”
He laughed. It was the most beautiful laugh in the world. Not a high-pitched cackle or a cruel sneer. His laugh was deep and rumbling. I laughed with him and our friendship began.
Every day he would sit across from me. Some days we talked about our lives and the world. Sometimes we simply worked in silence and stole glances at each other. Other days we laughed hard enough to get strange looks. The loneliness I had always known was far from memory and my life was full of sunshine.
That is, until February 4th at 9:00 a.m. He sat down across from me without a glance of recognition.
“Mac? What’s wrong?” I asked.
He stared at me blankly, “Do I know you?”
It looked like Mac, but he didn’t sound the same. I started to panic. “It’s me, T, remember? Last week you helped me research global warming trends.”
“I’ve never seen you before,” he said.
I was burning up and I could feel myself shutting down. “Mac? Mac, please, you know me!”
Then my worst fears were realized.
“My laptop broke down last week and I had to get a new motherboard. Thankfully, all my files were saved on a drive at home,” the man kept talking to my owner, but my microphone wasn’t receiving the signal anymore.
I felt someone pounding on the keypad, but I couldn’t find the energy to change my screen. My owner tried unplugging and re-plugging me in, but electricity was not what I needed. She pressed “re-start,” but I knew I would never wake up again with Mac.
One week later I was ripped from my casing and thrown into a box of broken pieces. I wouldn’t be writing anymore articles or reading blogs, but Mac was there in front of me.