Reserved
It's not at all what he expects. Different to everything he thought he would feel.
When he eventually comes face to face with her, it was in the backdrop of tinkling instruments of classical musicians and expensive perfume which choked his airways with their cloying stench. He had been standing by the table over laden with food that no one was touching, not the thin tall women in clinging dresses or the men stifling in suits that stretched across threateningly bursting waists and shoulders. He had shuffled along the table, heaping his plate with food he was not going to consume, for want of anything better to do. His hand paused when he came to the éclairs, stopped by a reserved sign with a familiar name upon it.
He stared at it for a whole minute, at that name, then resentment rose in his throat like bile. He snatched an éclair from the middle of the pile, creating a gaping hole on the plate. His teeth ripped into it furiously, the sudden burst of expensive cream and chocolate filling his mouth, tasting like triumph.
"The eclairs are reserved!" her familiar voice sounds behind him, indignant and angry like a Queen who has caught a subject stealing gold from her King's coffers. The sudden surprise causes the pastry sticks in his throat, a retching cough to wrack his body as his oesophagus tried to expel the bolus, his eyes filling with water. He's distantly aware of his name leaving her lips as a surprised exclamation. She's moved into action as he continues to choke, a hand hits him on the back, perhaps harder than necessary and eventually his body manages to right itself, enough for him to straighten, gasping for breath. When he wipes the water from his eyes she's standing in front of him now, staring with wide brown eyes that always seemed to speak volumes, though her red lips remained closed.
Small sandwiches and tarts litter the floor around them, the plate having slipped from his hand as his survival instincts conquered his body. Funnily only the torn éclair remains in his hand, the hole he had ripped into it revealed its insides like chocolate puss. And he just stands there, with it in his hand, staring at her.
For a moment her face shows shock, her red lips part slightly, her brown eyes widen with surprise, then trepidation, then pity and perhaps, though this may have been wishful thinking, regret. And then she is closed to him once more, a fortress of cool solitude. There is an awkward silence that hangs like tethered string; it was like they were strangers, worse somehow... His best friend was standing right in front of him, and he didn't know what to say and it was ridiculous.
His mouth opened, he thought of sweeping aside everything with a few simple syllables. But before he could a voice called out her name and her eyes flicked in their direction, away from him. They flickered back to his face for a second, she gave him a wane small smile, and then she was gone in the click of heels and the rustle of her dress.
He stood there for a minute, watching the spot she had disappeared in the crowd, between a balding man and an auburn blonde beauty fighting in hushed angry whispers. Finally he glanced down at the mess on the floor, bending down to pick the various ruined, crumbled pastries from the floor.
"Sir, please, there is no need, we will get that," an accented voice of one of the staff interrupted him before he could even touch the first crumb. The man knelt down beside him, quickly and efficiently clearing the catastrophe from the floor. He straightened, watching on blindly, in shock, as it was swept away. And then, just with one brush stroke, it was all gone, the staff member went to toss it in a can somewhere out of sight of these perfumed peacocks and Dan was left standing there with a ripped open éclair.
It took the balding man, bumping past him with the blonde woman on his arm, for him to tear his eyes away from the piece of carpet and for sound to suddenly return to his world. The man didn't even spare a glance at him as he and the woman moved towards the exit, both completely absorbed with the other, locked in an intimate bubble of romance.
He watched them leave and then, absently placing the éclair back upon the pile he headed for that same exit with rushed steps. He had never been part of this world…not hers at least…
It wasn't at all what he had expected. It didn't hurt as much, at least not in the way he thought it would...
A/N: Is anyone still reading this? : )