Don’t You Need Somebody?

N.S. Nitish

He sat at the small wooden table for two outside the café, but there was no chair facing him. With his headphones on, he was looking at the cars and bikes passing on the wet, dark black, alley road which partly reflected the headlights and the red tail lamps. His iced tea feeling ignored and forgotten was melting away in anger. The soft rock songs gelled in with the cold breezy night perfectly and the breeze made the neem tree shower the raindrops napping in the laps of it’s leaves on him.

He looked at all the people inside the café, some tables had smiling couples immersed in love looking at each other eat, while some tables had groups of friends laughing their guts out in front of their plates. And then, he looked at the wall facing him and laughed at himself for all the times his loneliness had bothered him. He then remembered all the times he had a good time going to the movies and restaurants alone, the solo trip he took, the cities and towns he had explored, the times he watched the sun rising from the hills and the sun setting into lakes, and the day he played at that sandy beach — all by himself.

He didn’t realize when the gentle soft rock song had ended and when the next song had even started. When his ears woke up again, they could listen to Enrique singing —

“Don’t you need somebody? Baby I wanna I wanna know.”

And he thought to himself, ‘not really Enrique.’

The End