I met Mia on a Tuesday. It wasn't a particularly remarkable Tuesday, as far as Tuesdays go, which is to say it felt like any other day trying to decide whether it was worth caring about. I was sitting on a bench by the fountain in front of the library, watching the water do what water does, and she just appeared, like a character who's been there all along but only now walks onstage.
"Got a light?" she asked, holding up a cigarette that hung loosely between her fingers.
I didn't smoke, never have, but I had a lighter in my pocket. I carried it around mostly for the same reason I carried a notebook: it made me feel like the kind of person who would, you know, be worth writing about. So, I handed her the lighter and watched as she cupped her hand around the cigarette and flicked it to life.
"Thanks," she said, leaning back and exhaling a thin ribbon of smoke into the air. She had this calm about her, like she'd seen through the punchline of life's joke and decided it wasn't worth laughing at.
"No problem," I said, because what else do you say to a stranger who materializes beside you on a grey Tuesday?
We didn't talk much at first. Just sat there while the afternoon pressed on, an agreement of silence stretched between us. It was strange, though, how easy that quiet felt. With other people, silence was heavy, something to be filled in before it got awkward. But with Mia, it was like the silence was the thing itself, the conversation we were having.
Eventually, she stood up, took one last drag from her cigarette, and crushed it beneath her heel.
"You gonna be here tomorrow?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said, honestly.
"Cool," she said, like my uncertainty was the best answer I could've given. Then she walked away, disappearing into the city like smoke carried off by a breeze.
----------------------------------------
I didn't think I'd see her again. Mia didn't seem like the kind of person who belonged to places. But she showed up the next day. And the next. Every day after that, she'd find me on the bench, smoking her cigarette and watching the world move.
We talked more, slowly, like peeling off the layers of an onion. She'd tell me about the people she noticed — the guy who always came by with a newspaper tucked under his arm but never read it, or the woman who wore sunglasses even when it rained. "Everyone's hiding something," she said once. "Even if it's nothing."
She never talked about herself, though. Not in the way that mattered. I only knew the broad strokes: she was seventeen, went to a high school across town, and she had a dog she never walked because "he's more of an existential companion than a pet."
And me? I didn't talk about myself much either. I liked Mia better for not knowing me, for the way she didn't ask questions that made me confront how little sense I made. With her, I could be just a person on a bench, watching the world move.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
----------------------------------------
One day, I asked, "Where do you go when you're not here?"
She looked at me, cigarette perched on her lips. "Nowhere special," she said, like that explained everything. I wanted to ask more, but something about the way she said it made me think that 'nowhere' was where she'd rather stay.
----------------------------------------
Then, one day, Mia didn't show up.
It was a Wednesday. The sky was heavy with rain that never fell, and the world felt dimmer without her there. I stayed on the bench for hours, watching the fountain, waiting for her to materialize again. But she didn't.
For weeks, I kept coming back. The same bench. The same waiting. But it wasn't the same anymore, because she wasn't there, and suddenly, the silence between me and the world felt unbearable.
----------------------------------------
It wasn't until a month later that I found out what happened. I ran into her at a coffee shop across town. She was sitting alone at a table by the window, staring out at the street like she was searching for something she couldn't name.
I almost didn't recognize her without the cigarette, without that distance she always carried. But it was her.
"Mia?"
She blinked, surprised, like she wasn't expecting anyone to know her name. "Oh. Hey," she said, her voice flat, like she wasn't sure if she should be happy or sad to see me.
"Where've you been?" I asked, though I already knew the answer wasn't going to satisfy me.
She shrugged. "Nowhere special."
I sat down across from her. "You just disappeared."
"Yeah," she said, looking down at her coffee. "I tend to do that."
For a moment, neither of us said anything. The rain finally started outside, tapping against the window in soft, steady rhythms.
"Did you miss me?" she asked, not in a way that sounded like she actually cared about the answer.
I didn't know how to answer. I wanted to say yes, but the truth was, I missed the idea of her more than anything. I missed the way she made the ordinary seem like it had a secret hiding beneath it. But that wasn't her fault. It was mine.
"I don't know," I said, honest as I could be.
She smiled, just a little. "That's okay. Neither do I."
----------------------------------------
We didn't talk long that day. And after that, I didn't see her again. I kept going to the bench by the fountain for a while, but it never felt the same. Eventually, I stopped going altogether.
But sometimes, when I'm sitting alone, I think about her. Mia. The girl who taught me the art of passing through. The one who never stayed long enough to be held onto.
Some people are like that. They're the spaces between things, the pauses that let you breathe, the fleeting moments that make you realize you're alive — even if just for a second.