Prompt: Write about someone who sees a former lover at another table in a restaurant.

"You know it's crazy, but you're the first person I've ever told about that." Julie tugs coyly at the stud in her lower lip and a smile spreads across her face that could knock angels out of the sky. "What do you think it says about me?"
Her characteristic scent of warm laundry makes my id curl up in a tight ball and purr.
"I think it says you need help."
"Oh yeah?" she scowls playfully, sweeping a few errant strands of coal black hair away from her face, "like medication?"
"Mm hmm. And plenty of physical therapy."
Of course neither one of us needs more medication tonight; our faces are already flush with it as we lean across the table to flirt. The bars have been closed for an hour now and the lights in the diner buzz the way they do when they're tired. Our waitress is at the register counting out bills for the third time, and the cook is in back wiping down the grill. It's one of those cheesy 50s restaurants with enough neon in the place to guide a space-shuttle in from low orbit. There's kitschy crap hung everywhere that pines for a simpler time of TV dinners, jukeboxes, sock hops, poodle skirts, patriarchy, domestic violence, HUAC, containment, and anti-miscegenation laws. I only wish the Cleavers could see us here now, the twisted fucks. They might learn a thing or two about affection.
Julie plays with the straw connecting her to the frosty remains of a milkshake positioned between us. She fixes me with a look that could light a candle at forty feet.
"That sounds pretty involved, Slick. We oughta get started right away."
She's about ready to climb over the table as her dark eyes glitter with anticipated sin. Deep, brown eyes; warm and electrifying.
I drip a little faux cream into my drink from the disposable plastic container on the table and fold it in with the back of my spoon. Pretty close to that color, actually, but more electrifying and quite a bit warmer.
"Are you trying to see the future, buddy?"
"What?"
"Are you trying to see the future in there? You've been staring at your coffee for thirty minutes now."
For 6.50 an hour, my waiter's not trying too hard to look like Buddy Holly. An aluminum pot of coffee steams perfunctorily in his right hand, but I haven't really touched the cup I got. Behind him, neon lights encircle a clock that's only accurate twice a day and nostalgia drips down the walls, gummy and brown, like unfiltered nicotine. A museum, this place; A mausoleum of posthumous embellishments, although some of the pies in the display case look original. What the hell am I doing here again anyway? I don't even drink coffee.
"There's plenty of fish in the sea, you know."
Incapable of effectively fielding this unsolicited cliche, my mind just lets it drop and roll away.
"Huh?"
"Oh it's a girl with you, I can tell if you don't mind me saying. I see this kind of thing in here all the time. Take that guy, for instance, couple tables down with the date. He was in here last weekend, staring a cup of coffee cold like yourself, and now -- well, unless I miss my guess, that cat's getting lucky tonight. And you can't see the girl from here, but between you and me, she's a dish."
"...you know," he capitulates rotely, drawing broad psychological analysis from the melanin levels in my skin, "if you're into that kind of thing."
Cat? Dish? Does this guy have anyone else to serve? Looking past the glassy surface of the dour drink in front of me, icy and inanimate, it seems fairly obvious that he doesn't. In fact I'm the only paying customer in the joint-- with the exception of the couple previously mentioned of course, huddled intimately over a shake. I hadn't really seen them come in; hadn't seen everyone else leave, but my sore neck and burning eyes make me wish I had and gone with them.
I remember when Julie's affection had started to cool; When our connection had begun to erode. Like the attrition of a lingering illness, there was no jarring catharsis, no pivotal dissension, just a slow, inexorable drift against which I was powerless and about which my heart was sick with grief. Towards the end, I would hold her to me with a desperate, possessive longing, fearing that each moment would be our last; aware that while the vessel I clung to was warm and alive, the passion inside it was dying. Soon it was cold and lifeless setting a pattern for everything else to follow.
"I can take that into the kitchen and throw it in the microwave if you want," Buddy interjects helpfully. "That coffee's bad enough hot, if you know what I mean, you couldn't pay me to drink it cold."
"Oh that's okay," I say, shaking off the memories and going for my wallet. "I'll pay to not drink it at all." I guess I'd pouted enough for one night. Julie was gone, and all the caffinated sacrifices in the world wouldn't bring her back. The Big Bopper here was right, of course. It was time, as the proverb goes, to pick up my shit and move on.
"Up front, buddy," the waiter gestures, as I fumble through some bills. Then, as the mug and saucer rattle up into his hand, "It seems a shame to charge you for a cup you didn't drink, but it's kind of like rent on the seat, you know."
"Oh yeah I'm not complaining," I state flatly and evict myself from the booth. "You guys got a restroom here?"
"Sure we do. Over there near the sign." The guy trundles away to the sink.
I drop a tip on the table and pass the only other occupants of the diner as I head to the back of the room. Wrapped in a fog of endorphins and alcohol, blissful and insular in one another's doughy gaze, they seem oblivious to the world around them; over-worked wait staff; buzzing lights, ugly customers with broken hearts slouching past on the way to the can. I don't even glance in their direction, but as I reach the far wall I catch a whiff of warm laundry and the door behind me closes on an easy laugh that lowers the moon in rapt attendance. "You know it's crazy," says a familiar voice, "but you're the first person I've ever told about that."