All that matters

He settles into the corner booth, dark coat slouching around him with a tired sigh. Two bowls of miso soup gone. Half-finished lunch slowly becoming dinner. At table's edge, his phone blinks red.

She flips one of hers open, looks at the time. "Is it time?" he says. She nods. "It's time."

He sits up, reaches two hands across the table; she rubs the roughness on his knuckles and promises to fix it. And then they flee into the chill of the day, running alongside each other in opposite directions.

But for one moment or 10, red blinking lights didn't matter. And that's all that matters.


Photo by Bund Freund from Corbis