They Never Saved Me A Seat So I Built My Own Table Chapter 15
A year later, on Thanksgiving, Matteo booked the same restaurant again.
This time, he reserved a five-person set menu in advance.
There were five cups on the table, five sets of utensils, and five desserts waiting.
On the one at the very end, my name was written in chocolate.
At seven o’clock, the four of them arrived one by one.
The fifth chair remained empty all night.
No one suggested taking it away.
Over the past year, they had sent me holiday greetings and mailed me gifts.
I accepted none of them.
Eventually, they stopped asking when I was coming home.
Bruno put my bracelet back in its box and never took it out again.
He went to the music festival twice more.
Each time, he bought an extra ticket, but he never again saw the person who should have been there with him.
Nico rarely took pictures anymore.
Because every time he raised a camera, he thought of the person who had always stood behind the lens, the one for whom no one had ever thought to save a single photo.
Matteo learned to remember everyone’s birthdays.
But every year on mine, the message he typed would sit in the text box, unfinished, until he finally deleted it without sending.
Bianca moved out of The Arches.
She started to handle her own problems instead of waiting for someone else to fix them for her.
Slowly, the food on the table grew cold.
Matteo looked at the empty chair and finally said, “Let’s not wait anymore.”
No one objected.
At last, they had accepted it. I was never coming back.