Three glasses and a jacket

Four chairs scrape back at once. The table's heading out mid sentence, and for half a second your body starts to rise with them. Then you remember. Now it's you, three abandoned glasses, and somebody's jacket on a chair. Nothing's wrong. Still, for about a minute, you feel stranded in a room full of people.

Most of that feeling isn't craving. It's the ache of being left out, one of the oldest aches people have. It got glued to this because the two always showed up together. Half of being out there had nothing to do with what was in anyone's hand. It was the huddle. The side conversation. The cigarette took your need to belong and rented it back to you, ten minutes at a time.

Then watch them come back in, night air still on them, picking the conversation up right where it stopped. Whatever got said out there wasn't the best part of the night. You couldn't see that from inside the huddle. From the chair, it's obvious. Those ten minutes, every time the chairs scrape, belong to you now.

Next time the chairs scrape, turn to whoever stayed and ask a real question. What they're into lately. Where they grew up. The one who stays behind is often the more interesting person anyway. God sees that choice, made at nine on an ordinary Thursday. Nobody at the table will know. It still counts.