the search continued

“I screwed up big time. Such a thing could have happened to none, other than me,” I kept repeating to myself
People who know me closely would have expected the same thing. I felt like I was the dumbest person in the whole world. The thought of the incident kept on torturing me again and again. I couldn’t sleep thinking about what would have happened if I had been more careful. I knew that she might have been waiting for my call.
“It could have happened to anybody,” I tried to console myself.
The next day, I visited the restaurant. I went and took the same corner place where we sat last night. For a moment I felt as if she was sitting next to me. After a moment, the waiter came for taking the order.
“Do you recognize me” I asked the waiter.
“yeah! You were here yesterday. So…..date again?” He asked bluntly.
“No….I mean there is something wrong but do you know anything about the girl sitting here with me last night?” I asked in an intense way as if everything in my life was dependent upon the answer.
The waiter’s face took the expression as if he was being questioned for murder.
“I don’t know anything,” he replied with a time lag of one millisecond after my question. I somehow got the idea that he misunderstood the situation. I made him sit beside me and explained, what happened.
“I don’t know anything” was his reply again but this time in a calmer way. He still wore the expression as if it was he who had lost the number of his girlfriend. It seemed that he wholly empathized with me.
I kept visiting the place at the same time thinking that there might be some feeble chances of her being there. Every time I visited the place, the waiter came to console me.
“You will find her one day and everything will be all right,” he used to say in the same tone. It seemed that he truly commiserated with me. Time passed by but things didn’t change. Finally it was time for me to leave for Jamshedpur. I went to the restaurant for the last time and left a note with the waiter which said.
‘It’s me! I am sorry but I lost your number that night. Please call as soon as you receive this note.’ My number was underneath that.
Although the odds of finding her were against me, I somehow believed that the chapter was not over yet.