Coffee

A Story by AcidRain

A short slice-of-life piece about unrealistic expectations.

Sarah always had this keen ability to call out my S**t. She sees it as a balance, me I see it as a constant disillusionment of what I've already played out a thousand times in my head.

" what do you expect?".

The 20 something people in the cafe seem to have all begun to fade into my peripheral vision. I'm watching all their conversations wondering if they notice mine like I do theirs.

" I'm just scared this is it, do I grow from here or am I going to be at a stand-still till something punches me in the face and I'm supposed to acknowledge my position."

She takes a sip of her coffee. " you know I can't answer that question".

The eggs were filled with disappointment. The coffee never had a chance, I expected too much. We've sat here two hours now. The waitress at this point is either annoyed or convinced her tip is going to be more than five dollars especially if I keep asking her for water.

" if you're unhappy, why don't you just change that. You do know that is an option."

She spent half of the time inbetween my constant complaints and our breakfast talking about her perception of what her relationship should be for her now, and comparing it to her current position. She's dating a guy, honestly for the life of me I can't remember his name.

"Dazed out again?".

She smiles while the background clears up and the people I was inadvertently staring at start to grow faces. I smile.

"I don't always you know?".

"No you're right just a good 70 percent of the time".

Sarah moved down from connecticut, we've known eachother since freshman year of high school. If my life were a sitcom this would be one of those cliché relationships the audience would expect to eventually get together. I'm not sure either one of us want to live up to that idea, even though both of us have acknowledged it at one point. Sarah is on her way to university. I haven't seen her in a year, that's mostly my fault. I was stuck in a dead end relationship. The kind where you both spend the majority of it concocting an idea of the other based on either what they're capable of or what you wish they would be to you. The relationship just speaks volumes about me, but it isn't until after that I can see my faults. That's the problem though I can always slightly see my faults but I can't keep it from wrapping its fingers around my neck and suffocating me. I end up trying to murmur out words and then get stuck on the idea of what I should do rather than what I want to.

She looks at me waiting for me to come back. "Jay is so clingy. I'm just not ready for that level of commitment".

"Question: is it because you don't see a future in letting this relationship evolve or because you have such a high standard of what your relationships should be like?".

"Maybe a bit of both, I don't know. You know he doesn't even pay for the movies, he's literally asked me to pay because he didn't have any money at all."

"Well tell me about him."

"He's convinced this whatever we are has value and is going to escalate."

"You don't right? That's what you're saying?".

"No, what I'm saying is that I haven't even made it clear that we are more than just two people talking."

"Oh, well I could see how that's a little weird." Truth is, I'm one of those guys. We romanticize, but I don't allow it to come out that early. If anything I'm at conflict with two sides of my perception of relationships. One side cynical disguised as realistic, the other pining for a theatrical definition of true love,.doesn't leave much room for middle ground when you're either going to fail or spend the rest of your life with the next person you're with.

"Yea, I just want to take it slow. He's a little intense you know?." I do know.

Lets get something clear Sarah is this really smart girl. I remember in highschool she caught this weird interest in me, nothing romantic, but for some reason she was interested in trying peel whatever layers she saw. I spent an entire day at her place when her mom wasn't home playing therapist with my perception of people. Don't get me wrong I can't help but be intrigued when someone else is of me, mainly because I'm so accustomed to believing I'm more of a background character than anything.

" I don't know Sarah I just feel like there might be something you're not completely being honest with yourself about.".

"No, not at all I don't want to be someone else's idea of a happy ending. I'm barely eighteen I haven't experienced enough to play house for anyone."

"Why don't you just tell him that?"

" I don't like to deny myself possibilities, options or even an experience that would've been good for me."

"Or a crutch."

" you think I'm using him as a crutch?"

"A huge one. Right now you're that 13 year old kid walking around laughing because he found someone's old crutch beside a pile of trash bags pretending you can't walk."

" well its not exactly a joke to me."

" him laughing isn't the point. The point is you can walk fine without the possibilities, if anything you're holding him back from the growth he could have, continuing this is only going to make him cynical about the concept of commitment."

"Or make him better for it."

"You're not the kind of person who will take that chance on a person's life."

"How would you know? I haven't seen you in almost a year because your ex was threatened by our friendship, and what did you do? You played along, I thought I knew you too. Guess I was wrong."

"Maybe we both were."

We both sat quiet for a while.

"I can admit I'm weak, if anything I'm starting to see it more and more."

She picked her head up from her cup.

" you know I blamed myself at one point for us not talking. I hadn't heard from you in such a long time. I made up a hundred different reasons why. I kept thinking you were going to call at some point and you didn't. It took a few months and a lot of new friends but I eventually accepted it. It hit me you know what else could it have been? You had to make a choice."

I didn't know what to say because she didn't deserve an excuse, not from me or anyone.

I remember on her birthday in freshman year, it was around may. School was almost over. I remember me being an idiot especially. I had just got out of a horrible relationship and while she was trying to cheer me up, on her birthday of all days. I'm sitting there on my couch wallowing in all of the things that I did wrong, and she's sitting there telling me all the reasons I'm wrong. The first thing I do is succumb to this needy even pathetic idea that now, even though I haven't even gotten myself together, I like her. Of course I do the worst thing possible in this situation. I try to kiss her. She gets up and walks off. I chase her for a while, she's running for the train and I'm running beside her trying to understand what it is I did wrong.

"Go home john"

"Can you atleast talk to me?"

"No."

"Why not? Please just give me one good reason."

She starts to slow down, and I beside her.

"I don't think you know what you want. It doesn't matter anyways I'm going to Connecticut for the summer. I leave right after school ends. I have to get home anyways. I'll see you on Monday."

This is the third time i've seen her since she got back. She transferred after she spent a year at her dad's. She graduated. I started working. I was already in a relationship when she did get back.

"Why did you leave her?"

"I wasn't happy and I kept convincing myself I was. She was unhappy even after I started working, she wanted a huge chunk of my time to be focused on her."

"So what then it hit you, that wow this isn't healthy."

"You didn't have to say it that way."

"I think I deserve to, don't you?" She stops for a second catching herself. She doesn't allow herself to get angry a lot, mostly because she doesn't think it solves anything.

"So what have you been up to john?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"No I guess not."

I pulled out my wallet and put some cash in the little booklet. I left a six dollar tip. She got up and grabbed her coat from the chair. I felt as if we were both just about to walk away, until we didn’t. I followed her not because I wanted her to stop but because we both had to go the same way. She eventually stopped after three blocks of me tailing her. She looked back and she said:

"You make yourself unhappy and you put it up to signs to dignify steps in your life. You're only bothered because of your own dissatisfaction. Even if you were to get what you want you wouldn't know the first thing about appreciating it, because once the idea becomes more than just that, you look for another. You're living in a fantasy, this is some scripted conversation to you. Funny thing is you'll keep telling yourself its part of the story. What if the story slipped through your fingers and now you're constantly trying to capture one that might have come anywhere near it. You can't expect people to make you happy if you're not."

She walked away, fast. I watched her from a distance. She hailed a cab, got in and I haven't seen her since. I mean we've talked, but we usually just pretend that anything other than that one part of the conversation happened and I think its because she thinks I can't take it.

"How does that make you feel?".