I'm waiting for him. And he's late. But only a minute, so it's not serious.
So, stage one: loving his being late. I go, it makes him human, gives him sex appeal. Everyone's late, right? From school and missing a test to work and being fired.
Stage two: checking my agenda. You know, I question myself. Maybe I got it wrong. I invent scenarios. I picture myself arriving late at another café because while I was waiting for him, he was waiting for me and his head shoots up and asks where I've been. So I look around where I am - the coffee-house owned by a mutual friend's parents and I'm in the right place.
Then I look down at my watch and it's been thirty-two minutes. Stage three: I tell myself I don't mind waiting. I keep myself busy, I read. I pretend to read. The same fucking paragraph, or the menus. I go to the bathroom, I pick at the loose string of denim on my jeans, I order stuff, I finish the last of my pack of cigarettes. Menthol cigarettes, vanilla cigarettes, cigarettes cigarettes, they keep me sane, obviously. And now I hate him, I insult him in my head, I think of cool quotes that'll be perfect for when he shows up and how I should dump my vanilla frappuinco over his head.
It's been thirty-nine minutes. He arrives, all out of breath, handsome. "Traffic was bad." I excuse him. We only meet here because his car is full of stacks of boxes and I told him I'd help and it's easier to meet here than give him directions because no matter how clearly I state them he will not find our new home. And I say, of course, only normal that he's late, back to stage one.
I already knew the day he moved in and placed his muddy boots behind the door and his shovel right next to them, it was over. It was over! No, I mean, it wasn't over over. We still lived together, watched his action movies with french subtitles, I made dinner which was just spicy ramen noodles and we had sex and all, but those are details, meaningless. It was over. Of course at first, we didn't want to admit it cause we felt bad, you know. The move, the apartment, all the stuff, all that. That's a shit load of money out the window.
Months passed and we shared the same bed and his tan skin brushed against mine. But today, something was wrong, we were not sharing a bed. Even other than, it was my cat. Miley, the cat was gone. I knew right away because I didn't hear the tingling. He'd put this collar on her a few months back, after we brought her. You know, for midgets. Oh, elves! Right, Santa's elves. You know, a tiny bell. He put a bell on, thought it was cute. You always heard it. But I came home, she wasn't there. I went, "Miley?" No bell. And the vase. That was filled with pennies we found in sidewalk cracks and bubblegum on the bottom of our shoes on the counter, gone. So I turn around and next to the door, just my sneakers. No combat boots. No stuff at all. So naturally, I tear through the place at like, two hundred miles per hour. He'd taken everything. All, all, all of his shit. On the kitchen table, there was a sheet of blue note paper, written in French. "I don't want to taste my life loving you badly."
And now I'm sitting on the couch that's now mine, and I'm thinking, It's like we were - "We", I mean, I'll speak of myself. For me, I was infatuated with the kind of love we had. He lived in France, I lived here, so I guess I was in love with, you know. Taking the plane, and I don't know, landing, the cafes, the cigarettes and wind from elsewhere, his accent. The love, it didn't exist. It's the concept I loved. I loved the concept more than him and laying on the pull out couch in his shirt covered in blood stains and him coming in early from a late work shift the night before and heading straight for the coffee. It's the distance. But there's no more distance, when there's no more ocean to cross and all there's left to cross is a hallway. Anyway, it's over now.