This Has Never Happened To Anyone
Ah yes, there he is. He wasn’t sitting in the front when you walked in so you thought perhaps you’d arrived early, but no, he’s way off there in the back for some reason. You stand in line to get a coffee you don’t really want; you’re not just going to sit there at the table with him and twiddle your thumbs.
He doesn’t even look up once while you get your coffee – he’s reading something. Must be awfully interesting. If you were waiting for someone, you’d be right up front where the person would see you coming through the door, and you’d peek up every now and again, just to, you know, see if he was there yet. But then this is the way he’s been lately.
You don’t really want to go through with this.
Someone hands you your coffee concoction – it has some kind of coined, corporate name, and you thought it would be hot but it’s actually some kind of frozen slushy drink. Well, whatever. At least now you won’t feel like a complete tool approaching the table; at least it signifies you took the time to buy something and didn’t just run right over to him the minute you spotted him. That’s right. Let him know you’re not desperate. You’ve been making sure about not seeming desperate for the past five months in fact. And this is how well it’s worked out.
Well, it’s too late now.
At least he looks up when you approach; you don’t have to shake him by the shoulder or yell at him to get his attention. It’s kind of loud in here, which you guess is good, since there are people at all the tables packed around the one he’s sitting at. Not the most private place to have this kind of conversation. Actually, exactly what “kind” of conversation this will be is yet to be determined, but from the way the past two weeks have gone, you assume it’s going to be the kind of conversation where you don’t see each other for a long while afterwards.
He smiles at you when he looks up and sees you, the same smile he always gives you, warm and apparently delighted to see you. He gets up and steps forward and hugs you, and your messenger bag (you just came from work) shifts its weight awkwardly and bangs against both your and his thighs and you squirm to try to get it to swing back behind you while you try to return his hug but not too eagerly lest he think you’re too needy. You still have a little pride, and you’d like him to know this. It feels as though it’s about the only thing you do have right now.
“It’s great to see you,” he says as you both sit back down. “I’m glad we finally got a chance to catch up, it’s been a really long time!” Yes, you think, it has been a long time, a long two weeks of making plans and making plans, only to have him call you up at almost literally the last minute each time and apologetically cancel them. He tells you it’s not because he’s seeing someone else (you’d gently inquired if this might be one possible explanation for his recent withdrawl) – it’s just that he has a lot of work lately, and has to stay late at the office a lot, and has a lot of other personal things to, you know, work through right now. He goes on about this for a few minutes. You’ve heard it before, though you listen intently, hoping to find some new nugget of explanation, something you haven’t heard before which suddenly throws everything into stunning focus, but there’s nothing, just further mushy re-hashing of “personal stuff” and “I’m just in a rut right now.” And he wants to be fair – yes fair! – to you, and not, you know, drag you through his personal confusion. And so, perhaps it really would be best if things, you know, stopped between the two of you.
After that, all the rest is so much mopping up. There’s some pitiful pointing out of the holes in his story, a little attempt to negotiate, but you know that he’s not going to change his mind, and that even if he did it wouldn’t be good anymore. And through it all he keeps that goddamn smile on his face, that nice, sweet-guy smile, a smile which melted your heart for five months and which suddenly looks artificial now, as though you can suddenly detect a seam behind his ears and see how those smiling lips don’t really move when he speaks. And you wonder at what point that face became a mask because presumably it was genuine at some point back in the beginning, back when he was e-mailing you in the mornings and texting you all day and making transparent excuses to come back to your apartment after brunch and talk some more even though you were going to just walk him to the train.
The conversation’s over now. The hammer has fallen, and something small and beautiful has smashed. There are a few minutes of small talk, and then a moment of silence. You break it by giving a brave little sigh and saying you might as well start heading towards the subway so you can get home before it gets too late. And he says yes, and that he’ll probably head over across the park and buy a CD for a friend, and you walk a little way together, each of you occasionally saying one thing or another of no consequence. You’re both getting pretty close to the CD store and it almost looks as though he’s expecting you to follow him in there and actually hang out with him while he buys a CD for this “friend” of his, so you stop on the corner and say, I think I’ll head this way now; it was good to see you. And he says oh, okay, and you say good night to each other and there’s another awkward hug, and this time you really don’t squeeze him very hard – in fact, you try to do that hug where it’s just the tops of your biceps barely touching his sides and your fingertips just lightly touching his back, and then you pat his back a couple of times because a friend of yours once said that patting someone’s back while hugging him makes the hug feel perfunctory and insincere. And then there’s the final, wordless nod while a fragment of true regret seems to be revealed for a moment in his eyes, and you feel the same beginning to flow from your own. So you turn and walk away into the crowd. And even though you desperately want to, you force yourself not to look back, and even though you end up walking five blocks across town which takes fifteen minutes you still don’t look back, not even once.
