Coffee Talk

Jacob showed up at my house at 1:30 pm, the same time he did every Saturday. I watched him pull in the driveway from my window before seeing the “here” text on my phone. Unlike usual, I wasn’t outside on the front steps waiting for him. Instead, I was lingering by the door, wondering how long I could stay in the house before he drove away without me when my phone buzzed for a second time. 

“you coming?”

I debated replying with a last minute excuse. A “sorry, just caught a stomach bug,” would do. It might as well have been true, my stomach was churning at just the thought of facing him. But I couldn’t put off this conversation forever.

 I climbed into the passenger seat while attempting to ignore his sweet smile- the same one he gave me every time he saw me. There were no snarky remarks about how long I was taking or that I was still acting like a brat after a full week had passed since we last talked, or more accurately, we argued. His hand reached out to stroke my hair before I deflected it. I heard a small sigh, and even though he couldn’t tell, my heart dropped. 

“Same place?”

“Where else?”

We stayed silent for the remainder of the drive until we got our regularly visited coffee shop. He held open the door for me, and I walked in without thanking him. He ordered our usual without me having to remind him what milk I got or that I took two sugar packets. He pulled out a chair at our usual table and handed me my drink. 

“A mocha for my Madi.”

I scowled at him.

He took a sip of his drink, and his demeanor changed. Knowing him, the sour expression on his face wasn’t due to my behavior. At least not fully. No, the barista had gotten his order wrong.

“I can go tell her that this isn’t the drink you wanted.”

He shook his head, “Madi, it’s fine.”

I reached across the table to grab his drink to show the barista when he snapped.

“Can’t you just deal with your own problems?”

My shoulders slumped as I processed what had just come out of his mouth. I knew he wasn’t talking about the coffee. I bit my lip to hold back the insults I was preparing to throw back at him, and maybe a few tears as well. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean it like-”

“I know what you meant Jacob,” my voice quivered.

I averted my gaze from him as the tears started to roll down my face. The same face that. burned as I felt the eyes of the other customers staring at me. Staring at us. We were officially “that couple”. The couple that argued in restaurants. The couple that caused a scene. The couple that couldn’t be together anymore.

“Why don’t we just end it here?”

Time stood still as the question hung in the air. There was no reason to not let it end. We were going to separate colleges in only a couple of months. That was the whole reason for the argument in the first place. Long distance wouldn’t work for us. Neither of us could do without the physical touch we had grown so accustomed to. As a biomed major, I wouldn’t have time to call him every night. With him planning to rush a frat, he’d have girls, much hotter ones, swarming him. Our relationship wouldn’t stand a chance. With the way I had been treating him lately, why would he even want to stay?

He reached across the table and rested his hand on mine. The warmth of his fingers sucked the coldness out of my heart. I glanced at the sudden display of affection, then into his eyes. There it was again. The sweet smile I had come to know so well.

“Because I love you, Madi.”

I spit out the coffee I had been absentmindedly drinking from. All over his face. Forgetting to respond to his original declaration, I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt over my hand and began to wipe his face. To my confusion, he started laughing. Even more confusingly, I started laughing too.

“Really, that's your response? Showering my face with coffee-flavored saliva and cleaning it up with my own hoodie?”

My face turned red as I officially stopped repressing the whole-hearted chuckle that had been building up inside of me. Despite my attempts to close-off my heart to him, my subconscious instincts couldn’t resist putting on his hoodie. I had been denying him- and myself, the joy that our relationship gave us, but I couldn’t keep resisting what I really felt.

“I love you too, ok! That’s my final response!”

The dam had broken. The three words I had been waiting to hear for the last five months finally flowed out of his heart and mouth like water. Was this our saving grace? The miracle that could repair the thread we were hanging on by? Or was it just another reason to leave?

As he gripped my hand, almost shaking the table with his laughter, I uttered the words that I knew would break both my heart and his.

“But I can’t stay with you”

His smile quickly faded and his brow furrowed. I could have just kicked a puppy and it would have given me a less pained expression than his. He opened his mouth to object at the same time I started spewing my defense.

“I mean come on, Jacob, you know it’s for the better. You’re going to find someone prettier, and smarter, or maybe-”

He cut me off with a single word. 

“No.”

“No?”

“Madi, I just told you I love you. None of the girls at that school will ever come close to what I feel for you. I’m not letting you leave me just because you’re scared I’ll leave you.”

This was the most direct he had been with his feelings since the day he first asked me to this same coffee shop. A declaration of love? A promise to stay? I could get used to this, but the same rule applied: I can’t.

He saw right through me at that moment. It was most likely due to the tears welling in my eyes that were threatening to ruin the mascara I wore everyday. The same mascara he gave to me on my birthday. Or maybe it was the way I had been fidgeting with the locket I had refused to take off since Valentine’s Day. It could have even been the way my bottom lip that I had his favorite flavor of my lipgloss to was trembling. Whatever it was, we both knew that this couldn’t end here. The pieces of him I carried everywhere had become a part of me, and he was the same way. I could reach out and touch my hair tie he kept around his wrist, or lean over and smell the cologne I complimented him on the first time I tried flirting with him. I gripped his hand harder. I couldn’t let go.

“Madi, I will do whatever it takes over the next few months that we’re both here to keep you with me. I can’t leave you.”

The tears began to spill out, but they were accompanied with a smile and a nod.

“I can’t leave you either, Jacob, but I just wish we had more time.

“Don’t worry Madi. We have all the time in the world.”