The Cup on the Counter

The Cup on the Counter

           The mug sat on the counter by the sink. There was a faded ring of lipstick on one side. Mold had started to grow in the dregs of coffee left behind. There was a picture on the cup, it was a shot of the Eifel Tower at night and below it read in half chipped letters ‘With Love from Paris.’ The handle showed the scar of when it had been dropped on the ground and lovingly glued back together. The cup had been cleaned so many times that it had become a coffee cream color on the inside. Now it just sat there and I stared at it.

I memorized it. Every detail dug into the folds of my memory. There was a ring of scummy water that had collected along the bottom of the cup. I had tried to wash it so many times, but still it sat there. I had to turn away, I couldn’t look at it anymore.

I had never been to Paris. There was always next year, next year, next year.

…

When I was seventeen I’d jumped from a bridge and into the water below. It had been ninety degrees in the shade. My dad had just released my brothers and me from the hay loft and we were hot. We’d done it a million times, the river was deep and lazy. I flew through the air, and just for a moment I could imagine what it would be like to fly. She had been hanging out on a pool float with a couple of her friends. I, as a complete gentleman, landed close enough to splash them all. There had been some screaming…cursing me and my family name, but I had flown that day.

Her name was Austen. Not Austin, but Austen with an e. She’d been named after the writer not the city. I only made that mistake once. She was going to go to my school, but was a year younger than me, she just moved here at the beginning of summer. She spoke like a city girl and had her long dark hair braided in what my mom would have called a sophisticated way. My brother Mark instantly disliked her, but I was a moon caught in her orbit.

…

My eyes were drawn back to the side of the sink where the cup sat. I stood up abruptly from the table, my chair scratching across the tile floor of the kitchen. I reached out for it, but something held me back an inch from the handle. It was as if someone had encased it in glass.

…

Mark had said that she looked like a stuck-up city girl whose daddy thought their family needed the nice house in the country. He said that he would complain about the smell sooner or later and then the politicians who liked his sort better than our sort would have us off our land quicker than a signature could be signed. He said that next there would be condos. Mark hated condos. It was weird, but in a way I got it. Our dad lost his grandfather’s land that way. He always said that farmers were dying not because the need was lessening, but because the respect was gone.

Austen was in my English class. I was bad at English and she was amazing. She knew words I only sort of knew where English. She had this journal that she carried around. I would watch her sometimes scribbling in it.

…

My fingers were straining against the invisible barrier. I could feel it in my chest, pressing on me. Squeezing the air from my lungs. I withdrew my hand and hugged it to my chest.

…

My buddies would shove me whenever she walked into a room. They would wag their eyebrows suggestively and I would wave them off. She wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that, I wasn’t some lovesick puppy who wanted to trail after her and smell her hair. I…

…

I could feel the tears stinging my eyes and I wiped them away with rough, callused fingers.

I was a man. I would not cry. I would not cry over a dusty cup.

…

I finally plucked up the courage to talk to her. I was coy about it, I asked her if she would help me with my English assignment. Her eyes were a brilliant green like gemstones. They were just as hard that day as she looked over me and asked if I was just there to make fun of her. People like me didn’t talk to people like her.

…

I fled the kitchen and the screen door creaked as I pushed it open. My chest was heaving as I leaned against the porch railing. Mark would be coming by. Coming by to check on me, I couldn’t let him see me like this.

…

She couldn’t understand why people hated her. I had tried to explain it to her that it wasn’t her so much as what she represented. She’d gotten haughty at that. What she represented, was a woman with a brain and dreams to get out of this sleepy, little town. Dreams to see the world. To see Paris.

…

I drew air into my lungs slowly, focusing on the oxygen entering my chest and the carbon dioxide being expelled. Next year, there hadn’t been a next year.

…

I had never thought about it, leaving I mean. After all there was work here, there were good people and good land. Yeah maybe sometimes it sucked to be moving hay in the 90 degree heat for a week straight, but who wanted to be crammed in a cubical all day. Austen told me there was a world beyond this one. She told me that it would be worth it to see it one day.

…

I sank into the porch swing, listening to the sound of birds trilling their morning song.

…

She became my world. I would rush through my chores just to see her. We would walk the little trail behind the park. She would chat and I would watch her as she livened the world I had known my whole life, but hadn’t really known at all.

…

I was still sitting there when Mark’s old pick-up rambled up the drive and kicked up a plume of dust. His boots hit the dirt and he walked up the stairs. He sat down beside me and swung his arm over the back of the swing. He didn’t say anything and neither did I. We both knew what day it was.

…

The first Christmas we had been together I gave her the mug and a promise that one day we’d go together. Her face had brightened so much I was afraid she would outshine the fire burning in the hearth.

…

“How are you Jamie?” Mark’s voice sounded a million miles away.

“I fine.”

“No you aren’t.”

…

I asked her to marry my when she turned eighteen. She turned me down. She was a woman with a brain and she damn well wasn’t going to get married before she graduated college. She had this fear of being lesser. As if I wanted her to stop dreaming.

…

“It’s been a year Jamie.”

“Yes.” I agreed still without looking at my brother.

“You need to move on.”

…

3am Tuesday September 6^th she sent me a text message. It said “Come get me please.”

“Where are you?”

“…”

I waited for five minutes just staring at those there little bouncing dots before I got myself out of bed, nicked the keys to my dad’s truck and drove the hour and a half to her college.

…

“It not that easy.” I said and Mark snorted. Mark had never loved anyone like Austen, he had never been burned by a shooting star.

…

I banged on her door so loudly that her harassed looking roommate was holding her phone like a weapon as she opened the door.

“Emery, I swear…” I remembered the surprised look on her face, “Aren’t you…Austen’s boyfriend?”

“Where is she?”

The roommate was silent.

“Where is she?”

“Look-it guy are you like mad at her or something? You know it’s like five am.”

“No I just…she texted me to come get her. Where is she?”

…

“Come to the bar tonight. It’s just be us guys, like old times. We can get drunk and forget everything.”

…

The roommate had sighed, “Look she went to a party at Alright. Second floor you cannot miss it. Just don’t let anyone know I was the one who told you.”

Alright was two dorms over. Music was blasting, the whole dorm seemed to be in on the party. Someone handed me a plastic cup as I walked through the door.

“Have you seen Austen?” The stereo stole my voice.

…

“Not tonight Mark.” I said.

My brother left me alone and I sat there until dark wrapped me in a blanket. I flipped on the kitchen light and it hummed into brilliance. My hand reached for it again. This time my fingers brushed the cobwebs aside and I was able to pull the ceramic into my grasp.

…

I searched for her everywhere. I pushed through the crowds screaming her name. Some drunk guy thought to throw me out, but I bloodied his nose and he bellowed as he went down.

“Austen!”

…

I turned the cup over in my hands. On the back I had written my promise in black Sharpie. Under it she had written “Count on it Jamie”

…

“Austen!” My voice was horse from screaming. The music was pounding in my chest. It was hard to breathe.

…

My fingers wiped across the black letters as if by wiping them away I could wipe away the memories crowded in my brain. They didn’t even smear.

…

I found her in someone else’s bed. She was already gone. Her emerald eyes as lifeless as stone regarding the nondescript dorm ceiling. Vomit clung to her lips.

…

I raised the cup as if to throw it against the wall and smash it to pieces. I didn’t need it anymore. All the promises it held were broken. The girl with a dream had become a memory. A line written on stone and a box lowered into the ground.

…

The roommate handed it to me. Austen would have wanted me to have it. She didn’t even wash it from the coffee Austen had, had that morning. I took it home with me.

I set the cup on the side of the sink.

I sat down in the kitchen chair and I stared at it.