Cold Coffee
Ashley Wagner
Crowded streets. That’s what she sees all around her. She knows she’s just another one of
them. The rushing, busy, haggard people who live with a predefined purpose. Walking through
the door of the cafe, she gets her coffee from the people who recognize the usual patron. She sips
her coffee; it is too hot, and she thinks disinterestedly that it tastes of the smog surrounding the
city. Perhaps it is just her jaded perception. She takes another sip and burns her tongue. She does
not react outwardly, and, to some degree, inwardly either. It is all the same to her. She waits
there, if not patiently, then solitarily, as if she is not waiting, but has already found her
destination. He strolls into the small structure of a coffee shop, bringing with him more of the
street sounds and smog she had come to escape from. She had come to escape from him, as well.
He opens his mouth, but she knows what he will say already. Save your breath she says.
Somehow, she makes it seem like polite advice rather than a dismissal, which it clearly is. he
gapes for a second, but remembering the game, the sick twisted game that she plays, he sits down
with her, joining the silence. In a brave attempt at a rebuttal, he asks, I just have to know what
I’m saving it for. However, he has made the fatal mistake of showing how much he cares. His
feelings were clear from the minute he burst into the restaurant, and she grabs onto this as a
shark would to a wounded seal. Tearing him apart in just two words, she shows she needs fewer
teeth than a shark ever could to make a kill. Someone else, she whispers, and it’s a if he is being
cut down. He staggers, the words a real blow. Perhaps she is a shark, as her emotionless eyes
cause him to wonder if he had ever loved, had ever known love, for surely this was not how love
ended. He had loved a shark and it had bitten him. He nods, stops, then nods again, as if trying to
convince himself he is alive and that he won’t break down. Long after he leaves, she can taste the
blood in the water, but she realizes he is finally gone. Tears are a mocker of her facade, and she
knows this. She lets two escape.
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