Because She Had Wanted Him To, Part I
?Listen, I just want to tell you something, alright? Could I just tell you this one thing??
?Fine.?
They were meeting at the coffee shop, at the diner, at the little hole-in-the-wall restaurant we?ve all been to before. Where they were meeting didn?t really matter; it could?ve been anywhere. They sat across from each other at a table by a wall that was all windows.
He was drinking coffee; black, no cream, no sugar, and smoking a non-filtered cigarette which he tapped on occasion with the index finger of his right hand to relieve it of its burden of growing ash. He wore simple clothes: old tennis shoes with slightly grayed laces, blue jeans, and a dark green shirt with no logo. His black hair hung down just enough to be a nuisance to both his eyes and the inner portions of his ears, and he was constantly pushing, pulling, and running his fingers through the hair that would not stop its onslaught of his sensory organs.
She sat up straight in her chair, hands folded on top of a menu on the table in front of her so that she wouldn?t have to be in contact with God-knows-what was on the table itself. She hadn?t ordered anything but a Diet Coke, which she sipped hesitantly through a straw. Her straight brown hair fell down to her shoulders, where the ends curled slightly inward toward her neck. A subtle hint of blue eye shadow was apparent on her face, along with cheeks and lips that were only slightly too red to look natural. She wore small golden earrings in each ear, small golden rings on her fingers, and a thin golden chain around her neck that supported a small heart made of gold. Her fingers were long and her nails painted red to match the red sweater she was wearing. The sweater was ribbed vertically, and the arm-hugging sleeves served to show just how long and thin her arms were, just like her fingers.
His eyes seemed to convey sadness, apprehension, anger, and cold logic all at once. He was nervous. All he wanted was one last meeting, one last night with her, no matter how she felt about him. He didn?t think she would?ve agreed to it, but she had. He sipped his coffee and looked across at her, not meeting her eyes.
She was frustrated. She had been through all this before, been through all this a dozen times over, and she was sick of it. Her very being demanded that everyone in the room know this. Her voice dripped contempt; her face contorted into such shapes as to attempt to run the conversation itself. Her tips of her fingers turned her rings around in an impatient way.
He was thinking about all the times they?d spent together: how they?d first met, when he first felt that sudden pang of love for her and known that it wasn?t returned, when he first realized that it never would be. All the suffering and pain she had caused him. All the terrible anguish he had caused her. Sometimes he felt as though the only way to receive any kind of emotional response from her was to cut at her emotions for him; emotions that were growing, but were always stopped short by his jabs. He took a large drag of his cigarette, inhaled, and blew the smoke out and to the left side of his body rapidly.
She knew; she knew very well how much he loved her. But she knew even better that she did not return the sentiment. She thought that she might have been able to love him, once. But now, she knew that she never could. She was glancing around the room, looking through the window at the night outside. Her hands trembled with the thought of going back out there, until she remembered how nicely the gloves in her coat behind her matched the flare of sweater she let show through the unbuttoned coat?s top. She almost smiled at the perfect match she had envisioned before leaving the house, and presently began to glace at the various men at the other tables and the counter. She found nothing of interest, and was, in a few cases, actually disgusted. The would-be smile on her face quickly changed back to a contemptuous scowl.
Zaben pines for all of you.