This was an assignment for a class to produce an unreliable narrator. Super difficult for me to do. But I had fun with it! 

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I got here a little early, because you should always get places a little early. You never know what’s going to happen. Well, sometimes you do, but when it’s snowing out, and it’s cold, and the suburbs are busy, and driving is bad but you still need to get somewhere, you don’t really know. So I got here early. 

    And I’m glad I did, because he’s here early too. 3 minutes early. I watch his slim figure pass against the clear cafe windows, one by one, until he swings the main entrance door open with confidence and stability. He barely blinks as he look to find me, and smiles with genuine eyes when he does.

    Stanley and I have been dating for about a year now. I’ve never been so happy in my life, and he tells me he feels the same all the time. I step out of my chair to greet him with a hug.

    “Loco,” he breathes my nickname out and wraps me in a quick -- but warm -- hug. The smell of roasting coffee beans mixes in air with the spicy vanilla embedded of his cologne. “I’ll get your usual,” he says as he releases our hug. I nod, return his admiring smile, and try to hide the rising panic as he gets in line. 

    That’s the fourth time this week he’s let go of a hug before I have. There was that time right after we had spent two hours talking, then that time his grandma called him and he had to reach into his pocket to answer, and also the time he heard that car crash and ran to go help, and now this. 

    I sit back down in one of the two chairs at our small, circle table and consider how I should react when he sits down to start our final conversation. ‘Look, it’s been fun,’ he’ll say. ‘But it just isn’t working anymore.’ Should I hold it in, or let my heavy tears fall? Should I beg to be friends, or just let him go? Or I could become angry -- “How could you? After everything?” -- and use “my usual” as an impromptu hot shower for his trimmed brown beard.

    “Here, baby.” He gently presses his hand onto my back, sets my usual in front of me, and takes the opposite seat. When Stanley had first told me he loved me, he had his hand on my back. This gesture must mean he changed his mind while he was paying for coffee; he realized that our relationship deserves more than slaughter. 

    The underlying panic now feels more like my unconditional, unchanging love for him, and we ease into the type of conversation that drew me to him in the first place.

    We discuss a lot of things. We talk about his grandma, how she’s doing well in the nursing home. He asks me about my mom, if she’s been “doing better” since she got the meds. I tell him for the most part, yes. He asks if I’m any less stressed this week than last, in this final stretch of grad school. I tell him yes, but it’s still difficult given all of my professors carry a considerable disdain for my astute assertions.  I’m about to give an example when I see the end of us in his eyes. Because his almond-brown eyes aren’t looking at me anymore. I fall silent.

    Stanley had been been drinking his coffee at an even pace throughout our time, and he has now reached the bottom of his cup. He brings the coffee cup up to his mouth and tilts his head far back to win the last of the brown drops. His eyes break contact with mine as he does this. 

    He must’ve planned it out.

    He timed it perfectly, when he was going to break eye contact. Breaking eye contact is the warning of what is to come. He is going to break my heart next. He is going to tell me how he’s found some one else. The boss at work? Affair. The barista that gave him my coffee? They’ve been secretly engaged for four months now. His grandma’s care-giver at the nursing home? An old flame now re-ignited. It had to be one of the three. And he knew to break the eye contact far enough into our conversation that I wouldn’t notice anything different or abrupt so I would have time to finish my coffee before I could throw it in his face as punishment for cheating. 

    But it’s complicated, because within seconds, the empty coffee cup is re-established on the table, his hands are folded on top of the table, and he’s looking at me again as if nothing happened. I try to make sense of it, because he is obviously confused and I’m getting a little tired of trying to read his mixed signals. There’s only so much women can take when it comes to men, after all. He notices my silence.

    “You were saying something?”

    I forget what I am saying as I look at him, he’s so handsome. I bring my hands to grasp his and smile. I will love him no matter how many times he changes his mind. He makes me so happy.

    “I love you so much,” I say, and he smiles, and we keep talking.