Make up your mind
Sometimes she got annoyed by everything: the sounds, the smells, the hustling and bustling crowd that never seemed to thin out on the sidewalks. When all someone wants is to be alone and sort through reasons and feelings, it is very frustrating to be subtly denied that constitutional right by the current state of affairs. Such busy affairs, people and love-sin infested affairs. The lines on her forehead furrowed to form a landscape of hills and small valleys on her face. She swirled her pinky-finger gently around the the rim of the plastic $0.99 coffee cup of which the contents had long gone cold and undrinkable. She placed her tired forefingers in the tender spots on either curving side of her nose, as if to hold back all the tears of joy she wasn’t crying, before her hands slowly slid over her eyes in the familiar way they usually did and acted as a curtain to the unwelcome heat of the reality we are all forced to face. She sighed ever so prettily yet so deeply.
When she opened her eyes, they wandered across the aisle to a girl, dressed in a suffocating, pressed beige business suit. Then she noticed the wild frazzled man in a distressed black motorcycle jacket, sitting across from the business girl. The man said something, his gruff voice lost somewhere in the aisle, in the drone of cafe clamor. Then the girl thew her head back and laughed. It was the kind of laugh that shined and sparkled with the full release of built-up “I just can’t take it anymore”. This was the kind of laugh characterized by a smile that reached behind a person’s eyes, a white flash of teeth that could free a person’s soul, a silly sound so similar to the absolutely pointless yet impossibly pure cry of a newborn infant. Things like this stranger’s laughter have the touch of angels and remind that a whisper of love can blind a whole world of hate.
What a beautiful couple, she thought, her hands now calmly cupping the coffee drink, for she was just the kind of person to admire unconventional beauty.
The clean, pressed girl leaned towards her greasy, unkempt counterpart, and he to her; their lips brushed for the slightest moment in time. It was the simplest moment in time. It made her wonder if such a sweeter second could be remade in the next 30 years of Hollywood; she decided not. She looked away from the girl and the boy right as the magic ended. For the sweet moment had turned into that awkward moment when your object of fascination, usually another person, somehow feels your eyes. But it is so premature a feeling that both parties doubt whether it happened at all, and most of the time conclude in their respective minds that it probably did not.
To emphasize her decision, she set her eyes straight ahead to stare at the back of someone’s graying head, someone probably just like her-tired-self who needed to refill her tank with caffeine every once in a blue moon. To emphasize her decision, she took a nice long swig of the still, cold coffee from her $0.99 plastic cup. She swallowed painfully but did not cringe. She felt the presences of the man and the woman stand up. They walked to the exit door and the man tried to kiss the woman again but she turned away embarrassed. Her eyes darted around furtively like they were trying to find something, and then she walked briskly away in the opposite direction of the man. So much for magic.
When everything started rushing back to her, she buried her face in her arms, feeling stupid that she thought she could forget it all. She felt the presence of the waiter beside her table. He was saying Ma’am, Ma’am, Here is your bill, We have other customers waiting.
She did not look up - just kind of muffled to the waiter, Kind of like it is your job to wait. I think it would do them some good to wait.
Let them wait.
