Cafe Everyday: Day 107
A cinnamon bun. Coffee.
Listen, I know what you’re thinking. “Here we go again, Lance dropping down the rabbit hole of romance.”
No, mate, sorry. I’m on top of this one. You don’t know. I’m not going to fall in love. I’ve had a lot of practice not falling in love these days. There is no bitter irony coming where all of my protests crumble in a heap of gushy poetry and emotion. I meant it when I told you that squishy stuff had been banished and I’m sticking to that. Despite my melancholy epigraph at the outset of yesterday, I am not letting my heart out of the penalty box.
Just to prove I’m being honest, I will admit that I felt a little deflated when she didn’t show up today. It’s Friday and all, it would have been a nice way to start the weekend. It’s just natural I might have an “aw, shucks” moment.
Such nonsense was quickly stamped down. I knew Traci was playing a strategy. This was her move. After all, she had told me why she hadn’t stopped the first day, and then warned me she might not be back. I even had half a mind not to show up here myself, to maybe camp out across the street for the duration until she showed up again looking for me.
I decided against it. That wouldn’t be in keeping with my strategy.
What Traci sees is what she gets.
Or so we’ll make her think.
The bigger question, though, is now that I have her here, what next? Though I might be content to have a breakfast companion, to meet here regularly, keeping our outside lives separate, more fodder for our sunrise catch-ups, it seemed far-fetched to hope that she might be down for the same. Monotony is my hobby, not hers. And the explanation that the beauty of our relationship would be that nothing would change, that we would never be any more than this and thus never tempted to hurt each other, there was no way to suggest that without sounding like a coward. If you’ve been hurt enough in your time, sure, it’s just common sense; if you’re still naïve enough to think life ever ends well, it’s nonsense.
Trust me, it’s not the kind of thing I like to be proven right on, not for anyone’s sake; but I also don’t want to have to put it to the test and become the reason the non-believer is converted.
Listen, I know what you’re thinking. “Here we go again, Lance dropping down the rabbit hole of romance.”
No, mate, sorry. I’m on top of this one. You don’t know. I’m not going to fall in love. I’ve had a lot of practice not falling in love these days. There is no bitter irony coming where all of my protests crumble in a heap of gushy poetry and emotion. I meant it when I told you that squishy stuff had been banished and I’m sticking to that. Despite my melancholy epigraph at the outset of yesterday, I am not letting my heart out of the penalty box.
Just to prove I’m being honest, I will admit that I felt a little deflated when she didn’t show up today. It’s Friday and all, it would have been a nice way to start the weekend. It’s just natural I might have an “aw, shucks” moment.
Such nonsense was quickly stamped down. I knew Traci was playing a strategy. This was her move. After all, she had told me why she hadn’t stopped the first day, and then warned me she might not be back. I even had half a mind not to show up here myself, to maybe camp out across the street for the duration until she showed up again looking for me.
I decided against it. That wouldn’t be in keeping with my strategy.
What Traci sees is what she gets.
Or so we’ll make her think.
The bigger question, though, is now that I have her here, what next? Though I might be content to have a breakfast companion, to meet here regularly, keeping our outside lives separate, more fodder for our sunrise catch-ups, it seemed far-fetched to hope that she might be down for the same. Monotony is my hobby, not hers. And the explanation that the beauty of our relationship would be that nothing would change, that we would never be any more than this and thus never tempted to hurt each other, there was no way to suggest that without sounding like a coward. If you’ve been hurt enough in your time, sure, it’s just common sense; if you’re still naïve enough to think life ever ends well, it’s nonsense.
Trust me, it’s not the kind of thing I like to be proven right on, not for anyone’s sake; but I also don’t want to have to put it to the test and become the reason the non-believer is converted.