We had spoken only a few times since he left my house saying that even though he still loved me theoretically, he couldn’t literally. We met for coffee over Christmas.
“What do you want?” I asked him, lining up.
“Oh, I don’t like coffee.”
“Why’d do you want to meet here, then? Do you want a hot chocolate? We can go somewhere else.”
“No, it’s okay. Yeah, I’ll have a hot chocolate.”
When we sat down to talk it felt awkward. We caught up on surface things; our families, our friends, work, school. I felt like he was wanting to say something but I couldn’t draw it out of him.
“So, how is she?” I wanted to be mature. I always want to be mature, for no reason other than pride. That's not really mature at all, is it?
“We’re fighting all the time.”
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ll say something, nothing really, and it will offend her, and then we’ll get into a huge fight.”
I nodded and stayed silent.
“I just don’t remember you and I fighting that much, Kate,” he said.
I looked at my coffee. He had made this bed and now we both had to lie in it.
“That sucks,” is all I said.
As I left we hugged, without affection, without intimacy, with pats on the back and space between.
“So, I’ll see you on Christmas Eve?”
We both went to St. Aidan’s midnight mass with our families and had for years, even before we were together.
“Yeah, I’ll try,” I yelled, my back already turned with my hands in pockets.
Someone told me long ago that the worst sort of misery is having been happy once.
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