I work in a coffee shop. It's not a great job - repetitive, doesn't pay that well, often lonely. You only talk to the customers briefly and so you just get the most minuscule glimpse of their life - you become a part of their day, but it's a totally insignificant part, despite the fact that you make eye contact (usually) and speak to each other and sometimes brush fingertips. I think about this fairly often, though I try not to. I suppose that sometimes I have a short conversation with the customer, but then it's even worse because you sort of have this friendly camaraderie that only exists in the delicate dynamic of barista and customer. It evaporates as soon as I hand them their cup. It's these types of existential musings that I've been trying to cut down on because I think they're making me depressed. Anyway, this just sets the tone for what happened one day.
I was at my job, making coffees, making change, whatever, when the hottest girl walks through the door. Like, I would consider myself pretty hot. I'll flash a smile at a girl and she'll giggle nervously. Guys often stumble over their order when I ask them what they want. But this girl who walked in that day, she was so hot that it almost hurt to look at her. It wasn't only the symmetry of her face, or the gorgeous golden colour of her hair, there was something else I couldn't define. Maybe her body.
I've never really identified as gay, but I was definitely attracted to this girl. She comes up to the counter and orders an iced latte, even though it's chilly out. Cool, I think to myself. She stays at the shop for my entire shift, and at the very end when I'm closing up, asks if I want to get a drink with her.
Obviously, I am very excited. We go to the vegan bar down the street and order the special on tap. We talk all night and I'm thinking about how this girl is the one, and how my coffee-shop cynicism was completely misguided, and we go back to her place and whisper and laugh and make out until it's time for me to go to work the next day.
We date for a year and then she breaks up with me. Crying, she says that we just aren't working anymore and that she doesn't want to fight all the time. I can't stand feeling like you're constantly disappointed in me, she says.
I still work at the coffee shop and think about her every day. It's like I've got a hole in my chest and I can't do anything about it. I think about how meaningless this shit is. Like, you meet someone, and it's incredible, and you're part of their life for the smallest amount of time relative to their lifetime, and then you're just forgotten about and the door is closed in your face and you just become another insignificant body on the earth.
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