Coffee, Candles and Hangovers

I was nineteen when we first met. Who was I? Most people thought I was a nice enough guy. Polite, smart, helped old people cross the street - the whole package. Some said they got a bad vibe from me, though I seemed harmless enough. What nobody knew about, was my 'dark' side. I don't want to talk about that now, we'll come to that later.

Who was she? She was twenty two years old and successful. And I mean successful in its most cliche meaning. A good job right out of college with a decent salary, not a college dropout who found success in 'doing what she loved and not what she was expected to do.' She was practical, she had goals, she was everything I wasn't.

So how and why would these two people meet, these two people with lives on opposite ends of the spectrum. What in their meetings would cause their lives to be linked together by this unbreakable tether, I don't know. But I do know that we're connected now. I haven't figured out fate's gameplan so I don't know why we met. I do know the answer to how we met, so I guess that's a start.

I woke up with a terrible hangover on her couch. It would have made sense except that I didn't know her at that point. Neither did I have any idea how and why I was there.

When I woke up that morning, the hangover flashing lights in front of my eyes, I had no idea where I was. I got up, blinking slowly and made my way to the room from where I heard voices. It was there that I saw her.

At first sight she looked nothing special. Just another girl, barely older than I was. It was much later that I began to notice the little dimple on the edge of her smile, that her eyes had this way of seeming so deep and so knowing that I could fall into them, that her gaze left me enraptured and speechless.

But for then, she was another nothing-special girl. A voice broke my alcohol slurred mind's theory formulation as to who she was and why she was there. I followed the sound across the table and met the eyes of a friend. Not someone I was particularly close to, a guy I knew from school.

Her phone buzzed and she smiled politely at me, excusing herself and left the room, leaving me alone with the friend. He smiled at me and offered me a seat, which I took and got me a glass of water to swallow the couple of aspirin he dropped into my hand. In about ten minutes or so, the girl still on the phone, I wasn't quite used to thinking of her as a woman just yet, when I was capable of coherent speech, I asked him where I was.

He said we had met at the bar on the next block and had found me passed out by the door when he was leaving, the bar staff debating on whether or not to roll me out into the street. He picked me up and piggy backed me to the place I woke up, his sister's apartment.

I sat at that table, kitchen table, I noticed after a while, trying to piece together the memories of the night before. I remembered going to the bar with a few of my classmates, bastards who'd left me passed out by the door. Then I remembered meeting this guy there, chatting for a while, treating him to a drink. But the rest of the evening's worth of memories were wiped out.

If this had happened any other day, I'd have taken the partial amnesia to mean that I had a good time. But somehow I didn't feel that way on that day. I felt like I was overstaying my welcome and said that I'd better be leaving. He looked concerened.

Somehow he persuaded me to stay for breakfast. The girl was still on the phone. She came in  after about ten minutes when her brother started taking out plates. She smiled at me asked me something, I think it was if I was feeling better or maybe she asked me what my name was. I don't really remember, it was a long time ago.

I had breakfast there and I left. Went back to the apartment I shared with all the guys I went drinking with last night to find them fast asleep on the floor, some even managed to make it to the couch and bed. Since it wasn't fair that I had woken up so early, I switched on the music system and turned the volume up to maximum so that they all woke up with the noise pounding in their brains.

Life went on as usual. I didn't think about that guy or his sister at all for the next four months. Then my world came crashing down.

See my parents lived very far away, since I don't want to go into details I'll just say they lived in another continent and they expected me to be studying really hard when they were paying top fees in one of the best educational institutions in the world. But when their son was involved in a drunken party/brawl/thingamajig which resulted in a couple of guys with broken bones and one guy with severe alcohol poisoning they weren't pleased. And in case you hadn't figured it out, 'not pleased' was the understatement of the millenium.

So my parents flew down from wherever they were at the moment, international go-getters that they were, to spend 'some quality time' with their son. And me, the son in this equation, had some 'quality' time with them for about a month. An entire month, waking up to the brand new sermon mommy thought up at night, did I mention my mother gave inspirational speeches for a living? I didn't? Well, she did. And that was followed by breakfast with daddy who spoke about how I wasn't 'go-getter' enough in my entirely 'go-getting' family and I was such a disappointment.

Sometimes they tried the blackmail card, where did we go wrong, did we not love you enough, did we not motivate you enough. And though I can be pretty stupid, I had the sense to know that those were rhetorical questions and kept my mouth shut like a good boy who repented.

Did I repent? Not really. I was rather indifferent. I didn't beat up those guys, they beat each other up. I didn't force the booze down the other guy's throat, he made a choice, even if it was a stupid, alcohol influenced choice. None of that was really my fault and I didn't feel sympathetic to them at all. No emotion of any kind. Maybe that was my dark side.

Then mommy and daddy left to go-get some more and I was left alone. Most of the guys involved had either turned over a new leaf or had been placed under parental crackdown, so it was just me left. And I couldn't afford that apartment we shared on my own so I looked for a smaller one. I got a room in a motel while I looked for a flatshare.

It was then that I met her again. But when I did, I didn't recognize her. It's not that she looked particularly different, I just didn't remember.

We met at a bar. Just because I had been advised a bazillion times, it didn't mean I didn't drink any more. I did, just not that much. And don't be mistaken that I didn't drink as much because of what I had been told, it was just that I didn't have good drinking buddies anymore.

So anyway, I was at that bar with a group of my college mates, sort of like a group date, a chance to pick up girls. But the ones there seemed terribly unattractive to me. Especially the ones who were hitting on me. When I told one of my friends, the guy that dragged me there, that I was bored to death and leaving he asked, 'What? The girls not good enough for you?'

I laughed and tried to deflect the accusation but you know how if you get drunk you fixate on some things? He fixated. And that turned into a bet that I couldn't get any girl in the bar to 'go somewhere quieter for the night.'

Maybe I'd had one too many drinks as well, because I accepted the bet and set out to find the girl that'd make me rich. That's when I saw her. She was different from the girls I was sitting with, no clunky jewelery, no heavy make up, no unneccessary giggling. The word 'unneccessary' has too many double letters. Just saying.

So I walked up to her and flashed my most debonair smile and said something cheesy in my best charismatic voice. We had drinks together but she refused to go somewhere else with the excuse that she had a boyfriend. I left and found another girl to sleep with.

The next day when I was wandering the streets with the classifieds page of the newspaper, looking for a place I could afford, I came across a familiar street with a familiar bar down the block. And I wondered if that friend who piggy backed me was still around and would he happen to want to go out for drinks sometime. Yeah, I was that pressed for good company over a glass.

I'm not quite sure what I was thinking when I took the lift up to the right floor or when I was ringing the doorbell. But I know what I thought when I saw the girl I flirted with the night before open the door in a dressing gown. I thought that the 'boyfriend' she spoke of was that friend I came looking for. No seriously, I didn't make the corelation.

She looked surprised, 'Oh you again' and asked me why I was there. I stammered something about a guy that lived there and she looked confused. She said that there wasn't a man living there and when I said his name she said, 'Oh, that's my brother. He doesn't live here. Do you know him?'

She invited me in and we got our stories straight over coffee. Oh so you were the drunk guy my brother carried in and oh you were the girl on the phone. I still thought she was younger than me when I asked her how she afforded such a nice apartment and now that I think back I'm surprised she wasn't offended. She only smiled and said that her salary wasn't so bad. I had a 'Wait a second' moment and almost fell off my chair when I realized she was in fact, three years older than me and until then, I had been talking to her like a little kid. When I tried to explain she simply laughed, saying that she had figured it out and was waiting to see when I'd realize.

I left there an hour or so later after having the best coffee I'd had in my whole life. I'd also gained a flatmate.

I moved into her spare bedroom that evening and she decided on a rent without being overly partial. It was a little more than what I had been paying when I was sharing a flat with all my friends but much less than what I'd been paying for my motel room the past week, still a fair price.

All of a sudden, she became my best friend, my confidante. She was also pretty much my only close friend, even 'my guys at college seemed not to get me the way she did. We ate together, played video games together, went shopping for groceries together. Whoever woke up first made coffee, she made breakfast while I packed our lunches. We made dinner together after she came back from work, I stirred while she chopped, she fried while I added the spices. After dinner, she sometimes helped me with my assignments and I read through her reports pretending I understood what I was reading. We went out drinking together sometimes, she always stayed sane enough to drag me home to my bed. When I turned up stoned, she never got mad at me but I always felt guilty about ruining her carpet one time and the couch the next two times. She never asked me to pay for the dry cleaning but I guess that made me feel worse than all the speeches mommy thought of. I didn't realize it then, but it was because of her that I started drinking with a bit more control.

I needed her. When she went on business trips or training camps, I wandered through the apartment like a zombie with nothing to do. I cut class to pick her up from the airport, crushing her in a bear hug when I met her, much to the surprise of her collegues. The day she comes back I'd be beaming all through the day, making her favourite food for dinner, renting her favourite movie, buy a new game for my X-box that we'd play the whole night. I think she needed me too. Or maybe she didn't and I made it up in my head.

When we met her friends and collegues outside, they asked if I was her new boyfriend. She'd laugh and say that I was her flatmate. The next question usually was if we were living together. She'd nod and say that I even paid rent.

I wasn't ever asked if I was her little brother. She still looked younger than me. Maybe that blurred our boundaries a little bit, made us closer than we would have been, than we should have been. My friends asked me if she was in the year below us and if she had anymore pretty friends she'd introduce them to, once when we met at the movies. I said that all her friends were really old and that she was older than she looked. She laughed and threw popcorn at me. That day we got thrown out of the theatre for lauging too hard. But maybe it was because I overturned the bucket of popcorn on her head.

That evening, she sat on the floor, sulking, while I sat on the couch above her, picking bits of popcorn out of her hair. Then she sat in the tub in her dressing gown and made me wash her hair with all her shampoos and conditioners and nice-smelling-hair-product-things. She sulked and refused to make dinner after I splashed water all over her, but I knew she wasn't mad at me when she ordered take-out from my favourite Italian restaurant.

It had been over three months since we began this living arrangement. It was only then that I met her boyfriend. Though back when we met at the bar, she had turned me down saying she had a boyfriend it didn't really register. Those three months I was living in this little delusion in my head which told me that I'd marry her someday and we'd live together the same way like we did now, except we wouldn't say good night and go into separate rooms, we wouldn't part every morning with a pat on the back or a hurried wave but a sweet goodbye kiss, we wouldn't just hug when I went to pick her up at the airport. Also that I wouldn't open the door to find a tall guy at the door when instead I was expecting to find the delivery guy.

This tall guy looked at me and asked, "Who the fuck are you?"

I refrained from swearing by replying with, "I could ask you the same question."

He looked like he'd punch me in the face and I honestly thought he would, except that it was then that my savior looked out from behind me going, "Oh its you."

I went to my bedroom and got out about an hour later when I heard the guy leave. By then the food we'd ordered in had arrived and gotten cold and the noises of them talking had subsided. I stepped out of my room tentatively, as though I was in a warzone and was expecting to step on landmines to find her sitting on the couch, expression unreadable. I walked slowly, barely making a noise and stopped when I saw her, wondering if I needed to leave her alone. Still, she heard me somehow and looked up at me and gave me a sudden smile before getting up and walking over to the kitchen saying, "Take-out's grown cold. I'll reheat it."

I didn't know if I was supposed to pretend that I didn't notice tears in her eyes so I stayed quiet. She left the room and I stood frozen where I was. I thought I ought to say something so I followed her a few minutes later. She had her back to me when I walked in through the door.

"Hey, are you okay?"

She didn't reply, just nodded. I walked closer to her quietly and put my hand on her shoulder, "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"You sure?"

She nodded. I turned her around. She shook her head and turned away. I don't know why I did what I did next but I pulled her into my arms. She resisted for a few seconds then turned around and buried her head in my chest. We stayed there for a long time, the food reheated and cooled again. We didn't talk, I don't think I was even thinking. I think she cried for some time. All I knew was I could feel her arms around me, her face buried in my chest.

Later she sat on the couch and I heated dinner for the second time. I sat next to her and pulled her onto my lap. She closed her eyes and leaned onto my chest, opening her eyes only when I nudged her lips with the fork, feeding her the twice heated spaghetti. I'd never seen her so vulnerable. Though we were terribly close and we could speak about anything, she always had a wall surrounding her deepest feelings. She would have told me if I'd asked her but I didn't. I'd felt like I'd have been prying. But right at that moment, she was curled up on my lap, her eyes swollen and red, complying to the fork i was guiding to her mouth.

I should have kissed her then. I should have picked her up and lay her on my bed and made love to her, make her feel more loved than she had her entire life and told her that I'd always make her feel that way. But I didn't. Because that thought didn't occur to me until much much later. The next night, maybe. Or even the next week. That night though, I slept on her bed. I slept with her in my arms. But nothing happened between us. Nothing at all. Not even a word passed between us. No thoughts, except that I knew I had to be there.

Time flies, about a year passes since that night. I still loved her, loved everything about her but I didn't see her everyday anymore. We didn't live in the same apartment. I moved out when it became unbearable to see her face every morning and still not be able to kiss her, to hug her, to tell her how much I loved her, to love her.

She called me often. Asking if I'm eating well, how living alone is treating me, how college is treating me. I figured she just wanted to make me feel loved, she'd heard enough stories about my parents from me to gather that I hadn't felt loved enough as a kid. Maybe I was needy but she accepted me. She loved me. It confused me.

Her boyfriend and her weren't dating anymore. She called me and said that it was me who gave her the courage to do what was right for her. We met for a celebratory dinner then went back home to tubs of ice cream. Hers was because she had left something that had been a part of her life, a destructive part, nevertheless still a part for over five years behind her. Mine was because I knew she still cried over something that was so wrong for her and there was nothing I could do about it.

Love hurt. It made me curl up into a little ball every time I hung up after talking to her, clutching my chest. It made me feel pain, white hot pain deep inside me every time we parted after a movie or dinner and I hadn't kissed her goodnight. It made me cry everytime she was upset, everytime I felt helpless.

You'd think that human beings would have evolved in some way that made them unable to fall in love, something that hurt so much. Evidently not. Whenever I said this to anyone but her, they'd protest that love also caused a lot of happiness. Maybe I was born a cynic, maybe things made me that way but I responded with wouldn't you get hurt when you broke up? What if you didn't break up? Oh please, you think your relationship is perfect?

She'd smile half a smile and nod. When you have one cynic in a relationship, it just means you might have a few disagreements. But when you have two cynics put together and you expect them to fall in love, you get the situation I had going on. Life sucked. She was still my best friend.

She turned twenty three and I was still nineteen. We had a little party, just me, her, cake and red wine. It felt like she was moving ahead and I was still stuck in love with her. It hurt. We still had fun that night. Played a new game on her Xbox, pretended we were at a karaoke bar, smashed cake on each other's faces. I slept off on the couch and woke up with a blanket over me and the smell of coffee in the air.

It was almost as if I wasn't in love with her enough that we had these little moments that made me fall for her harder, deeper, irreparably.

Her parents started asking her to find a nice guy and settle, it's hard being the independant daughter of conservative parents, she says. Once when her mom had visited while I was still staying there, I'm not sure she could quite decide whether to be horrified that her daughter had a man living with her or delighted that she had a 'live-in' boyfriend. After we explained that it was just a flatshare I think she was more disappointed than relieved. It's a weird world, filled to the brim with hypocrites.

My parents on the other hand thought it was extremely silly that I was living with an older woman. My mother, never shy to express her 'expert opinion' said that being with an older woman was the consequence of broken families and why did I have to do that, our family was perfect, wasn't it? Next thing I knew she'd say homosexuals were suffering from mental diseases so, I hung up.

Dad went on and on about 'cougars' though only barely audible because I'd almost burned the house down the first time he said it out loud. But when he met her, he started playing quite the different tune. When mom and dad walked in the door of my-then-shared-apartment for a surprise visit, they were quite surprised to see her. She was dressed in a black pant-suit, I thought her work clothes made her look sexier but I guess that isn't the point right now. Dad was instantly charmed by her go-getter ways and her sudden smile and her independant lifestyle. Mom on the other hand, hated her guts. Dad tells mom over the breakfast my flatmate had made for us before she left that the only reason mom hated her was because 'your son loves her more than he loves you' and mom sulked the rest of the evening.

All this happened over two years ago and now we come to right now. I'm twenty one years old and she's twenty four. She says sometimes that we should start splitting the rent fifty-fifty from next year on when I join the workforce. I tell her that I shouldn't have to because I don't really have a room of my own, I just share hers, I even share her bed and bathroom. She shuts me up halfway saying that I shouldn't be reminding her that she's a paedophile so early in the morning.

Confused? I don't blame you, I still am sometimes.

When you put two cynics in a room, give them food, water and put holes in the walls to allow for air circulation, something happens. You start with one of them having a drinking problem and being irrevocably in love with the other, and the other having an abusive boyfriend. For a while they're going to be cynical about the possibility of being in love with each other, one pretending to be cynical, the other not realizing that she's pretending. Soon they sort their lives out and as soon as that process starts, separate them and put them in facing rooms with a glass wall separating them. Don't forget the food, water and airholes. Add some unfavourable conditions and soon they find their way around the glass wall.

You want to know how they found their way? They wouldn't tell you. For these two, it's a wonderful, magical thing. They wouldn't tell you.

Fine, I'll tell you. I pretended to be drunk and kissed her. She kissed me back then swatted me away and tucked me into bed. Then I sat up and told her I wasn't drunk and we spoke for hours and she kissed me again before going to her room. I know, it's a stupid story. But yeah, it served its purpose.

We began to date and our relationship didn't change all that much. I felt that she had begun to open up to me a little more, that she let herself rely on me a bit. I liked it that way. I don't think I'd have minded even if she turned into a huge sappy, clingy, possessive blob once we started to date, but she didn't.

She woke up first and made coffee. Some days when I woke up earlier, I lay in bed watching her sleeping face and pretended to be asleep when she woke up. She made breakfast, I packed lunch, I snuck up to her from behind and snaked my arms around her waist. She squealed if she was surprised or sighed and leaned back onto me if she heard me coming. I bury my face into her hair, breathing in the smell that was so quintessentially her. Sometimes she'd turn around, kiss me on my nose and we'd stand there, swaying like we were dancing to music that wasn't there. Other times she'd reach her hands back and tickle me to make me let go while she tried to save the almost burnt eggs.

I came back from class and slept sometimes, one time when I was feeling cheesy, I finished my assignments, filled the house with candles and bought roses and poured out champagne. She came home later than usual that day and we spent the evening with nice smelling bubbles in the tub. Later that night when we were all cuddled in blankets (after fighting about who has to get up to switch off the lights) she joked that me being in a romantic mood was quite the fire hazard. I turned away from her and sulked. She hugged me from behind and whispered cheesy pick up lines at me until I laughed. Then she squeezed me tight and told me she loved me. We kissed.

Her friends think she's insane, mine think I'm a hero. But it doesn't really matter, neither of us cares. Her parents threaten to disown her, my mom thinks what I'm doing is horrendous.

Maybe someday we'll get married but for now, I treasure the small things. Kissing her good night, hugging her to sleep, eating out and playing footsie under the table.

Once in a while I wake up with a hangover on her couch, the smell of coffee in the air and the noises of someone in the kitchen. The only difference is that now, I know exactly where I am. And that this is where I'm supposed to be.