joe’s

I had known what I was doing. And I know - now, at least - that you knew, too.

I was trying to be nice. I really was. You’d texted me, two minutes before I’d woken up, and you’d said, It’s Sunday! Let’s gooo, and I’d shut down the urge to tap back It’s Sunday, it’s fucking Sunday! I haven’t woken up in my own bed on a Sunday in weeks, leave me alooone!

Instead I’d just said, I JUST woke up. Need to walk Sonny still

What do you wanna do?

You’d said you’d like to do a hike. You’d said, get your hiking boots ready! as if I was going to do anything with my hiking boots except leave them in my closet until the moment I shoved my feet into them.

I don’t know what you’d wanted me to say back to that. I don't know if you thought that maybe if you’d seemed like someone who was peppy and happy on a Sunday morning that it might have made me want to be peppy and happy on a Sunday morning, too.

The thing was - I’d already seen that you weren’t peppy and happy. I already I knew you weren’t peppy and happy, because you’d seen me on Friday in the car, and you hadn't liked what you’d seen.

I was happy, then. I was happy. I was actually happy, deeply happy, down-to-the-bone-happy, because I’d just spent five days without you, without living in your world, without showering in your shower, without breathing your air between your walls. For the first time in what felt like an age, I’d spent five whole days waking up in my own bed, eating my own food, existing in my own realm, and I’d occupied my time reading a really shit romance novel that had made me finally realize that I was never going to fall in love with you.

You’d made a comment, back there in the car, about how I was happy without you. You’d seen it, and I knew that you’d seen it, and you knew that I knew that you’d seen it. I’ll never remember how I responded to your comment, but my garbled excuses for words had left you feeling - something, I suppose.

That was it, though, wasn't it? I was never really sure why you wanted any of this. I never knew why you needed me enough to want to scramble together the dregs of us into something that had never been there in the first place, and I had never really known what I’d wanted until I’d had five days of space, delicious space, space enough to feast on a really shit romance novel and finally realize that nothing resembling love was ever going to emerge. Not here. Not for us.

/

I’d said I wanted to get breakfast before we did anything, so could we get breakfast, and you’d said, sure, I already had a grapefruit, but I can eat a bit more and slam coffees, and I’d wanted to slam my phone into the ground at the idea of dating someone who could be satiated by a goddamn fucking grapefruit.

I said I’d be ready around 10.30. I didn’t text you at 10.30. I was in the shower at 10.30. You texted me at 10.38 and said, how’s it going over there? and I’d said I just got out of the shower! Head over whenever! as if I hadn’t just been listening to The Pretenders at the behest of someone who I’d kissed last summer.

But I did walk outside at the exact moment that you pulled up.

I forgot my mask, and you knew I'd forget my mask, so you opened the glove compartment for me so I could grab a mask from the stash that you put there for the occasions when I forgot my mask, because I always forget my mask.

I put my mask on at the exact moment that we walked into Joe’s Diner. I think you’d thought that maybe Joe’s Diner could become our diner, but in reality Joe’s Diner had always been my diner because it was the diner I’d always wanted to go to but had just never been to before we’d gone together the one time when things were okay and we’d talked about normal things like normal people. I can’t recall for the life of me what we talked about, but I do remember that the food came out very quickly and that the biscuits were fantastic.

We got sat in a booth near the front wall and the hostess splayed the menus and I knew what I was about to do but I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it or say it, so I said something to fill the space, and you said some other things.

The waitress came. I asked for a Diet Coke and the waitress asked if RC was okay, and I wasn’t sure what RC was but you said it was like Walmart’s version of Diet Coke, and I almost laughed because of course Joe’s Diner served Walmart Diet Coke instead of just regular Diet Coke. It was apt, really. Our relationship had been bookended by divey dining. It started with a sudden, sloppy makeout over plastic baskets of burgers and fries at Harveys, and it ended with an expanse of table between us at Joe’s Diner, where the waitress cheerily refilled that scratched-up mug from the 2000 Democratic National Convention with decaf coffee for you while I played with the ice in my Walmart Diet Coke and choked down a nervous-laugh that bubbled up in place of the words I can’t do this any more.

I just had no idea what to say to you. Not then, not that morning, not the evening before, not on Friday when I’d gotten into the car and you’d asked how are the boys and I’d wanted to scream because they were the same as they always were, obviously, and why the fuck did you even need to ask that? I’d had no idea how to articulate how much I appreciated you and how I still abhorred how humdrum we’d become, how I still found myself dreading the thought of eking conversation out of you when we were alone, how impossible it was to want to relight a fire that had never picked up in the first place.

It wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault. I’d thought that maybe it was good that you were your way and I was my way, and that maybe opposites did attract, after all, and that maybe I needed someone solemn and patient and steady to temper my maniacism. I thought that maybe it was good for me to calm down a little bit, and sometimes I was right and it was. But sometimes it wasn’t. And that wasn’t your fault, but it wasn’t fun or fair for either of us to keep pretending like we knew how to inhabit one another’s lives. We knew we liked one another,  but we didn't know how to eat or act or talk around one another. You used words I hated and I was always too much for you, and you were glib and I was wild, and you were mild and I was a swirling inferno of all sorts of things, always, and - I don't know. I don't fucking know. I didn't fucking know. I just knew that you were you and I was me and that we weren't ever really going to stand a good chance at being a We because of who we were and who we are and what we need and how our worlds work and what we eat and when we eat it and how we talk and what we talk about and when we laugh and what we laugh about and all of the million trillion things that people do that sometimes just don't make a lot of sense. 

It wasn't you, but it was you, and it wasn't me, but it was me, and mostly it was you and me just not really being a We and the fact that there really wasn't much rhyme or reason as to why we should ever have thought that we could or should or would have been the We that we thought we were.

But I didn't know how the fuck to say that.

So I stifled the laugh and I sighed and I said some things. I told you about the time my mum asked what sort of sandwich I was eating when I was eating a sandwich right in front of her in Morrison’s Cafe, and how I'd been so irritated by the question that I'd snapped at her and said it's ham, look, and how I'd given her A Look and how she fled as soon as I fired my shot. That memory has been on my mind a lot, lately, I guess. She'd run out of Morrison’s, and I had then had to go and stop her from crying as she cried over a cigarette in the parking lot. She’d said some things about me getting new boobs and America. I had not said the things about how small and cold and claustrophobic England was. It had just been a ham sandwich and a stupid question. And I don't really like stupid questions. 

But you and I were in the diner, and you were asking about my dad and I was saying things about the time difference and how much I hate that I have these little windows of time in the week wherein I can actually speak to my parents, and mostly I miss the windows so mostly I don’t talk to them. And somewhere down the line I stopped talking, and you asked how I was, and I wasn’t sure how to say I’m good, I’m really good, I’m just really good and I don’t want to have to think about you any more.

So I didn’t say it. I shoved my face into my elbow instead. I blocked your face and the diner and the world out with my elbow and my hair, that's when I knew that you knew what I needed to say, and that's when my brain stopped working and it all became a blur of words that neither of us even really needed to say anyway. 

I just knew that I needed to eat, so I came back up from my elbow and out from my hair, and I did the things that people do. I started to say some words. 

I didn’t like it up there. You shook sugar into your coffee and I stabbed at the divets in the ice cubes with my straw. I couldn’t look at your face. Instead, I looked at the metal signs for 7-Up that they’d hung over the door to the kitchen, the neat rows of Hershey’s syrup on the shelves behind the counter, the dried-up glue on the wall of our booth. I scrambled around for some words, but you got there before me. You said this isn’t working, is it, and I said no, it wasn’t, and then I said a lot more things in an order that didn’t really make any sense but were supposed to mean no, it’s not working, and it’s not your fault, and I’m sorry. 

At some point, the food came. The busser delivered our food and asked if we needed hot sauce or ketchup at the exact moment that I looked at the ketchup bottle and the Cholula, and I was silent for a moment before I came to my senses and I said no, thank you. I reached for the Cholula. I did not say why the fuck are you asking if we need ketchup and hot sauce when the ketchup and the hot sauce are right here, and I know that you hate your job but use your eyes for a second, would you. As he walked away I thought about laughing about how the busser hadn't used his eyes, but I didn't think you'd find it funny, so I didn't say it.

I scooped up some little bits of potato with my fork. Bits of onion and trails of spinach evaded me. I stabbed at my eggs. 

I asked if you agreed, and you did. It wasn't working. 

You said there couldn't be a third try, and I agreed with you, and I couldn't fathom why in God's name you were saying it like I'd want a third try. I couldn't fathom what in the fuck made you want to try to do a thing that was supposed to make sense with someone who was never going to make sense for you. 

You only ate one biscuit. Your plate was starting to get cold and congealed and pukey-looking. I cut a piece of your food, because I'd never had chorizo gravy before. The biscuits were still sturdy. I piled some eggs onto my little section of biscuit and cold chorizo puke, and I ate it politely as I wondered why the hell you were attracted to me instead of Scarlett who did mosaics and worked at Deloitte, and why you wanted you for me instead of someone who made me belly laugh because I wanted to laugh about the busser who couldn't see the ketchup and the hot sauce. 

All I know is that I know that we know when we know, and I think that we both knew we weren't ever really going to know one another. Not really. So I’m not sure why you aren’t talking to me, but I’m just glad I don’t have to try to talk to you any more. I guess I think that this is for the best, for both of us. And - I don’t know, I guess that I’m sorry that this is the best way that I can say it. I don't know why I never knew what to say. I don't know why it wasn't ever going to be love, and I don't know why that was okay for you.

I hope we can still be friends.