A Break

“You should text her,” I said.

“I should,” he answered, his voice absent of the certainty of his words. His eyes looked down on his phone as if the rest of his life was hanging on that very moment, those few seconds of creation, his thumbs tapping fateful letters on a cold sheet of glass while our morning coffee brewed on the counter just behind him.

It was across that same counter not many months ago that Andrew attempted to speak to a barista, asking for her number so he could begin pouring out his whole heart to her in silence, as with his other solitary romances. Her elfin features could not hide what seemed to be a nervous awareness that as my friend walked towards her, he would be asking for something other than the morning’s pastry. He clung to his phone lightly, ready to save those precious digits. She wore her usual smile as he reached the counter. She declined to give her number, citing a store policy, but agreed to be friends online. And it was online where Andrew saw her again, looking like she’s gained a bit of weight and a year’s worth of wisdom in her eyes, alone in a summer selfie, a few weeks after my friend cried.

Andrew is not one I would typically call a hopeless romantic. His heart, I know, yearns to be so in love that the joy is almost painful—just as I had yearned for a decade, almost quitting on the idea of marriage bliss, before God thought he’d finally answer a prayer I’d already forgotten. Perhaps it is in that melancholy dream of his that I relate so well to his struggle. He is a dreamer. A known idealist—often too much for his own good. An old soul looking for the one to build a home with. But where I might have had an irrational abundance of confidence, Andrew when put in the situation choses to indulge in apprehension instead. That is one thing where being a programmer never helped him. There is no algorithm for romance.

But this time it didn’t take much persuading for him to just pull out his phone and send a quick apology for not even glancing at Seline as we crossed paths on our way to get coffee. Andrew, for some unfortunate coincidence, was looking at Seline’s friend as we passed them by, not even realizing that she was also there. It was an honest mistake. But one perhaps that he didn’t need to be so honest about.

“So what did you text her?”

“I just told her I’m sorry for not noticing her earlier. I told her I was looking at Christine.”

“You said what?”

I gestured to see exactly what he typed, and was lost for words when I saw that my poor friend even managed to start his message with a silly laugh and ended it with a smiley. I wanted to hit him with his phone but I found in his face a slow-creeping consciousness of what a bad day he just started. It was not the kind of childish mistake a young man who’s never talked to a girl would make. Nor was my fried being deliberately dismissive of the girl he wants to fall in love with. It was something else. And it pained me that I couldn’t understand it enough to know what to say to him.

He stood up to get our morning drug and returned handing me a latte while staring past the tall glass windows of the storefront. It was a clear day. But in my cup I thought I tasted a dash of that same unpleasantness that was growing in Andrew’s almost-frown. He forgot to ask for Stevia for his cup like always did, but I imagined it would be bitter either way.

I remembered a time when he revealed to me that his latest would-be relationship had already gone as gloomy as that December day. He was asking if it would be a good idea to send the girl a book, as a unpresuming gift, as good friends would do. He had in fact already settled on sending three books, chosen with care, already wrapped in a pretty box that probably weighed more than the modest friendship he thought he was hoping for. I couldn’t bare to tell him it was probably not a good idea, that it wasn’t probably the best time to push for a third chance so soon, even though he believes that was not his intention. I told him to send just one. When the year ended, I found all three books still sitting in their pretty box, untouched in his office desk.

As we stepped outside to bask in that early Wednesday light before we nestled back to our cold office, I noticed a change in Andrew’s face. It was as quick as the air had changed from the scent of roasted beans to the thick, lingering odor of sun-kissed grass.

“Did she reply?”, I asked as he pocketed his phone with the refreshing confidence of a Wall Street banker that just ended a call with a client. He was smiling.

“She did. She replied with a smiley.”

“And?”

“She was laughing.”

“Laughing through text? How?”

“She said her day hadn’t been going so well. She was late and was already stressed out. But not until I made her laugh, apparently.”

“She thought it was a joke?”

“She just asked me if I wanted to have brunch at 10. She said she’s dying to take a break.”