Fair chance

She sat alone staring blankly at her cup of coffee and she knew, that today is going to be the test of her resilience. She could almost never say the things she planned to when it came to moments like these. Almost. How could things be so bad, when nothing really went wrong? Something must have been amiss and she vowed to figure out what that was. All she really needed to do was to make the decision for herself and everything would fall into place for her. She looked at her watch. He was already 20 minutes late. She picked up her phone to call him, to ask him where he was. But she didn't make that call. She knew that every call she made to him, made her feel worse because he just didn't know how to be polite. Another 10 minutes, and he walked in, oblivious to the fact that this was her second cup of coffee and she looked like she could cry any minute. He sat down, took off his shades and said, "Sorry. Got stuck up in some work. Man my life sucks." She looked at him, and assuming the role of an understanding ex-girlfriend said, "That's okay. You want something? I'm going to get myself another cup of coffee." He said, "No." It's little things like these that had all of a sudden started to spring up in her face. She thought, if this really was a guy who liked me as much as he said he did, wouldn't he have asked me what I wanted? Wouldn't he know how much I like my Cafe Latte, with a hazelnut flavour?
She came back to the table and noticed he was talking to someone on the phone. She sat across him, staring at him, and she thought of all the good times. The time he cooked for her, and the time he looked at her with love. The time when they fell asleep in each other's arms and the time when they laughed so hard at something that only the two of them understood, that they knew this is as good as it gets. She knew that she ought to have thought of the pain. Of how he didn't know anything about himself, and how he dragged her out of her comfort zone, only to leave her stranded in the middle of nowhere. " So? How are you?", he said as he hung up, and she just smiled and replied, " I've been better." She gave herself a countdown, before she began to tell him what she wanted to say. 3-2-1. She always did that in situations where she was nervous, and petrified of the consequence. And somehow it always worked for her. 3-2-1. "So, practicality is evil. I've always believed that when you like someone you work at spending all your time with them, because that seems like the natural course of action. You get past the silly details that somehow don't bother you anyway, and you feel the joy. Every little bit of it. And for some reason, the only choice of action now is being practical. I get it. It's to avoid pain. But here's the thing, I've never really been afraid of pain, definitely not as much as I am afraid of losing out on people I so blatantly love. You are a horrible person. You don't get me. You don't even care enough to pretend, and that is hurtful. But that is not what I wanted to say to you. I wanted to tell you how much I am going to miss everything about you. I can't put my life on hold, and well, obviously neither can you, but I just wish this hurt you as much as it hurts me. It's not nice that while I get to be a caffeine popping no-one, you get to be this casual. Like nothing ever happened in your life. Practicality has changed all the rules of life, that I so diligently followed, drastically. It doesn't work for me, and it sure as hell works for you. So, it's been really nice knowing you, and someday, hopefully, we will get our fair chance at being with each other. Until then, you will be missed." He looked at her, not knowing what to say. And she fumbled with her keys, and her bag, before she left, because she hoped that today would be different. That today for a change he would know what to say. But he didn't. As she walked away from him, she felt physically distant from him for the first time in her life, and as hurtful as that feeling was she was thanking her stars for it. As she sat in her car, clouded by a million thoughts in her head, she crossed her fingers and hoped this would mean clarity.