Reminders of Him

I was sad that I didn’t.

I’m telling you this because he tasted like coffee, but a better kind of coffee than the prison coffee they served to the prisoners. He tasted like expensive eight-dollar coffee from Starbucks, with caramel and whipped cream and a cherry. It’s why I kept kissing him. Not because I enjoyed the kiss, or him, or his hand on my waist, but because I missed expensive flavored coffee.

And you. I miss expensive coffee and you.

Love,

Kenna

“You want a refill?” the bartender asks. He has tattoos that slide all the way into his shirtsleeves. His shirt is deep purple, a color you don’t see in prison very often.

I never thought about that until I was there, but prison is really drab and colorless, and after a while, you start to forget what the trees look like in the fall.

“Do you have coffee?” I ask.

“Sure. Cream and sugar?”

“Do you have caramel? And whipped cream?”

He tosses a rag onto his shoulder. “You bet. Soy, skim, almond, or whole milk?”

“Whole.”

The bartender laughs. “I was kidding. This is a bar; I have a four-hour-old pot of coffee and your choice of cream or sugar or both or none.”

The color of his shirt and the way it complements his skin tone are no longer impressive. Asshole. “Just give me whatever,” I mutter.

The bartender backs away to retrieve my basic prison coffee. I watch as he lifts the pot out of the holder and brings it close to his nose to sniff it. He makes a face, then dumps it out in the sink. He flicks the water on while refilling a guy’s beer while starting a new pot of coffee while closing out someone else’s tab while smiling just enough but not too much.

I’ve never seen someone move so fluidly, like he has seven arms and three brains and they’re all going at once. It’s mesmerizing watching someone who’s good at what they do.

I don’t know what I’m good at. I don’t know that there is anything in this world I could make look effortless.

There are things I want to be good at. I want to be a good mother. To my future kids, but mostly to the daughter I already brought into this world. I want to have a yard that I can plant stuff in. Stuff that will flourish and not die. I want to learn how to talk to people without wishing I could retract every word I said. I want to be good at feeling things when a guy touches my waist. I want to be good at life. I want to make it look effortless, but up until this point, I’ve made every aspect of life appear entirely too difficult to navigate.

The bartender glides back to me when the coffee is ready. As he’s filling the mug, I look at him and actually absorb what I’m seeing this time. He’s good looking in a way that a girl who is trying to get custody of her daughter should want to stay away from. He’s got eyes that have seen a thing or two, and hands that have probably hit a man or two.

His hair is fluid like his movements. Long, dark strands that hang in his eyes and move in whatever direction he moves. He doesn’t touch his hair; he hasn’t since I’ve been sitting here. He just lets it get in his way, but then he’ll flick his head every now and then, the slightest little movement, and his hair goes where he needs it to. It’s thick hair, agreeable hair, want-my-hands-in-his-hair hair.

My mug is full of coffee now, but he lifts a finger and says, “One sec.” He swivels and opens a minifridge and then pulls out whole milk. He pours some into the mug. He puts the milk back, opens another fridge—surprise, whipped cream. He reaches behind him, and when his hand reappears, he’s holding a single cherry that he places carefully on top of my drink. He slides it closer to me and spreads out his arms like he just created magic.

“No caramel,” he says. “Best I could do for not-a-coffee-shop.”

He probably thinks he just made a bougie drink for a spoiled girl who’s used to having eight-dollar coffee every day. He has no idea how long it’s been since I’ve had a decent cup of coffee. Even in the months I spent in transitional housing, they served prison coffee to the prison girls with prison pasts.

I could cry.

I do cry.

As soon as he gives his attention to someone at the other end of the bar, I take a drink of my coffee and close my eyes and cry because life can be so fucking cruel and hard, and I’ve wanted to quit living it so many times, but then moments like these remind me that happiness isn’t some permanent thing we’re all trying to achieve in life, it’s merely a thing that shows up every now and then, sometimes in tiny doses that are just substantial enough to keep us going.