Last Cup of Coffee

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When I was a kid, I used to wonder what coffee tastes like. Seeing how my parents always drink it together. Smiling while talking about how they met. But little did they know, one will be their last.

Just a week after that day, they got into an argument that they failed to fix. They started shouting at each other more and avoiding each other's gaze. Taking more time at work than in our house just to avoid seeing each other. And watching them do that, I started to realize that they got tired. Tired of fighting with each other. And when they decided that it was time for them to part ways, I did not cry. I did not cry because I thought it was just a normal fight. That in the end it will be fixed. Because that's what parents do, they fight and they fix it... right?

But I was just a kid back then. I was still naive. I didn't know that it would be permanent.

In the first month after my Dad left, I still talked to him. On video calls and normal calls. To ask me how's my day and how I've been. It was always fun, it makes me feel like he's just at work.

In the second month, the calls started getting less. We didn't do video calls because he has work to do and it's just a quick catch up. He says he was busy and I said it was okay and I understand it, because I thought I did.

Third month, the calls became texts. Asking how are you, how's your day, is school fun, and responses to my long texts are always "That's great" followed by a "I'm sorry, sweetie, I have work". But that's okay, because I understand, and if I don't I always find a way to.

And in the fourth month there's silence. There's silence and there's a kid staring at her phone in their living room, alone. Waiting for something that seems to never happen. But she didn't give up. She waited and waited and waited until she got tired and just accepted the fact that it was over.

That night she cried. She cried on her bed with her phone in her hand. Begging for it to ring. Wishing for something that she knows will never happen.

She remembers the day in the coffee shop. Her looking at her parents laughing and smiling with each other in the cafe's window. Her coming in and sitting near them to hear what they're talking about. Her smiling as her parents laughed. Her getting caught. Her parents saying it's okay and filling her in what they were talking about.

She remembers it all.

She remembers the smiles, the laughter, the love. But she also remembers the tears, the fighting, the hatred, the tired faces. All of it.

And that night, she started hating coffee.