Cold Coffee {COMPLETED}

Cold Coffee: Chapter Nine

Cold Coffee: Chapter Nine

"There's not much to say about me that you probably haven't already heard."

"Luckily for you I don't tend to believe everything I read. No matter how tempting it is."

Klaus stared at me with those eyes that resembled the remains of a combusted star; his whole being seemed to be made up of tiny broken pieces of something else that once belonged to him. He was held together by cheap sticky tape that could suddenly lose its purpose and leave him in shards on the floor. Klaus was a hazard, and I knew it.

"Where should I start?"

"Where do you think you begin?"

He tapped his fingers against the table top and I noticed how they were the fingers of a musician. They were pale and skeletal and they might have scared me but they suited him.

"My life truly took off when I was asked to join this band at high school. I was fourteen and ugly and I cried when I watched The Notebook with my sister-"

Klaus came to an abrupt halt as I tried to contain my laughter but that only caused me to choke and he waited patiently as tears ran down my cheeks. I didn't know whether I was crying because of the pain or because of what Klaus had said.

"The Notebook? As in-"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"It was with my sister-"

"You can't have-"

"Would I lie to you?"

We were quiet for a moment as we both contemplated the answer to his question. I didn't say anything so he carried on.

"Anyway, it was a four piece band called Trucker, or something along that line. I tried my best to erase the worst of it when I left. We entered a few school shindigs and we kind of did alright. The girls went crazy for Pete who was the lead vocalist. He was everything I thought I wanted to be." Klaus ceased speaking and stared at something that I couldn't see. I wonder if he was flitting back into the body of his fourteen year old self who was insecure and sensitive and all those things that girls asked boys to be but then never really gave them a chance. I think he forgot that I was still there so I nudged his foot under the table.

"We could never have gone anywhere, though. We wanted different things, me and the lads. They just wanted to sing songs about sex and snog fifteen year old girls wearing tight skirts in dark corners of pubs. I don't know what I wanted but I didn't want that. Maybe that is where I went wrong."

The silence that followed was so sad and so cold that I couldn't just sit there and watch him. I offered to bring in another round of coffee but Klaus didn't respond so I did it anyway. When I returned he appeared to have stopped breathing in the nostalgic fumes.

"I just don't know what I want. Sometimes, I want everything to stop so I can figure out what I am supposed to do because everything I am doing right now is going to affect what I'm going to do. I can't stand that. I can't stand thinking that there is more time left and that I will have to fill that time with what I am doing now."

I opened my mouth to interject but Klaus drove on, his hands curled into trembling fists and his eyes ignited with passion and hate and longing.

"Because people can say that I am in charge of my future, but I'm not. Not really. The people who listen to my music and the people who come to my shows hold my life in their hands. Something as-as- horrid- as despicable and vindictive as the media decides what I do next. It's not fair. I don't want that."

"Then don't," I said plainly. "There's a saying that if you want something you can get it but you just have to want it enough. How about if you don't want something you can lose it but you just have to not want it enough?"

"I just don't want to face another day doing the same things."