CLEAN

Accompanied by the buzzing sounds from the cars across the street, I found myself doing a lot of waiting. The November air was so cold, I had carried my favorite red sweater in my bag just in case my pink cotton t-shirt wasn’t enough.

The grip around my phone tightened, and my feet tapped furiously yet rhythmically to the tune of my anxiety. Waiting.

The restaurant’s bell went off, and the front door opened with the energy of a young child discovering something new.

“Look at me, look at me,” the small bell seemed to be screaming, and I obliged. I turned my head towards the entrance. It was exactly who I thought it was.

A man stood with his hands in his pockets, moving out of the way for a couple, who had been here long before I came, to go out. He scanned the tiny restaurant space, a quick nervous look in his eyes as he met mine.

It was crazy to think that those eyes had once peered down at me from the comfort of a bedroom.

I let out a little cough. Waving my hands, I gestured for him to come to me. He obliged.

“Hey Joe,” he greeted the quiet sort that reminded me that people didn’t just change because you hadn’t seen them in months.

“Hey,” I greeted. If things were the same, he would ask if I was okay and I would tell a lie, but that was seven months ago and it was November now.

He took the seat across from me, sitting down silently. Our eyes never met the entire time.

“I-“

“We-“

“-Can I take your order?” a waiter asked, cutting off what could have been an awkward first conversation.

Even though we had spoken a couple of times on the phone, a combination of small talk and questions about when he could come over and collect his things. It never truly felt like we would ever be on good terms again.

That’s what you get when your last words to someone had been a mixture of ‘please don’t leave’ and ‘I wish you were dead’.

“I’ll have whatever he’s having,” he said.

“What if I’m not having again?” I teased a response that came out whenever he would say that.

He chuckled and I joined in, the laughter fading slowly. We let out awkward sighs, clearing our throats and then there was silence.

“Uh, a soda and maybe a plate of your spicy jollof rice,” I said, watching the waiter nod in response. “That’ll be one for each.”

The waiter nodded, walking off.

It was back to square one.

“We could have been sitting across each other in a nicer restaurant, maybe celebrating a third anniversary.” He said, in that quiet voice again. Way to change the mood.

He leaned forward and for the first time, I was seeing him.

He looked good. It was one of the things I loved about him, he always looked good. He cared about those things and without reason too.

He looked good because he wanted to, there wasn’t some backstory about a dead grandma who made him swear to always look handsome even when he was about to deliver the final blow to an already dying relationship.

He just looked good. He kept his hair underneath his cap, I knew it was trimmed, he wore a purple shirt, pressed, and I caught a whiff of the perfume I had gotten him for Christmas.

I would smile, but I knew he wasn’t wearing it for sentimental reasons.

Inhaling it, however, made me realize how much of his presence I had missed these few months.

People say you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, which was true but for a while, I didn’t think about it. Here he was and now I missed him.

“We could have, but we chose other things.”

You chose other things, I wanted to add but didn’t. I didn’t want to start a brawl.

“Yeah and it’s working for us, yeah Joe?” he said. No, just you.

“Yeah, so why did you text me so urgently?” I asked.

“Well-”

“-cause I had things to do.” No, I didn’t.

I had been doing nothing for the last seven months.

“Well I was in the state and I thought to treat you to lunch, we’re friends, and well, also I was hoping we could discuss stuff like getting the rest of my things from Ou-your place and terminating house rent.” He replied.

I nodded my head.

Of course.

“Lawrence, you dumped me on my birthday and then left. You’re so full of it, I’m sure you just want to see how much of a miserable fuck I turned out.”

But I didn’t say that, I couldn’t have so instead I responded with a sigh.

“Yeah, yeah. I already told Mr. Edward that I would be making rent payments myself and I put all your stuff in a box.” I could have put my heart but you only take what you need.

“Oh cool, you’ve got it.”

Silence.

I wasn’t always used to the silence, it made me uncomfortable and I was never the kind of person to handle uncomfortable situations perfectly.

I tried to tune out the silence, fill it up with the incoherent chit-chat of the people around us. The clicking of glasses, the laughter that floated through the air from a table not far from us, a family singing happy birthday to someone.

The world around me wasn’t waiting for two exes to figure out where they stood in each other’s lives, but the sounds around me helped mask the obvious.

Lawrence was one foot out of my life, the other foot was just caught up in the stuff he needed to take with him.

“I wish you had stayed,” I said quietly like the tone he would use when saying the simplest things. Maybe wishing someone had stayed is a simple thing.

“I know.”

The reply was short but it was unmistaken. I knew what he was saying and I knew what I shouldn’t have said, but I did anyway.

“So why didn’t you?”

He let out a sigh, a father explaining math to his level seven child for the fifth time. At some point, we all get tired.

“Because it would have made you sad.”

“No shit, Sherlock. I’m sad now.”

My voice raised a little too high, I could feel a couple of eyes on us.

Lawrence turned to the onlookers and gave them a look, something that married a plea for privacy with an apology for being too loud.

“Don’t make a scene, Joe, this isn’t what I came for.”

He placed his right hand over mine, slowly trying to ease the lump inside me, but I didn’t come all this way to grant him a peaceful goodbye.

“No! You’re an asshole who dumped me on my birthday, you couldn’t even wait for the after-party!” I yelled, slamming my fist on the table.

“Yeah I did, but it was because I didn’t want to be with you anymore.”

“Even now, how could you say that calmly, after everything we’ve been through?” I asked, my eyes began to water. After all these months, I thought I was over this.

When you haven’t seen someone in a while, you forget why you need to forget them. So you go grocery shopping and forget their favorite brand of milk. You go to work and forget why you always had to call them at five.

You exist harder than you need to, hoping you just forget, but when you find them at a party, at the market, on a final date, you realize it didn’t go away.

You didn’t forget.

I felt the grip of his hands, the gentle stroke before I shrugged his hands off.

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t want to stay and be unhappy and then make you unhappy.”

I sniffed.

“Lawrence, did I do something?” I asked.

 He shook his head.

“Then why?”

“Because I didn’t want to make you miserable,”

“As long as you’re here, I wouldn’t have been,” I said.

“And that’s what I feared, Joe. We’re just two lonely people who stayed with each other to make ourselves a little less lonely.”

“I’m not lonely.”

Was I? I had spent the months trying not to think of him, throwing myself into everything I could. All that distraction was for nothing.

“So what now?” I asked, “What happens to me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t want to remember today as the day you dumped me.” He nodded

“I didn’t dump you all over again. It’s just a sad day, Joe, and I’m sorry about that but it’s just another day.” He relaxed a bit, clearing his throat.

“You deserve a nicer goodbye and I thought I could give you that instead.” He said, pushing the chair back. He fished for something in his pocket but I couldn’t see what, I kept my eyes down.

I saw the money being placed beside my right hand and the silence that followed. I knew he was standing there, watching me.

This would be the moment he would subvert my expectations, the shiny knight that comes in to save the prince.

The seconds began to drag and I felt my heart racing as I waited for him to say something, change everything. I wanted his hand on my chin, to feel it lift up and into his eyes but with each second, my heart began to slow down.

I knew it wasn’t coming.

“I’m sorry.”

I nodded.

I didn’t need to look up to know he had walked away. I felt the cold rush of the November air when the door to the restaurant opened and closed.

The tiny bell dinged, and I realized it wasn’t asking to be noticed. It was just a bell and it served its purpose, reminding us that someone had walked in or walked out.

I reached for the sweater in my bag and threw it on, waiting for my order.

Written By:

Idiowaiwori