“What about love?” she asks, and looks at the tattoo he has on his arm.
“What about love?” he repeats like he wasn’t paying attention. But she knows he does it when he doesn’t want to give an answer. Maybe he doesn’t have one.
So she lets the smell of the coffee on her hands distract her, looks out the window and starts wondering if people are conscious of their reasons for waking up in the morning.
“You know” he starts- she doesn’t look at him, knowing it’s easier for him to talk if he doesn’t feel examined- “when I first met you, I thought that you had the face of someone with many answers-”
“But it turns out I have a lot of questions.” She takes a sip of the coffee and wonders if love can be described as coffee: warm, bitter or sweet, whichever way you prefer, always giving you energy, even when your eyes hurt from fatigue.
“You just don’t recognize your own answers.” He says, and for the first time today, looks directly in her eyes.
“Tell me one.”
“What?”
“An answer I don’t recognize.”
“Well, you’re always talking about how sick you are of everything, and how tired you are of being surrounded by people… But you always give your best smile when you greet someone, even if you don’t know them. And they’re not fake… The smiles, I mean, they’re always the good ones.”
She gives thought to this, playing with the napkins.
“Is it enough? Do you still think that I’m someone who has many answers?”
“Sometimes the questions are answers.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“So is your perception of the world and still you base your decisions on it.”
“They’re always bad decisions.”
“You just don’t accept yourself.”
“You said that my perception is bullshit.”
“That was only because I knew you wouldn’t defend yourself. No one can say that something in your life is wrong when no one can really understand what life is.”
“You’re talking too much today.”
“Last time, you said that I never share my thoughts.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to hear them.”
“You also said that you like when I share what’s going on inside my head.”
“Touché.”
“I guess its the winter. This season inspires me.”
She finishes her coffee in silence, wondering if people can even comprehend what inspiration is.
She also wonders if love can be found in the form of the cold breeze in a winter afternoon, when the sun is trying its best but she finds home in the cool air.
She wonders if love can be found in the form of a quiet walk or maybe in a conversation, coffee in hands. Or in the form of an effort to make eye contact, or in the calm but insistent need to make someone know how much you appreciate their company.
She wonders if love can be found in the strange form of a pleasant smile… in goodbyes that aren’t real goodbyes… because you’ll reach for each other again. If not today, tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, someday.
