Coffee, Conversation and Fear of Commitment

Max and I were sitting at a coffee house one day, I was sipping down my triple espresso as he drank his Irish Cream Iced Latte. Personally I had begun to hate the designer drinks, Starbucks was still my worst enemy, yet I had been supplying them with monetary compensation for there services of bad coffee just to settle my caffeine addiction, Lucky for me there were still small independent coffee houses near most areas I frequented. This Inland Valley joint I happen to stumble on a few years back was one such place. It was still independent but had attracted a larger crowd than the franchises that had been appearing over the past decade. The coffee was somewhat better, beans were not burned to hell as they were from the House of the Green Straw and the décor seemed to have a better atmosphere as if it had grown a personality over time. The downside was the crowd, which is why this story takes place. A woman desperate to get a place to sit with her iced Joe decided to come to the table where Max and I were sitting. She was attractive to the eye, Max made sure to give me the look that we needed to have her sit here in a vain hope that he could somehow convince her into going home with him. I didn’t care, I was at the point were caffeine wasn’t going to help anymore, I was cranky and tired but I had not yet reached the levels of asshole to deny her a place to sit. She had curly raven hair that came down just below her shoulders, ocean blue eyes and a semi conservative, yet laid back attire.

            “Thanks for letting me sit here guys.”

            “No problem” replied Max, on edge as if he was about to jump out of his chair at her bidding. “We’re just nice guys like that”. It was obvious to me that her was hopelessly attracted to her, but she didn’t show any signs that she picked it up.  She simply smiled at him before introducing herself.

            “My name’s Brenda”. She announced holding out her hand to Max

“Max”. He said as he shook her hand gently before she turned to me with her hand still held out.

“David”. I answered as I shook her hand. She smiled for a moment as she let go and took a sip from her drink.

“So, what were you two talking about before I interrupted” she asked

“Dating” Max answered quickly.

“Dating?”

“More like the cons of dating”. I added. She looked at me puzzled for a bit, as if trying to study where I stood one the topic.

“Why would dating be a con? People should find dating to be wonderful.”

“A wonderful mess” I added. She smiled at me again in amusement.

“I take it that you haven’t had the best luck at dating”.

“No I have had a wonderful time at dating, but after a while I have just started to believe that it is better to not date than to pursue someone in hope that it will work out. There are better alternatives than trying to find someone who overall is simply a friend with benefits.” She looked puzzles and shocked for a brief moment as though she couldn’t understand why I would say such a thing.

“Look”, I continued. “Take a relationship, in essence it is simply a friend that you are affectionate to and carry on a sexual relationship with. It only falls apart when people bring their fears and insecurities into the equation and that’s when the friendship as it were is to fall apart.”

“Why did your last relationship fall apart” Brenda interrupted.

“Because she was a kid and she wanted to play. When reality came into play she didn’t want me in the picture to help her out, she had insecurities about men helping her in order to use her.”

“So it was only her insecurities that caused the relationship to fail?”

“No” I replied “Mine was that I wanted to be in love and I can’t handle the word no when it comes to helping” I told myself a long time ago that not everyone can be helped, I just have trouble excepting it sometimes”

“Because you loved her.”

“No.”

“No?” She looked at me in a puzzled way, it was apparent that she couldn’t understand why I answered no so quickly.

“Look, I was with this girl for less then three months. I moved in with her after six weeks of dating, I moved in only because I didn’t want to be at the place I was living in at the time. Not the brightest thing I have ever done of course. But what’s done is done. Only thing I regretted was the fact that I eventually lost her friendship with it.”

“Why?” Max jumped in.

“Because she is brilliant. I am only prejudice toward stupid people, I enjoy carrying a conversation with someone who makes me rethink my views. She made me do that in many conversations that we had, we argued about issues all the time and I loved it. I was set in my beliefs until I met her. We would have made great friends, but never should we have been lovers.”

“Then why did you become lovers?” asked Brenda “Couldn’t you have just been friends?”

“No, we had an attraction to each other. It is hard for people of the opposite sex to just be friends when there is a physical attraction to each other.” I said in a matter of fact way. Brenda leaned in toward me.

“So, if you and I found each other attractive, there is no way we could be friends”

“No” I corrected “I said it is difficult to keep them separate, it is never impossible.”

“So you mean to say that you can find a girl physically attractive and not have it turn into a sexual relationship?” Asked Max.

“Yes, It doesn’t mean that she has the same attraction” I stated

“You know what I mean Dave, if you both had an attraction to each other, could you manage not to be physical?”

“Yes”

“Bullshit.” Max shot back.

“It is all based on your level of maturity. If you really want that friendship to last, you make sure you don’t get physical with her.” Brenda rolled her eyes back

“So if you liked your ex’s friendship so much, did you lack the maturity to keep it separate.” I gave Brenda a sharp stare, I could feel the asshole in me wanting to retaliate.

“Yes, by way of bad timing. I discovered that she would have made a better friend after we started dating. I dated her mostly because I was alone. I wanted someone in my life and I was insecure about trying to maintain a friendship with someone who already admitted that she was attracted to me.”

“So what made it hard to try to keep a relationship”

“Because,” I paused for a moment to take a sip of my cooling espresso “I still believe that in order to have a successful relationship you need to predict what your partner wants from you”

“Oh, that’s easy enough.” She said sarcastically.

“Yeah, but I am a horrible psychic”. At once all three of us burst into laughter, which was a relief to my apprehensions. We all took a moment of pause to tend to our drinks and to reflect. I had noticed that David Grey was playing in the background. I closed my eyes in order to filter out my senses in order to hear it better.

“I love this song.” Brenda announced. I opened my eyes to the sight of her watching me, knowing what I was doing when my eyes closed.

“Yeah, me too. The first time I ever heard this was when someone did a cover of it.”

“There’s a cover out?” She asked me surprised.

“Not really” I smiled “A friend of mine sang this when he was doing his show”

“I see”

“You mean Joe’s show?” asked Max.

“Yeah, great show. Too bad it had a small turnout. So where were we?”

“Psychic dating” Brenda answered

“Yeah” Max answered with a huge grin appearing on his face. Brenda smiled to before she added to the conversation

“Explain why you need to predict what’s going to happen in order for a successful relationship?”

“More or less, you need to know what she is thinking or feeling in order to keep her interested.”

“There is where you messed up!” announced Brenda

“Excuse me?”

“You tried too hard to cater to her needs. A relationship is made to be equal. You should plan to do things together instead of you trying to figure out how to serve her. You were her boyfriend, not her servant. If you act that way she has every right to loose respect for you.”

“That and I’m an asshole when I get defensive.”

“How so?”

“I’m a great friend, my boyfriend skills are mediocre and I am absolutely horrible at break ups. I have this twisted dedication into trying to make something work even if it was never designed to do so.”

Brenda sat up in interest.

“I feel a story coming up.”

“You have no idea.” Max spoke up

“Bad story?”

“Let’s just say his last break up could have gone better”.

“Piss off!” I gave Max a stare as if he was holding up a bottle of Lemon juice to an open wound. “He’s right, things did not go well. Let’s just say that I am going to blame depression, alcohol and the full moon for my actions that night. Which was made worse by her friends getting involved.”

“What happened?” she asked

“Let’s just say that tried to at least save a friendship, but I still had a lot of anger in me at the time. Emails and Instant messages were taken wrong and next thing, I am yelling at her friends over a telephone making an ass of myself trying to talk to her. Things were said, things were taken wrong and other things were taken real wrong. Next thing I know, my mom is getting an Email from her wondering if she should call the cops because her friends told her I was threatening her.”

“Were you?”

“No, I was just being an asshole who wasn’t making any sense.” I felt my body tense up from the topic. I took a hard gulp of my coffee before I took a deep breath in order to calm down.”

“Still a touchy subject I see” She said before she took another sip out of her drink. I could see in the corner of my eye that Max was watching me with a little bit of worry as if I may take out the resentment on him. I gave him a reassuring look to let him know that wasn’t the case. It was clear that he got the message and reclined back into his seat. Brenda studied the two of us for a bit before she jumped back in.

“So do you miss her?”

“No” I answered

“Hate her?”

“Nope.”

“You don’t hate her? I would have figured with a break up like that you would spend your time telling your friends how much of a bitch she is.”

“Why? It’s not worth it. I wasn’t with her long enough to have any lasting feelings about her and both here and I weren’t ready to have a relationship. Especially with each other. I have regrets about it. About loosing a great friend, about how I acted, and about the fact that I jumped in head first to a relationship when I knew perfectly well that it would have never worked. I think I wanted to have the happy ending. Even apart of me wanted to ask her to marry me. That was a disaster that was thankfully averted. I learned that I was not ready for a relationship and I won’t be for a while.”

“Won’t you just become lonely and jump into another relationship.” She asked

“No, I have friends that make sure I know I am not alone.”

“What about the physical.”

“What about it? I like sex, but I never based it on a relationship. Don’t get me wrong, if a girl I was with was cheating on me I’d go though the roof, but that is based on trust, not the physical.” I took one final swig of my now cold espresso before I got up. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work tomorrow and I need sleep.”

Brenda sat up surprised as I began to leave.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yeah” I answered

“Well can I get your number?”

“Yeah sure.” As I pulled out my pen and notepad out of my jacket. I wrote it down as I hoped that she would have got the hint and realized not try to make this into a physical relationship. I quickly pushed away the macho egotist running though my thoughts as I handed her the paper.

“Talk to you later, then.” She said as she took the paper from me. I smiled back at her before I turned to Max and shook his hand.

“Later Dave.” He said as I turned and walked out of the coffee house.