Burning Bite

The latte burned his lip and the tip of his tongue. He winced. It was all planned, all by design. She loved when he did that. She would crinkle her nose and just barely stick out her own tongue, trapping it between a crooked top front tooth and barely off center bottom tooth. The level of empathy killed him every time. He liked to think it sort of made her fall in love with him all over again; like it was all worth the pain.

He thought.

He thought a lot of things.

“It’s not gonna work. This time.”

“But it did before, yeah?”

“Put your eyebrows down.”

“Stop biting your tongue.”

“Fair.”

They looked anywhere but ahead. Well, she did. He kept his eyes on her. Unblinking. Focused.

“Maybe if you focused like that over the last year we wouldn’t be sitting here.” She said it in the matter of fact way he had come to know well - and loathe - over the last year.

“Well,” he said, trying to fill the air with banalities before she could fill it with the words he had a feeling were coming. But he stopped there. Regardless of what was coming he sat there dumbfounded that it was happening. She raised her eyebrows again, telegraphing an altogether different tone.

“Well.”

She had a singular way of turning sentence fragments into fully formed and devastating soliloquies. She continued.

“Well, I had expected you to say something.” She let out a slight chuckle, sad but resigned. “Maybe that was my mistake. Not my first, but-”

“Your last.” They both jumped slightly at his interjection. “I mean, like, it’ll be the last you’ll have to make as far as I’m concerned.”

She winced. Was he aware of what she asked him here after all? It wasn’t easy to tell. He had a history of being obtuse but this would be a new level entirely.

He narrowed his eyes. “What was that look for?”

“Do you really not know my reactions? Even after all this time?”

“What do you mean by that? All what time? We’ve only been together, like, officially, for like, a year.”

“You’re not helping your case here.”

“Yeah, guess not. But you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” she said. “And that’s sort of the problem. I know what you mean but you…” she trailed off hoping he would pick up the thread. She sighed. “Of course not.” He looked blankly. There seemed to be nothing - no questions, no understanding. Just eyes. She swallowed and went on. “I know what you mean but you don’t know what I mean.” She waited for a glimmer of…anything on his face. All she got was a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth. It was enough to keep her going.

“This…us…we…we’re broken.”

“No we’re not.” The lack of passion in his response caught her off guard. Him too, if he were honest. His tone was flat and his eyes were starting, just barely, to well up.

“Yes, Josh. Yes. And that response, the way you said it, the way you’ve done, well, most everything as of late leads me to believe - no. I know you agree.”

Josh blinked. Any tears had dried up. He cleared his throat but didn’t speak. An almost imperceptible nod was all he could manage.

“See?”

“What?” He whispered.

“I know what that nod means.”

“Anne…”

“Bye Josh.”

She got up, kissed his head, and left.

Josh took another sip of his latte. It was cold now. Not that it mattered. He didn’t have anyone to bite their tongue instead of saying I Love You.

That’s what Anne always meant by it.

And Josh know that.

He always knew that.